“LINE IN THE SAND” DIFFERENTIATION STRATEGIES:

1. The “Only” – With this differentiation strategy you hang your hat on the fact your business is the only one that offers the types of products/services you do. You might own an entire market segment all by yourself or you may play in an existing segment but offer something no one else offers. This is my favorite differentiation strategy.

2. The “Largest” – Based on market share, staff size or annual sales revenue, this differentiation strategy focuses on your business’s breadth as compared to your competitors. This too is a very effective differentiation strategy when it is verifiable.

3. The “Fastest Growing” – Usually associated with a smaller player in a given industry segment, this differentiation strategy promotes the fact that your business is growing faster than any other provider. This can be based on revenue, staff, customer base, market capitalization, etc. You have a lot of leeway in terms of how you quantify and qualify this positioning strategy.

4. The “Most Comprehensive” – This differentiation strategy espouses the breadth and completeness off your solution portfolio. Perhaps you have the most different types of widgets or maybe your business is the only one that offers a one-stop-shop for legal services spanning wills, traffic tickets, corporate law, divorce, etc. all under one roof.

“KEY ATTRIBUTE” DIFFERENTIATION STRATEGIES:

1. “Organizational Distinction” – With this differentiation strategy you are distinguishing your business based on the uniqueness of its ownership. Examples include minority-owned, woman-owned, non-profit, charitable, etc.

2. “Geographic Distinction” – With this differentiation strategy, you are trying to stand out based on the geographic designation of your company. Perhaps you are the only “U.S. operated” or “U.S. based” provider in your segment; or maybe you are the only “European provider”.

3. “Industry Distinction” – Within your market segment (e.g. computer services), perhaps you are the only provider focused solely on the Insurance sector; or maybe you are a web development company that only focuses on non-profits. This industry-specific focus in a viable differentiation strategy.

To best communicate these critical characteristics to your target customer/member, it is important to consider these three must-do brand positioning activities:

1. Elevator Pitch – If you do nothing else in terms of differentiation, you need to have a concise and value-driven means of communicating who you are, what you do, who you serve, how you are unique and what value you provide. Examples can be found here.

2. About Us Page – The first sentence on your “About Us” or “Company” page on your website should be some version of your elevator pitch. It is where site visitors typically go for this information, and you should use this highly valuable real estate to communicate your top-line positioning.

3. Top 3-5 Differentiators – Along with the development of your elevator pitch you must identify those 3-5 (could be more) things that make you/your business stand above your competition. Examples include:
A. Largest provider with the most customers globally
B. Only widget maker serving the public safety market
C. Offer more flavors of bubble gum than anyone else
D. Consistently demonstrate a 3 month return on investment
E. Have been in business for 73 years, longer than any other vendor
F. Offer the only free website intrusion detection software
G. Offer the only pay-as-you-go no-contract service

While these are certainly not all of the brand positioning tactics you should consider in your business if you want to effectively distinguish yourself from other players, these are certainly some of the most critical ones to employ. If you do nothing else but these three things, you at least have established a competitive positioning foundation that you can build on to carve out a unique niche in your market. This puts you on the path to repetitive and increasing sales and marketing traction.

To learn more about these and other important brand positioning activities, please learn about our Brand Positioning Do it Yourself Toolkit!

I have come up with over 50 different places in which to leverage your key messaging, and below I list some of those areas for you:

Collateral – brochures, sales sheets, etc.

Web – company website, blog posts, online banners

Events – booth messaging, show daily newspapers, invitations

Public Relations – press releases, media pitch letters, success stories, articles

Branding – advertising, business cards, PowerPoint templates

Sales – telephone call scripts, proposals, presentations

Email – email signature, news alerts, announcements

If you were to look at your business objectively and check off as many of these above areas as you can in terms of where you currently use your business’s key messages, you will get a good sense for how effectively you are differentiating your business from your competitors today.

If you were able to check off at least two things in each of the seven categories, then I would say you are doing a nice job in the areas of differentiation. If you cannot mark off that many, you really need to take a good look at your sales and marketing efforts and reevaluate how well you are differentiating your organization and positioning your business for success.

