What is Brand Differentiation?
Building a strong brand is the undisputed key to success in today’s business world, and robust differentiation is an absolute must to build a powerful and compelling brand. Brand differentiation is the means by which your brand is set apart from the competition, by associating a superior performing aspect of your brand with multiple customer benefits.
In terms of branding, differentiation can relate to any combination of the following from the physical characteristics of your product or service, to the emotional response your brand triggers, aspects of its presentation, its price point such as very high or very low, your brand story, and even the customer experience of your brand as a whole.
Branding is the art of differentiation David Brier
Why Is Differentiation Important?
When we buy goods or services we want value for our money.
Every person’s situation is different so some customers may prioritize quality over price than others or vice versa.
But there are many more possible buying considerations a market may have beyond quality and price.
Some may be short on time and place a high value on convenience while others may have plenty of time and place a higher value on the overall experience.
The list of buying considerations in a given market may be long.
The differentiation strategy defines which buying considerations a brand focuses on with a view to attracting a more specified segment within that market who want what they have.
The differentiation strategy highlights the focused buying considerations the brand has selected to match its intended audience.
A brand without a differentiation strategy has an audience without a reason to choose them.
Examples of brands who nailed differentiation
Beyond Meat
Meatless companies and products, despite having a hungry market (no pun intended), have never quite actualized mind blowing success. They’ve been stale, uninspired and unable to differentiate from each other to win the market over.
That all changed with Beyond Meat, thanks to innovative products and branding. Beyond’s products are now all over the globe, and they’re on the forefront of meatless brand success.
Their target market: People seeking meatless alternatives that offer similar taste and texture to meat.
How they differentiated: The most obvious way that Beyond Meat is in their branding, starting with their name. Beyond meat implies that the product is the next step in food consumption evolution.
Further, they noted the stagnated products other meatless brands were promoting, and innovated the idea to emulate meat in many ways, rather than to move away from it.
The result was a movement that many other brands tried to become a part of. Longtime chicken restaurant KFC even joined the party, co-branding a chicken-less chicken product.
Planet Fitness
There are two types of people who go to the gym: those who love going and those who hate it. If you are one of the many who hate going to the gym, Planet Fitness decided to make it easier for you to love it.
The typical gym is filled with things that discourage newbies and people who took a lot of time away from working out. Planet Fitness turned all that on its head by excluding members who turn gym culture into an unpleasant ordeal.
Their target market: Gym-goers who wanted to exercise without feeling the guilt brought on by stares from over-enthusiastic weightlifters.
How they differentiated: Planet Fitness is famous for restricting certain gym member types (shirtless, muscley men grunting and being intimidating to others), while promoting the idea that their specific gym is a ‘judgement free zone’. We won’t even fault them for misspelling ‘judgment’, because who knows, maybe they were trying to stand out?
Red Bull
As the demand for energy drinks continues to increase, one thing remains the same: Red Bull is a popular option. There are many reasons for this, and continued differentiation is one of them.
Red Bull refuses to be just a beverage, pushing the envelope on what a brand can accomplish in terms of experiences. This, among other things, have helped it remain in a class of its own.
Their target market: People who want the taste of soda but with more caffeine.
How they differentiated: Red Bull has made lighthearted claims about its product’s efficacy (“Red Bull gives you wings”), held global events and even sponsored a space jump! Pretty impressive for an energy drink brand.
Oatly
The market for milk has changed, opening a world of possibilities for new creations, such as soy, rice, almond, etc. This list of dairy-free milks is now bigger, thanks to Oatly and their oat-based milk products.
Apart from creating a new way to enjoy milk without the need for cows, Oatly is working to help the environment with their drink. This bigger purpose is evident all throughout their marketing campaigns.
Their target market: People who want a dairy-free alternative to milk but haven’t enjoyed the options available, such as rice, soy and almond milk.
How they differentiated: Oatly used creative branding and marketing to attract a niche demographic, as well as a whole new product to separate from the pack. They’ve even expanded their oat formula to be used in ice cream.
Unmade
It’s been a bumpy ride for the world of fashion in the internet age. As clothing companies work to find new and effective ways to ship their products to customers, brands with creative solutions are coming out of the woodwork.
However, one such brand did something that no one else thought of: re-purpose unused clothing materials for custom orders.
