Marketing a business? Here’s a question: What sets your brand apart from other similar brands? Every marketer worth their salt should know what truly differentiates the brands they promote from their competitors. However, unearthing that brand difference is tricky business. Once it has established a solid differentiator, the brand needs to communicate this to its stakeholders. This article discusses one way to find your brand difference and how to communicate it effectively:
Finding your brand difference
Mark Di Somma, Senior Brand Strategist at The Blake Project, believes that to be effective at selling, a company needs a genuinely remarkable brand. The products and services offered might be phenomenal, but success will ultimately lie in the organisation’s ability to communicate its true brand difference and value effectively. Di Somma provides some questions that every brand should ask themselves when in search of what makes them different from the crowd:
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What did you see that you wanted to change when launching your brand?
Let’s use the fictitious retailer, Sandra’s Scented Soaps as an example. Did Sandra want to provide society with better-smelling soaps, perhaps containing aroma-therapeutic essential oils for increased bath-time relaxation to reduce lifestyle stress levels?
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How can you making that change make an even more significant difference?
Could Sandra’s Scented Soaps really decrease stress levels, and if so, could they even be contributing to a potential decrease in adult burn-outs? Dove started out selling soap products, but their higher mission has become about increasing self-esteem amongst women.
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What change do people want to see in the world, and how does your brand fit in?
Today’s society is cause-driven, with more consumers aligning themselves with brands that engage in ethical, transparent activities. A critical question to ask as a brand is: What do our audiences care about, and how are we supporting these causes.