Understanding how to get a key message across requires a lot of practice and knowledge.  With a St. Mary online MBA degree, you can learn some of what it takes to run a great business.

I can’t tell you how many companies (across all industries, all sizes) I have come across that do this.

Recognizing this right away at a drug development services company I worked for (as Senior Manager of Strategic Customer Messaging), I proposed a shift away from service features and functionality, and toward customer needs and business value. This “needs/value-based” approach fundamentally changed this $1.2B organization’s whole go-to-market strategy. This seminal shift in sales/marketing strategy promoted a more consultative promotional culture that resonated better with clients.

This business-value focused philosophy puts the primary focus on your target customer/user rather than on you and your products and services. This makes perfect sense, right? I mean, why would you want to talk all about yourself in a sales presentation, website content or sales sheet when you have the opportunity to pose solutions and value to your customers’ business and personal challenges instead?

Here is an example:

Let’s say we work for a payroll services company. This is an example of what NOT to do:

XYZ Payroll offers full payroll services including invoice creation, check printing, check mailing, payroll tax calculation, direct deposit, and more.

INSTEAD, this is how you can talk about these services in business value terms:

XYZ Payroll helps small and medium sized businesses automate and streamline the entire payroll process in order to accelerate payments, reduce administrative workload, increase data accuracy and elevate the company’s business profile with a more professional look.

This is just a small example of value-based messaging, but I’m sure you get the idea.

To learn more about value-based messaging and for access to “Steps and Formulas for Developing Value-Based Key Messages”, please learn about our Brand Positioning Jumpstart Toolkit.

Having a “me-too” brand with little distinction (from other providers is like having the top and bottom bun without the patty).  Not too many people would be interested in that.

You absolutely must distinguish your business or you are likely leaving sales opportunities on the table for your competition to win.  I don’t know about you, but as a small business owner myself, I hate to think there is business out there I could have closed if only I better branded myself.

You may be asking yourself what you can do to identify your key differentiation.  Here are some questions you can ask yourself to help you narrow in on your business’s distinction:

1. Is there a unique target buyer that only you cater to?  For example: only healthcare providers, only banks or maybe only businesses with less than $5M in annual revenue.

2. What distinguishing characteristic sets you apart from other providers in your space?  For example: your customer base, your revenue, your product portfolio, awards received, etc.

3. What business problem do you solve that others either don’t focus on or cannot address?

4. What characteristics of your service or product make you stand out?  For example: speed, return on investment (ROI), cost, etc.

5. Is there a specific segment of customers/companies that use your offering?  For example:  65 of the Fortune 100, 6 of the top 10 insurance companies, 40 percent of U.S. banks, etc.

These are just some of the many questions you can consider to help you figure out what makes your business special.  Once you have identified this/these characteristics, you can begin building a differentiating positioning statement, key messages, proof points and value propositions.

Learn about the Brand Positioning Jumpstart Toolkit to help you craft these “messaging” statements.

Take a legal service, for example. Without effectively communicating its value and distinction, the firm will be hard-pressed to secure new business. New clients would likely only come if they were referred by a friend or family member. In order to attract new business, the firm must successfully articulate its marketing positioning in the form of targeted, value-driven, succinct key messages that make a case for why this firm is right for you. These statements can describe, for example, the firm’s litigation specialties, its past success, its credentials, and so on. These are the key attributes that will attract and convert prospects into paying clients.

The same holds true for your small business. Are you adequately communicating your value and differentiation? If not, you need to be. Otherwise you are leaving business opportunities on the table for others to secure.

Here is what you need to do in order to craft strong marketing positioning for your business:
1. Identify what makes your business special as compared to your competition
2. Clearly articulate what products/services you offer
3. Clearly articulate who your target buyer is
4. Clearly articulate the value of your offerings

Once you have these components nailed down, you have the pillars needed to craft a powerful elevator pitch (aka positioning statement), supporting key messages and value propositions (what’s in it for the customer).