Their target market: Initially, their market consisted of customers who wanted to purchase a custom piece of clothing from high-quality fashion labels. Now, they help retailers design and manufacture new clothing ideas.
How they differentiated: By finding purpose and value where there previously was none, Unmade stood out to a market that typically had fewer options in terms of creating and/or purchasing different clothing materials.
IKEA
Furniture stores, at least until recently, were chocked full of stereotypes that for whatever reason all seemed to be true from one place to the next.
Customers expected basically the exact same thing whenever they needed to purchase some furniture, and their experience matched these expectations every time. That was until IKEA started growing in popularity, and managed to revolutionize how people think of the industry.
Their target market: Customers who crave new and exciting brand experiences when they buy furniture.
How they differentiated: IKEA stands out by offering low-priced products that somehow look extremely high-quality. They also are more than a furniture shop (they sell food in-store).
They’ve essentially gamified their products, making it quite an experience to assemble, which has become iconic.
Lastly, IKEA differentiates by understanding that no two customers are ever alike. This is evident from their guide to different bedroom layouts, which helped people find personalized furniture based on how they sleep.
For example, if someone slept with a pet in their bed, such as a dog, the IKEA guide would detail the best bedroom setup for that particular customer.
Etsy
Upon first hearing about Etsy, it may seem like a strange idea as a company, since they functionally seemed like just another eBay or Amazon. However, it turns out there was quite a market for it, and they were able to capture a niche audience.
Etsy is similar to eBay or Amazon in that it connects buyers with sellers across the world, but it differs in the fact it is dedicated to promoting handmade items that aren’t found on other sites. Clearly, Etsy was doing something right, because Amazon eventually tried to enter the same market, creating a handmade section as well.
Their target market: People who had unique skills to make crafts that didn’t have a set place on a site like Amazon or eBay.
How they differentiated: By catering strictly to handmade crafts that customers wouldn’t find in stores anywhere or on other e-commerce sites. Etsy helped users find that very specific vintage handmade item they had been looking for all their lives.
30 Ways to Differentiate Your Brand
Price Differently
Varying the price of your products or services from the competition can be an effective differentiation strategy. You can be either the economy bestseller with a low price, or a premium brand with a high price – such as Starbucks, which prices coffee higher to increase perceived quality. In fact, many brand differentiation strategies can help you charge and receive a premium price.
Mine a Niche
Niche products or services have built-in brand differentiation, and the marketing for them should reflect that niche. A good example is GoPro, which makes body-mounted video cameras and markets them to athletes.
Be the Expert
If your brand is the best at something in your industry, you can differentiate by focusing on your expertise. Domino’s Pizza provides differentiation through its expert home delivery and 30-minute guarantee.
Deliver a Unique Point-of-Purchase Experience
Give your customers a memorable buying experience, and your brand will stand out. Children love stuffed animals, but they love them even more when they can create their own stuffed animal right in front of their eyes. The Build-A-Bear Workshop has differentiated and flourished with this strategy. You can read more about what the founder Maxine Clark did to achieve this in a previous blog.
Distinctive Brand Collateral
Your brand collateral can be a key aspect of differentiation. A memorable, instantly recognizable brand identity that’s not typical of your industry segment or category can be very effective at adding differentiation. For example, Johnny Cupcakes, a unique apparel company in the US, sells its branded t-shirts with a baking theme, including both the way in which the clothing is merchandised and the packaging in which you purchase your clothing – ovens, bakers shelves and cake boxes! You can read more about Johnny Earle’s strategy, the founder, here.
Use a Mascot
Brand mascots can be powerful differentiators, especially if you want to bring a sense of humour to your brand perceptions. American Insurance company GEICO has created massive success with its mascot – a talking lizard that has nothing to do with insurance, but still makes millions of people believe there’s something different about the company.
Heritage and Provenance
Brands can differentiate through strong associations with their country of origin. Many UK brands are noted for a timeless, classic appeal, brands from Switzerland are often associated with craftsmanship and precision, and German brands are viewed as reliable and well-engineered.
Innovate
Innovation can be a key brand differentiator. This type of distinctiveness is common for tech brands – Apple is synonymous with innovation, ease of use and enhanced life experiences, SalesForce captured a largest market share with an SaaS-based CRM. But innovation isn’t limited to technology: FMCG brands can also differentiate with innovative packaging and/or different product solutions such as O’Egg and their liquid egg products and white shell eggs.
