How to differentiate your business
9th February 2012
When thinking about a USP, or differentiating your business there are three angles to look at:
1. The product or service
What feature or benefit does your business, product or service have that is different? This may be a unique feature, your price point, the speed you do business or many other things. Think Fairy Liquid lasting longer, or Amazon having the largest collection of books in the world. For some businesses this is easy, for commoditised businesses this can be very hard.
2. Customer relationships
Does the value in your relationships differentiate you? Is the service you offer remarkable or do your long term relationships and customer success stories set you apart? Think management consultancies, like IBM or Accenture or in the USA, online shoe website Zappos
3. Positioning
Differentiating on positioning is taking the higher ground and ‘standing for something’. Apple’s ‘Think Different’ slogan is an example of that; they associate themselves with the ‘crazy ones’ or geniuses. Nike is another example, yes they sell trainers but they stand for ‘Just Do It’ and associate themselves with the top athletes in the world. The Body Shop and Innocent smoothies have missions greater than their products too.
So if you have a new business or you want to re-brand your business and understand what you stand for where does your business fit into these categories?
