Stand out in a crowded world - Get your branding on point.
Are you struggling to stand out in the marketplace?
It may not be your approach to marketing, it may be your overall branding and how you show up in the eyes of your target market.
When building a business and marketing for your new products or services, it is important to dial in your branding first. Your branding is very important because it is how you actively shape who you are in your consumers eyes. Everything from the look, feel, sound, taste, it is about defining who you are as a company.
Marketing is the actions you are taking to connect with your customer to get them to invest in your products or services. Marketing will first gain the attention of your customer but in order to keep them interested you need to first have proper branding.
Proper branding will show your mission, values, and what makes your product or service unique. It should also be recognizable which will drive customer loyalty. Your branding should display your competitive advantage in a way that is clear, concise, and memorable. Some additional important factors to note when speaking about your brands competitive advantage is to make sure that it is different than your competition and relevant to the customer.
Some tips to define your companies competitive advantage and make it easy for your customer to understand is to think like your ideal customer so you can develop your unique selling proposition(USP). Doing so will allow you to figure out what your customer really wants and what the main problem is that you’re solving. There may be multiple problems that your business solves but when defining your USP it is important to be as clear and concise as possible to help avoid confusion. Cute and cleaver can kill a brand because although it may make sense to you, it doesn’t always to your customer. Being extremely consistent with your mission and your brands USP is very important and is the foundation for good marketing.
Some tips to define your companies competitive advantage and make it easy for your customer to understand is to think like your ideal customer so you can develop your unique selling proposition(USP). Doing so will allow you to figure out what your customer really wants and what the main problem is that you’re solving. There may be multiple problems that your business solves but when defining your USP it is important to be as clear and concise as possible to help avoid confusion. Cute and cleaver can kill a brand because although it may make sense to you, it doesn’t always to your customer. Being extremely consistent with your mission and your brands USP is very important and is the foundation for good marketing.
Having a distinct personality with your brand and in your marketing will allow your company to stand out from the crowd. It gives shoppers a reason to remember your brand and want to buy. There are a few unique and creative approaches that you can take to differentiate your business. A lot of these differentiating factors are portrayed by unusual differences that help people better remember.
Terry O’Reilly’s podcast, Under The Influence (S6EO4: What A Difference A Difference Makes: Standing Out In The Marketplace), goes over multiple amazing examples about just that:
Something as simple as language can be a great distinguishing factor. For example, the “Mc” in McDonalds menu items, such as “McNuggets and McChicken”. Starbucks is another great brand who created its own ordering language which created loyalty with Starbucks fans while mystifying it for those who don’t shop there. A very creative marketing stunt that Starbucks does is they purposely spell customers names wrong in their order. This is because when customers see their name being spelt wrong or funny they tend to share it on social media creating more eyes on the brand.
Design is another creative example on how your brand can stand out in your customers minds and influence purchases. Swatch was a brand that stood out through design by using self-expression as its defining characteristic. The benefit to Swatch wasn’t time but it was the ability to choose from a fun range of colours that matches to your personality and wardrobe. The name Swatch was another name for “second watch” as they are meant to be your second watch that is more fun, casual, and disposable.
The key to standing out is to think like a marketer by thinking differently than the other brands in your space. In Guatemala an Indian motorcycle brand overtook the leading motorcycle brand in Japan by telling customers to use their bikes for work instead of fun or sport. The ad said “This is the motorbike that helps you do your job better.” As a result banks saw the bike as a work tool, helped them out, and in return they gained 60% market share.
Domino’s Pizza revolutionized the pizza business by focusing on operational efficiency. They came up with an operational advantage through their, 30 min delivery time or get your pizza free model, and were able to stand out from their competitors.
Emotion can define a brand as well. Geico creates comedy in the boring insurance industry instead of instilling fear into their customers.
Colour is another way that companies brand themselves. Distinct colours can create excitement. For example Tiffany’s blue box colours creates excitement from customers and have become so desirable that you can find empty boxes on Ebay. UPS also stood out with colour with the colour brown. They had a slogan, “What can brown do for you.” The brown gave a unique character to all the trucks and gave off a military feel that has people perceive their brand as having military efficiency. Interestingly enough some of these colour plays were founded on accident. For example the Yellow Pages book was founded when printing a phone directory. They ran out of white paper so instead of waiting for more white paper they began printing with yellow paper. This can also be true in photography and videography and how you show up on your social media feed. Brands these days can set themselves apart and be more professional with a consistent look and feel.
Market leaders are always the ones with the most distinct personalities. Often times smaller brands do not spend enough time differentiating themselves from the competition. We as customers are attracted to the unique.
A good example of being unique and imprinting your brand in the mind of consumers is through the brand Toques From The Heart. I am actually the President and Co-Founder of this social enterprise where we sell toques and for every toque you purchase for yourself, we give one to a Canadian experiencing homelessness. We started out by simply repurposing hockey socks that we collected into warm and durable toques for Canadians experiencing homelessness. This hockey sock toque concept was what we lead with for two years as our USP for being the first to do something so unique, sustainable, and helpful at the same time. This got people very interested in our brand early on and has allowed us to build trust within the hockey community. As we’ve grown as a business and taken a slightly different approach, this year we’re focusing on quality and branding ourselves as a having “the perfect toque for the cold Canadian winters” because over the summer we customized and improve all of our toques. We knew that in order to give more toques, we needed to sell more toques and in order to sell more toques, we needed to perfect the toque.
Overall, I believe that if you’re trying to break through the noise in your industry your brand should have a unique voice that is clear and concise while at the same time being unique and different than your competitors in your space. You should focus on perfecting every single element of your businesses branding because this is the first step to creating a memorable business that people trust and will fall in love with.
A good example of being unique and imprinting your brand in the mind of consumers is through the brand Toques From The Heart. I am actually the President and Co-Founder of this social enterprise where we sell toques and for every toque you purchase for yourself, we give one to a Canadian experiencing homelessness. We started out by simply repurposing hockey socks that we collected into warm and durable toques for Canadians experiencing homelessness. This hockey sock toque concept was what we lead with for two years as our USP for being the first to do something so unique, sustainable, and helpful at the same time. This got people very interested in our brand early on and has allowed us to build trust within the hockey community. As we’ve grown as a business and taken a slightly different approach, this year we’re focusing on quality and branding ourselves as a having “the perfect toque for the cold Canadian winters” because over the summer we customized and improve all of our toques. We knew that in order to give more toques, we needed to sell more toques and in order to sell more toques, we needed to perfect the toque.
Overall, I believe that if you’re trying to break through the noise in your industry your brand should have a unique voice that is clear and concise while at the same time being unique and different than your competitors in your space. You should focus on perfecting every single element of your businesses branding because this is the first step to creating a memorable business that people trust and will fall in love with.
How do you want to stand out? What’s your USP? Let me know in the comment section below. I’d love to hear from you!
Terry O'Reilly. (2021, June 18). Under the Influence. Terry O'Reilly. Retrieved September 13, 2021, from https://terryoreilly.ca/under-the-influence/.
