Be Distinct, not Dull: How to Stand Out from Your Competition with a Simple, 5-Step Exercise

One of the hardest questions small businesses face is this: why should someone buy from you, instead of your competition?

Do you know?

If you can answer it, it can mean a dramatic difference for your budget.

If you don't know what sets you apart, your visitors certainly won't.

Or they will, but you won't be happy about what they think.

I've been helping small businesses brainstorm, sift through, and nail down the top 3 or 4 ideas about their company that they want website visitors to know.

?So if you're:

• Having a hard time finding out what sets you apart from your competition
• Can't decide what makes you special, and why someone should pick you first
• Really want people to understand how you are qualitatively different

Take 10 minutes, and toy with the exercise in this post.

Here are the steps we're unpacking:

1. Create a list of all the words that express your brand
2. Explain what each word means.
3. Sort, refine and condense the list.
4. Create 1-2 sentence summaries, and micro-phrases.
5. Craft your unique value proposition.

And then give it a go. Perhaps 6 months later, it might change. That's ok. Start somewhere.

First thing to note: with this exercise, we do not compete on price.

If you're playing that game, you know how easy it is to lose. Be affordable, do your price-cutting, but don't make it the key thing that sets you apart. Dollar General and Walmart are on a race to the bottom. You can't afford to be.

These are top-of-mind issues for any small business. If these talking-points aren't clear in your mind, then they're absolutely not present in your client's minds.

Every time I host this session with a client, I can hear the sense of satisfaction and awe as we get through it.

I was recently working with a Canada-based law firm, and he struggled to find his top three points. He had no reviews to look through for inspiration, so he listed 15 different words that sounded good.

We then walked through each word, asking him to unpack what it meant for him. Halfway down the list, words were being grouped together, nested under each other, and trimmed down to the top 4 ideas.

He was excited. Because what we're looking for is not simple, standard things that we all expect from businesses today. Trustworthy staff, quick response time, friendly support, these aren't value-adds any more. They're expected.

You could only compete on those in a market niche where it is obviously, and blatantly, absent.

I wrote about another moment with a client where we dug through his reviews, and let his clients tell him what they loved about him. (How to Market Yourself When You Don't Know What Makes You Special). That can be particularly revealing and insightful - and probably where you should start.

So, let's dig in.

Who are you as your client's guide?

Your focus in the brand narrative process is to re-position yourself as a guide to help your clients solve their problems. Think through your message from their point of view - it helps you eliminate ego-puffery and jargon.

A tour guide is not the star of the show. They exist to help you enjoy a particular experience, or get more out of the program they paid for. It's not an ego trip.

So first off, this exercise builds on a foundation of excellence, authenticity, and a great product. If any of these are missing in your equation, your clients will struggle with you, and fall away. And you'll get weak or bad reviews.

Always work hard to be the best you can be, don't pretend to be a bigshot or more competent than you actually are, and deliver a product you believe in and your client's are happy with. Everything is about honesty and credibility.

Step 1: Create a list of all the words that express your brand.

List out all the main words you'd use to describe yourself, or your brand. You might come up with 6, or 16.

If you have reviews, look through them for general themes, ideas about why people like your service.

Often they come back to your attitude, reason, and a specific way you solve a problem.

When you're done, try ranking your list in order of the most important to the least.

Sidebar: In the recent past, a marketing tactic was to use three words as your marketing slogan. The problem with that is that it means nothing, because anyone can tack three words on a brand name. And communicate nothing distinctive.

Acme Corp: Passionate. Progressive. Puppies.

The reason it's a bad marketing practice is because you're offloading the mental processing onto your visitors. Your job is to eliminate that.

Your job is to come up with a brand statement, a UVP (unique value proposition) that explains how your service is experienced through these value points. Do the thinking for your visitors.

Step 2: Explain Your Choice

Now, write down what each word means to your brand. Why did you choose it, how does it make you feel, why is it a goal, why do your customers value it?