If you need help, please learn about the following two new solutions now available:
Brand Positioning Jumpstart Toolkit
48-Hour Elevator Pitch Service

The proverbial elevator pitch (aka elevator speech, positioning statement) is a 35 word (approximately) all-telling company statement that details who the company is, what it does, for whom it does it, the value of its products/services and what makes it special. Yes this is a lot to put into one sentence, but it is possible, and it is important.

Here are several elevator pitch examples:

Company 1’s flexible and open data quality software helps leading European organizations optimize their large customer databases for increased profitability, reduced cost, improved decision making and successful regulatory compliance. [29 words]

Company 2 is the fastest growing, longest-standing and 3rd largest global call recording provider offering the most secure, open and future-proof solutions for organizations to rapidly improve performance, optimize service, mitigate risk, lower cost and maintain compliance. [37 words]

Company 3 is a technology company helping specialty physicians and medical billing companies increase revenue up to 40%, productivity up to 20%, and regulatory compliance as much as 10% by streamlining and enhancing the patient billing process. [37 words]

Company 4 is the total wireless solutions company to beat, with the deepest integration expertise and product knowledge, a 99% client satisfaction rating, a 15-year successful history and the industry’s shortest installation and delivery times. [35 words]

Company 5 is the world’s fastest-growing, minority-owned, midsized provider of business consulting and IT solutions, arming organizations and systems integrators with breakthrough services, training, on-demand staffing and CTO-caliber leadership to optimize resources, reduce costs and accelerate performance. [37 words]

Company 6 is the number one provider of business intelligence and data warehousing solutions for mid-sized insurance carriers, providing actionable business information and deep insurance and technology expertise to maximize bottom-line performance and minimize risk. [35 words]

Company 7 offers the most encompassing, up-to-date, recognized and sought-after global training and certification programs for privacy and data protection, helping organizations enhance compliance and risk mitigation practices, and providing professionals with the insight needed to add more value to a business. [42 words]

In the course of creating your own elevator pitch, do not worry if it is longer than 35 words. The important thing is to ensure it encapsulates all of the necessary components, which I mentioned above. A good rule of thumb once you have drafted your elevator pitch is to go through it carefully and pull out every word that can be taken out without affecting the flow or meaning of the statement.

If you would like help crafting your elevator pitch, please learn about my 48-Hour Elevator Pitch Service.

By Dan Hoff

Whether you are new or a long-time established business or the one person totally responsible for marketing, at some point the cold, hard reality hits you. The realization comes to you that simply creating the best, most useful and valuable product or providing the absolute most needed service or even the most brilliant business model just isn’t enough.

The toughest part for most businesses today, big and small, is getting noticed, not coming up with an idea for a business. Let’s face it, no matter what business you are in it is crowded, noisy. It is tough to let your target customers know who you are, what you do and why they need you, your service or your product.

You created a great product, or provide the best service in the world and no one is calling. Now it is a mission critical necessity for you to not just survive, but to build your business and to begin to prosper. Remember, if you don’t, your competitors will . . .

After all, if your prospects, customers and clients can’t see any difference between you and everyone else out there with similar services or products, then why would they consider you? Or for that matter, why would they even notice you?

Tough questions to ask yourself, aren’t’ they. But they are necessary if you want to survive and even go so far as to prosper. In face you not only need to ask the questions, you need the answers to these questions.

These are business critical brand positioning questions. But if you’re a small/medium business or small practice marketing company and simply do not have the expertise and resources to get in front of the whole concept of “branding”, what can you do?

For me the answer came a few weeks back when I noticed a “free” eBook Differentiate or Diminish being offered by Kevin B. Levi, a name familiar to me.*[see footnote] I subscribed to his link, and downloaded the book, thinking that for free it probably would be little more than a superficial outline.

But what I received turned out to be a single great resource that every small/medium business must have. With over 80-plus pages of brand positioning insight and instruction it took a complex subject, broke it down expertly and then explained in a clear and concise way the “what”, “why” and “how” of what he refers to as The Art and Necessity of Business Positioning.