Create a New Product (by Renaming it)
Offering your customer something entirely new is a great way to differentiate, and you may not have to change what you’re selling – just what it’s called. Tyson Foods – the world’s second largest processor and marketer of chicken, beef and port – began selling chickens that were much smaller than average. The product might not have caught on if they’d called it “miniature chickens,” so they marketed them as “Cornish Game Hens” instead.
Be the Underdog
A lot of customers love a good underdog story and will connect with you through your ‘David and Goliath’ brand story. Emphasizing your brand’s humble beginnings can help you differentiate, especially if your competitors are focused on being the biggest and the best. Successful founder stories with an underdog aspect include Nantucket Nectars’ “only a blender and a dream,” and Amazon CEO’s Jeff Bezos launching his “everything store” from his garage. Sir Richard Branson has launched the Virgin brand into multiple sectors with a ‘David and Goliath’ strategy – challenging the perceived big guys and the status quo – as the ‘customers champion’.
Make it Convenient
Convenience can be a big brand differentiator. Something that makes life easier for your customers will make you more desirable than the competition. Amazon is the obvious example, but other brands, such as Stamps.com, have banked on differentiation through convenience and won.
Consistently Over-Deliver on Customer Service
With all other factors equal to your competitors, consistently superior customer service and exceeding expectations can differentiate your brand. Online shoe store Zappos commands a premium price tier because of their outstanding customer service, including free shipping and free returns.
Stand Out on Shelves
Really strong brand packaging can be an obvious and effective differentiator, in fact it can make or break your brand. If, for example, you use black packaging for your butter like Rachel’s Organic Butter, your brand will be distinctive amongst all the yellow, red, and green packs.
Tell Your Unique Brand Story
Every successful brand has a compelling story behind it. Fully developing and emphasizing your brand story can help you differentiate, be core to your brand DNA, and reinforce the personality, promise and values of your brand.
Solve a Universal Problem
If your brand addresses a problem everyone can envision or relate to, you’ll achieve brand differentiation. TOM’s shoe brand took on the issue of children in need, by donating a pair of new shoes to a child for every pair of shoes purchased. This not only massively differentiated the brand, but emotionally engaged its audience by making corporate social responsibility live within the heart of what the brand stands for and created immense customer goodwill and brand loyalty.
Appeal to Emotions
Your brand can stand out by delivering an emotional experience that’s associated with your product or service. Coca-Cola capitalizes on emotional appeal by branding their products as happy, implying its the maker of joy and harmony. Everything Coca-Cola does from a strategic branding perspective is to associate the brand with ‘happy occasions’.
Be (Relevantly) Shocking
Aligning your brand with shock value can help you differentiate, but use this strategy with care. The outrage you can generate from a shocking brand should be directed in a positive way, toward your brand and what you stand for. Italian fashion brand Benetton’s has used shock campaigns multiple times over the years to raise brand visibility such as with their “Unhate” campaign, which managed to anger the U.S. government, the Vatican, and many other organizations – but was a hit with customers.
Change Your Customer Experience
If your industry is known for a certain type of experience, you can differentiate by making your customer experience different. GEICO succeeded in the insurance industry, which often uses serious approaches and scare tactics, by creating a whimsical and fun marketing strategy with talking animals. Southwest Airlines injected quirkiness and enjoyment into the cookie-cutter world of travel.
Make it Personal
Personalization can help you differentiate your brand. Allow your customers to make your products their own through interactive buying experiences, higher levels of customer service, and digital marketing strategies like retargeting and pre-targeting that offer the right products, to the right people, at the right time.
Link to an Occasion
Another way to differentiate is to build up your brand’s association with a particular occasion or celebration. Cadbury’s is synonymous with Easter, De Beers is equated with Valentine’s Day, and Christmas (in the United States, at least) can’t happen without the Macy’s parade and Coca-Cola virtually invented the big red suited man at Christmas along with a multitude of other ‘happy occasions’ throughout the year.
Personify Your Product
A slightly different strategy from brand mascots, brand personification involves creating a “character” that represents the characteristics of your brand. Green Giant vegetables has done this successfully with the Jolly Green Giant, while Keebler snacks are personified through the Keebler Elves.
