How To Differentiate Yourself From Your Competitors

In business it’s much the same. If your customers think that you’re like any other company, then the only thing you can compete on is price. Unfortunately there will always be a company willing to do the work for less, even if it means they’ll go out of business.

Differentiate yourself from the competition

To be successful in the marketplace, your business will need to have an approach that differentiates you from your competitors. If you create a very clear niche for yourself, then you become unique in the eyes of your prospects and customers, and there is no competitor.

Your “Differentiator” is how you set yourself apart from the competition.

Every business that has success in the marketplace does so because they bring value to their customers, because they solve a problem that their customers have. Often businesses don’t even know what problem they solve. Likely it’s not the products or services that they sell, but how they do it. 

Every accountant is trained to review your books and submit your financial statements to the tax office, but your customers may appreciate that you always call them back within the hour, or that you provide your service based on a fixed monthly rate, or that you handle the bookkeeping for your customers.

Every painter is trained to paint your walls, but your customers may appreciate that you use the most environmentally friendly materials, or that you clean up extremely well every single day of the project, or that you bring a team large enough to get the job done in one day.

Ask your clients

A great way to find out what problem you solve for your customers is to simply ask them. Interview 5 to 8 of your Ideal Clients and ask them these five questions: 

• What made you decide to hire us?
• What’s one thing we do better than others like us?
• What’s one thing we could do better?
• What could we do that would thrill you?
• Would you refer us or do you refer us?
• If you would refer us, what would you say?

If your customer simply tells you that you provide great service, then push a bit further to find out what that really means: 

• What does good service look like?
• Tell me a story when we provided good service.

Satisfied customers will quickly point you to your core differences. Just look at the common threads you find in your conversations, and then list up to 3 main differentiators from the competition.

Check your social media and online reviews

A second way of finding out how you differentiate yourself from the competition is to check your Google My Business and Facebook reviews and see if there is a common thread. Google reviews really are a message goldmine.

Remember the example of the tree service company mentioned above? Here are quotes from some reviews of Jackson Tree Service:

• They came and worked as scheduled and cleaned up nicely after it was done.
• They showed up when they said they would and cleaned up all the debris from the bushes and trees.
• In the past we have dealt with people who don’t show up or do a professional job. Everything was cleaned up very well.

Many of their customers appreciate their timeliness, and the fact that they clean up after the job. Based on the feedback of its customers, the company formulated their differentiator as: “We’ll show up when we say we will, and we’ll clean up before we leave”.

What your customers appreciate most about your company will likely sound very different from what your competitors list on their website, and that is great news. It is often not a unique product or service that they appreciate, but your company’s way of delivering an experience and solving the problem your customers have.

(See our ebook “7 Steps to Small Business Marketing Success” for more information on Digital Marketing Strategy and online marketing tactics)