I was intrigued. He had managed, in a very concise form, to arm me with all the basics of differentiation – one of the more complex and difficult to master principles of marketing. But that was just the beginning.

Branding and Positioning strategy is a fairly specialized niche of the “art and science” that is marketing.

It seems that Kevin has come up with a clever idea based on the premise that small business – and marketing people too – could use an in depth, comprehensive and affordable do-it-yourself resource kit for this. What he has put together is a well thought out and extremely comprehensive set of do-it-yourself tools, references and informational guidance he calls his Brand Positioning Toolkit.

This do-it-yourself toolkit walks you step by step through the process of identifying your business’s uniqueness by performing a comprehensive competitive analysis. It includes step-by-step instructions that guide you through the process of crafting your succinct, highly targeted and value-based 35-word brand positioning statement or what is more commonly called an elevator pitch.

As you progress through the kit, you will then learn how to develop supporting key messages that substantiate the claims made in the brand positioning statement. These all-important, hard-hitting statements will focus on your key differentiators, your key target audiences, your primary products/services.

Once you have this messaging platform completed – including your brand positioning statement and key messages – the toolkit then guides you along and shows you how to come up with proof points and value propositions to validate and support the brand positioning statement and each key message.

The result is a comprehensive, business-value-based, brand positioning platform that you can use to develop any and all sales and marketing materials, tools and collateral. These easy to use tools work and can help you craft new brand positioning for your organization in a single day, without any prior brand positioning or key message development experience or expensive “professional” consultants.

So whether you are a new business, a small operation, a large company, are new to marketing and need to know how to brand your products or a seasoned professional looking for that go-to reference package, this is a “must have” reference toolkit for you.

* A Little Bit about Kevin Levi
I first became aware of Kevin in 2007 when he published his piece on SmallBusinessBranding.com entitled Branding on a Shoestring Budget. I was an early subscriber to what was then a groundbreaking marketing resource. It was full of cutting edge, new tech marketing knowledge and resources all formatted in short, simple and quick-read pieces.

What originally caught my attention was Kevin’s ability to take highly complex branding and positioning principles and translate them into short, simple and easy to follow narratives that even I could understand and relate to. He simply had the knack for giving valuable knowledge a real world connection.

Kevin is the primary architect behind the Brand Positioning Do-it-Yourself Toolkit!, and is a living, breathing example of his handiwork. He has successfully used these strategies himself for years to re-position over 40 companies around the world in a broad range of industries.

With over 17 years of experience currently Kevin helps companies of all sizes hone their messages and develop differentiating company positioning strategies and content. He is someone whom I consider to be a consummate corporate branding specialist. He has recently authored two company positioning books, “Differentiate or Diminish: The Art and Necessity of Business Positioning,” and “Selling Your Distinction: Utilizing Differentiation to Drive Your Business.”

Kevin is also a featured columnist on smallbusinessbranding.com and marketingprofs.com.

This review was written by Dan Hoff, former VP of Marketing and Managing Partner for Blinding Rain, LLC a boutique mobile app developer based in Seattle, Washington. Dan has over 20 years of software and technology marketing experience and a knack for discovering the best path to market for new and innovative products.  Check out Dan’s blog.

Regardless of whether your business is fledgling or flying, effective brand positioning can be the difference between customers considering you versus passing you by for the next guy. If you are already doing well, just consider how much better you could be doing! It goes without saying (although I’m going to say it) that if you are doing poorly, brand positioning can most certainly help you turn your company around.

With highly differentiating, customer-targeted and value-based (focused on customer value, not on your products and services or you) brand positioning (positioning statement, key messages, value propositions) at your disposal, your small business is likened to an armored tank outfitted with a ground-shaking cannon. You have an extremely powerful weapon you can use to pave your own path in your industry by consistently communicating competitive differentiation while your competitors are passively and non-distinctively peddling their wares. Your offerings will stand out even more than they already are and resonate well with your target customer, while your competitors’ will not.

