27 Ways to Create Your Competitive Positioning & Business Differentiation (with Examples)

If you are a relatively new business owner, a big question you might be spending some sleepless nights on, is how to establish differentiation for your business and brand, especially in highly competitive markets.

Why should anyone choose YOU?

What is your competitive positioning?

It’s the unique, differentiated perception of your brand and business in the minds of your target audience. Your competitive advantage over others.

Your whole message of who you are, why you do what you do, what you offer, how it helps others, what your brand personality and communication is life, what emotions you invoke in others.

Related: Create Your Powerful & Unique Brand Story

So it’s usually not one thing, but the whole story put together. But there are a few competitive advantage factors and strategy that you can follow for your business model.

Let’s take a look at some of these factors and some positioning statement example of how some brands have established their differentiation.

1. A targeted audience
2. Niche focus
3. A specific solution
4. Breaking the industry rules
5. Innovation
6. Product Features
7. Performance
8. Functional Benefit
9. Claims
10. Number of Options
11. Emotional Benefit
12. Price
13. Customization
14. Location
15. Distribution Channels
16. Purpose
17. Mission & Vision
18. Values: Nike
19. Process (Source)
20. Process (Method)
21. Process (Delivery)
22. Brand Personality (Look and Feel)
23. Brand Personality (Tone of Voice)
24. People
25. User Experience
26. Customer Experience
27. Endorsement

1. A targeted audience

As small business owners, I know we tend to want to make our products and services available for everyone, and not eliminate anyone.

But the truth is, it is always better to go niche, focus on a specific type of customer who can relate to your brand and start using it, build a loyal customer following, and then expand to a broader customer base.

Brand Focus: Axe

Axe launched by understanding on one hand the need for young teenage boys to attract girls, and on the other, that they lacked the masculinity and charm to do so.

So the brand positioned itself as a magnet that would immediately help the young men lacking confidence, to having a masculine charm that would make young women run after them.

Needless to say, this specific focus on young men, with a specific benefit, unlike any other created an immediate differentiation and strong brand positioning that has remained strong over the years.

And even though they extended the product line to body and hair products, they still retained the same target audience.

Recently, they have been strengthening this audience focus with a deeper message, by calling out to these men who feel a bit lost, to be themselves, irrespective of what the world thinks.

2. Niche focus

A business can also focus on an uber-specific market or create one of its own.

Brand Focus: Bonobos

The founders of this brand, Andy Dunn and Brian Spaly, realized a specific problem: most men didn't like store-bought pants.

So they started their business to create the perfect pair of pants. And they kept at it, till they made millions in sales. Just with pants. So while their business fell within the scope of men's apparel, by focusing on a single product and perfecting it, they worked in a niche segment of their own and won at it, before expanding to other categories of menswear as well.

Continue reading the 25 other ways how brands and businesses have been able to create a strong competitive positioning for themselves.