When You're Competing in a Crowd - You Can't be the Same As Everyone Else

by James @HelpYard - View Comments

alt text Chances are that your business is in a noisy marketplace: one where you have at least a few competitors with similar products/services.

How do you increase the chance that people choose you?

First, an Exercise:

Please have a go - it will take 2 minutes tops - I promise!

Grab a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle. On the left-hand side, write down all of the things that are similar between you and your competition:

the products that you sell
the price of your products
where you sell your product
how you sell your product

On the right-hand side of the paper, write down what's unique about you compared to your competitors.

customer service
price
after sales-service
quality

Finished?

Now, take your pen and cross out all the things on the right-hand side that your potential customers don't know about you, or probably don't know.

Be Honest.

You're not different if your potential customers don't know why you're different.

If you don't give them a reason to choose you, then, why would they choose you?

Don't feel bad about the result - we're all a work in progress. But, do make sure you do something about it.

Be Different & Shout About It

If you've got something that sets you apart from the crowd then tell people about it:

if you've got testimonials from customers praising the difference, put them front-and-centre on your website, or on your sales literature
use it as your strap-line: 'the only company that does x'
communicate stories that illustrate your difference - tweet them, email them, put them up as a video on YouTube

Make it as easy as possible for people to choose you over your competition by telling them what makes you different.

Got any interesting examples of companies communicating their differences? Drop a link to them in the comments below.

Look out for future posts where I'll go into detail about how being completely different from the competition is better still - be the Purple Cow.