Here are some ways effective and highly differentiating brand positioning (positioning statement, key messages, etc.) can further catapult your successful small business (or jumpstart a lower-performing one):

1. Spruce up your website home page with highly differentiating, value-based messages that clearly articulate what you do, for whom, how you are different, and what value your offerings provide. Just remember, a prospect takes just three seconds to decide if your website is worth perusing. Put 2-3 nuggets from your positioning statement or key messages right upfront for them to immediately digest.

2. Overhaul your telephone sales pitch – You have 10 seconds (or less) to impress a prospective client on the phone or you’ve lost your chance. Instead of floundering as to what to say, use your hardest-hitting key message or your positioning statement to very clearly and quickly convey your story and your value.

3. Empower every employee with the company’s elevator pitch and top key messages – Every staff member you have can be confronted with a potential sales opportunity. Why not put your elevator pitch and key messages onto a laminated card for all employees to carry at all times?

4. Hit a home run with your next RFP/proposal – often times companies put out RFPs (requests for proposals) to dozens of vendors/providers, making it nearly impossible to stand out. With highly distinguishing key messages you have the tools you need to clearly differentiate your business from the pack.

5. Develop a killer sales presentation – An effective corporate sales presentation should be between 12-15 slides total – on average. Anything longer simply turns off the audience. A strong messaging platform will serve as the framework for your PPT.

Learn more by checking out our Brand Positioning Toolkit which teaches you how to easily and successfully create your own messaging platform (positioning statement, key messages, proof points and customer value propositions).

The toolkit also includes a mind-map which shows the 56 places to use your messaging platform.

1. What type of business/organization you are
2. What products/services you offer
3. To whom you offer your products/services
4. The value of your products/services/expertise
5. What differentiates you from others?

Yes it is a lot to put into a 35-word statement, but it can be done. I successfully craft positioning statements  all the time for clients.
Here are some examples of such statements:

XYZ is the fastest growing, longest-standing and 3rd largest global call recording provider offering the most secure, open and future-proof solutions for organizations to rapidly improve performance, optimize service, mitigate risk and maintain compliance. (34 words)

ABC is a technology company helping specialty physicians and medical billing companies increase revenue up to 40%, productivity up to 20%, and regulatory compliance up to 10% by streamlining and enhancing the patient billing process. (35 words)

123 is the world’s fastest-growing, minority-owned, midsized business consulting and IT solutions provider, arming organizations and systems integrators with breakthrough services, training, on-demand staffing and CTO-caliber leadership to optimize resources, reduce costs and accelerate performance. (35 words)

There are two main camps in the branding/marketing world with regard to how such elevator pitches are to be used. Some believe they are internal-facing-only statements, while others feel they can and should be used in customer-facing communications. I am in the third camp. I feel very strongly about their applicability both internally and externally. Let me show you what I mean.
Here are a number of different ways an elevator pitch can be used internally:

A. For internal operational alignment of staff – for example, if a positioning statement highlighted three types of organizations the business targets, then perhaps it makes sense to have three matching business or sales teams to cater to each group’s specific needs.
B. To communicate with all staff precisely what the company does and for whom, so they can be proud of whom they work for
C. Keep all staff singing from the same hymnal – armed with the company’s elevator pitch, each employee in the company knows exactly how to describe the company and its offerings to sales prospects if/when the need arises. What if a potential customer was stuck in an elevator with your office manager? See what I mean?

Here are a number of different ways an elevator pitch can be used externally:

A. As the opening paragraph on your website’s Home Page
B. As the opening paragraph on your website’s About Us page
C. In your company brochure
D. In your press releases at the end in the “About ______(company name)” section
E. On your tradeshow booth
F. In your telephone sales scripts

This is only a sample list; there are many more places an elevator pitch/positioning statement can add value to an organization, in both its internal-facing and external-facing efforts and activities.
For a mind map showing 56 places to use your elevator pitch and your key messages, take a look at my Brand Positioning Do it Yourself Toolkit. It is one of the 15 tools offered.