Give Back
Modern customers, most notably Millennials, love to get behind a brand that gives back to the community. By emphasising corporate social responsibility (CSR), you can differentiate your brand and get an edge over the competition such as O’Egg’s support of ‘Action Breast Cancer Ireland’.
Go Green
By the same token as community generosity, more of today’s customers are concerned about the environment. Differentiating through green packaging, green manufacturing, or even environmental charity can help your brand stand out.
Break Away
You can differentiate your brand by moving away from the conventional wisdom surrounding your industry and delivering an opposing viewpoint. Odour control brand PooPouri accomplished this by abandoning discretion in their marketing and embracing all things poo – with lots of toilet humour.
Redefine Your Product Use
If your products can accomplish more than one thing, the alternate use can help you differentiate your brand. As an example, Arm & Hammer was just another baking soda until the brand began marketing the idea that it also made an excellent air freshener along with a multitude of other uses.
Simplify Your Customers’ Lives
Simplicity and purity are highly prized in today’s cluttered world. Marketing your brand as a simple pleasure can help you rise above the noise. The Method brand of cleaning products uses this strategy, providing naturally derived and non-toxic household cleaning products that simply work. This simplicity is underscored by their tagline: “people against dirty.”
Provide Higher Quality
Luxury brands are able to command premium pricing through an emphasis on higher quality products – either actual or perceived. Providing luxury is an automatic brand differentiator for most markets.
Limit Availability
While it may seem counterintuitive to profits, limiting the availability of your brand can actually help you sell more, at higher price points, through differentiation. When customers perceive that not everyone will be able to have a product, demand and perceived value increase. Ben & Jerry’s premium ice cream employs this strategy with limited production runs for some flavours, and by “retiring” flavours after a certain period of time.
Reposition Your Category
You can differentiate your brand by developing a new category that falls within your industry. In the United States, the National Pork Board accomplished this with a campaign slogan: “Pork, The Other White Meat,” which appealed to customers who enjoy red meat, but don’t care for chicken. The campaign also made pork more appealing due to the health issues being associated with red meat consumption.
Serve an Unmet Need
An effective way to differentiate your brand and reach a broader audience is to identify a need that isn’t being met, and fill that need by tweaking or repositioning your offerings. Enterprise Rent-A-Car became the top car rental company in the U.S. when they began to offer a leasing option – when none of their competitors did.
Creating your brand differentiation strategy
By now, you should have a good idea of what a brand differentiation strategy might look like for your company. However, if you still need something of a template, the following guidelines could help:
- Begin by deciding what you want to be known for You don’t want to draw attention to the differences in your brand that make you less valuable than your competition. Instead, you want to draw focus to factors of your expertise that make you more appealing. Your primary brand differentiator should be relevant and enduring for your clients, decide what you want people to associate you with, and work from there.
- Remember to research Doing your homework might seem boring, but research will help you to align the offerings of your business with the preferences and desires of your potential clients. It will also inform you of the issues that you need to address to make your company more appealing to your audience.
- Develop your differentiators Remember, though there may be one specific brand differentiator that you use to help identify your brand, that might not be all that’s different about your company. If you end up with three to five reasons why your customers should pick you over your competitors – that’s great too. However, no matter how many differentiators you have, you will also need some focus. That focus, alongside the supporting differentiators that come with it, should help to inform your brand positioning statement – another crucial aspect in branding.
- Tell your story
One of the easiest ways for any company to set themselves apart from the crowd, is to tell a brand story. Most prospective clients will come to your website to learn more about you, so that’s a good place to start showing off your personality, in everything from blog posts to your “About” page.
Try to keep in mind that your website is just the beginning though. You’ll need to make your expertise obvious to the outside world through plenty of webinars, publications, workshops, and other sources of media.
- Connect
Finally, once you have an idea of your story, and what you want to be known for, it’s time to start sharing your brand differentiators with the world. Implement your plan and find as many ways as possible to highlight what makes you different from your competitors.
Remember to track your efforts and the impact that they make, that way, you can build on strategies that appear to be working, and remove strategies that aren’t having the right impression on your audience. Your message and brand will become stronger every time you make adjustments driven by results.
💥 Take Action
Develop Your Brand Differentiation?
1. What is the one thing we do differently from our competitors, that adds value to our audience and enchances their experience? What will we do differently and what will that mean to our audience?
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Next Step Step 8 ⇒ Brand Personality