If you're having a hard time, then do it this way. Write down two things for each word. Say as much as you can/need to:

• Problem: What are people not getting, or what bad experiences have they had? Every word you pick has an inverse reality; if you listed 'speed', then your competition is probably slow. If you picked 'painless', that means there's pain out there.
• Your response: how do you resolve the problem? Don't just say that you're trustworthy, or that folk will like doing business with you. Explain your process for building trust.

Almost every company and brand that I work with has created a business that they believe is the way business should be done in 2018. If given a choice, they would do exactly the same thing.

They can't imagine serving their clients any other way. They may not be 100% where they want to be, but they're confident about getting there.

Step 3: Sort, Refine, Condense

As you work through each word, you'll notice that you're referencing other words in the list. Strike them out.

The list is getting shorter. Keep looking for themes between the words, associations. Ideally, you want no more than 3.

If you find yourself with still too many, then look at broadening the scope of the top three words to include some of the others.

Note: The 'danger' of doing that means diluting the power of your brand promises. Alternatively, weigh the value of the choices, and pick the strongest. You will always find ways to communicate other distinction points.

But at the very, very least, you want your visitors to know the top 3.

4. Summarize Your Distinctions

Now that you've refined the list, you might have 250 words to each one, each a patchwork of rambling sentences.

The next step is to craft a 1-2 sentence summary of each word.

Ideally, the first sentence talks about the bad experiences that are 'normal' out there. The second sentence explains your response to it. You might get something that sounds like:

• Most people struggle to pay their heating bills in winter. So we came up with a simple gadget that boosts your heating system, without touching your electricity bill.

or

• Few lawyers are up to speed with today's tech, and you suffer from slow to no response times. We changed that; we digitized and streamlined every part of the process, so that you always get fast and accurate answers from a live lawyer.

Or something. :)

These summaries are some of the most important work you do. They should be instantly readable on your Home page, perhaps just below the fold. Use the more detailed explanations on your About page. Perhaps put them in your site footer, and have that show up every where on your website.

Micro-phrases: The last step in the summarize process is to list the three words, and then put an equals sign next to them.

• word = short phrase to be used instead

Craft a short micro-phrase that you can use, instead of relying on a single word.

Step 5: Craft your unique value proposition.

Writing a brand statement is no mean feat. It's one of the most important pieces of marketing you'll work on.

If you're unsure how or why to do it, check out Can You Brand Like a Superhero? How to Solve Your Positioning, Create a Clear Brand Statement, & Be Remembered for Being Awesome.

Remember, your brand is a promise of an experience. The service itself can be identical to the guy next door. But the brand, the experience of the work done, is what sets you apart. The whole 'how you make the customer feel' part.

So now that you have your top 3 distinction points, work them into your brand statement.

Don't just list the words that define you. Craft phrases that promise something specific.

Your UVP should be pithy and simple to read. Hire a copyeditor to wordsmith it, if you're not confident, because you're going to be using this everywhere.

It should be the first thing people read when they land on your website. It should lead your homepage. Perhaps even on your business cards. Every brochure.

And everyone in your company should know it by heart.

The UVP template from my brand statement article runs something like this:

I'm [company name], and I do [my core service] for [this audience] because [reason].

Usually [reason] expressed what you believe about how the world should be, or how services should be delivered in your niche in 2018.

Here's where you can use those short phrases you worked on. They can include the distinction word, but they should communicate the idea.

Raise the Bar

Doing this exercise has an important 'side-effect': you're raising the bar of what clients can expect. You're setting yourself up as the only option that makes sense as they're shopping around.

Be crystal clear about the value points that you and your customers share in common, and they will remember you.

And as they're shopping around, they'll be checking to see how everyone else matches up.

And when they don't, they'll be back.

If you took a stab at this exercise, and need some help, shoot me message! Or put it in the comments and I'll be happy to give you my two cents.