Bart Caylor, President and Founder, Caylor Solutions. We’re a marketing agency committed to advancing brands that advance education.
What if I told you that I could give you a secret weapon that would almost guarantee your marketing success? Well, the truth is, you already have it. It’s you.
Regardless of how big your competitor’s marketing budget is, how much market share they hold or even the caliber of their marketing staff, you have an advantage over all of them. You are you—and no one else can be you.
This bonafide marketing advantage is called differentiation, and it should be exploited as much as possible because no one else can copy it. Other advantages like business models, products and marketing strategies can be imitated. But what makes your organization truly unique by definition cannot be replicated, and therefore, should be at the heart of any marketing message.
How To Differentiate Your Brand
Differentiating your brand is a task that might seem easy once you’ve completed it, but is not always simple to do when starting from scratch. For that reason, carve out some time to think through what makes your brand unique. To get started, look for differentiators of your brand in these key areas:
Ethos
Your organization’s ethos consists of the beliefs, values and worldview your brand embraces. It goes well beyond corporate speak and company biographies. Your ethos is expressed in the values and dreams which you live and work every day.
In other words, your brand’s ethos is the spirit of your organization expressed in your corporate culture, aspirations and beliefs. How do you know what your aspirations are? Look at what your organization spends money, time and talent on.
One outstandingly successful company using its ethos to differentiate itself is Chick-fil-A. Their direct ethos of being a faith-based brand is demonstrated in closing on Sundays. This has become a magnet for many faith-based families and organizations that frequent their services. It is one of their many differentiators, which also includes their ethos-driven good manners policy (e.g., “My Pleasure”) and their drive-thru savviness.
Because organizational ethos is built from so many intangible factors, each one is unique. This makes identifying your company’s ethos, and expressing it consistently in your marketing messages, an indispensable part of differentiating your brand.
Atmosphere
Does your organization have a brick and mortar space? Are you associated with any physical location? For industries like tourism, real estate and higher education, brands can use their physical location to differentiate themselves from their competitors. But even if your product isn’t location-specific, there are often characteristics about where you are based that you can leverage in your brand messaging.
With the right approach, organizational brands can use these location-specific characteristics even while being national or international in scope. Take, for example, In-N-Out Burgers with their very West Coast vibe. Or, Ikea’s homage to the melancholic beauty of Sweden. Are there other burger joints out there? Can I purchase a living room from someone else? Yes, but the atmosphere of these two brands gives me the feeling of being transported somewhere else during the transaction.
Both Ikea and In-N-Out have differentiated themselves by embracing the unique atmosphere of their operational base. Somehow, the locations also embody these brands’ respective ethos. If you give it some thought, there might be a way to leverage your brand’s location too.
History
Another aspect of your organization that competitors cannot copy is your history. Every organization has a story. While elements of other brand stories can be similar to yours, each story is different. When told well, your company history has the potential to differentiate you from everyone else in the market.
When telling your organization’s history, instead of listing a bunch of irrelevant dates and facts, focus on answering the following questions:
• Why was your organization or company founded?
• Who was your organization or company intended to serve?
• What were the notable problems or concerns your customers faced when you were founded?
• What were the cultural expectations, societal needs and marketplace demands when your brand began?
• Who were the characters and personalities involved in the founding?
• What were the pivotal moments in your brand’s history that made it what it is today?
• What were the challenges that your brand had to face when opening?
Of course, you should write out your history with these questions in mind for your About Us section on your website. But don’t stop there! To truly differentiate yourself from your competitors, incorporate your history into your brand messaging and marketing campaigns. No one else shares your history, which makes your story a powerful brand differentiator.
Yum! Brands’ KFC brand is an example of how history can be embedded while remaining relevant to today’s consumers. To this day, the logo of the Colonel’s head takes us back to a slower time in Americana when Southern hospitality along winding, endless roads gave passengers joy over a warm, home-cooked meal. The story of Colonel Sanders and his relentless drive to bring Kentucky Fried Chicken to the Depression-era United States is powerful and inimitable.
Conclusion
In a crowded marketplace with competitors that may have bigger budgets and larger marketing teams, small to mid-sized organizations can stand out by leveraging their number one marketing advantage: themselves. By embracing the uniqueness of their brands—ethos, atmosphere, and history—marketers can differentiate themselves from competitors and give consumers a compelling and relevant reason to buy from them. Perhaps this is what one of the most iconic brand marketers of our time, Walt Disney, meant when he said, “The more you like yourself, the less you are like anyone else, which makes you unique.”
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