Rolex is recognized as a Swiss watchmaking pioneer, and the brand is synonymous with quality and luxury. Source: Rolex

If you’re aiming to differentiate your brand with your product offering, the first step is to identify what part of your product will be your differentiator. For example, you may want to invest in top-quality components, or you may wish to focus on other differentiation options that may appeal to customers who gauge quality in other ways, such as using vegan or sustainable materials. Then you can work your differentiation messaging into your marketing, product descriptions, and sales scripts to ensure customers know what makes your products unique.

2. Stand Out With a Unique Visual Identity

Your brand’s voice and visual identity can help your products, messaging, adverts, and other content stand out in a crowded market. A distinctive visual identity is one way to differentiate your products from your competitors and build brand recognition.

For example, the oat drink brand Oatly needed to differentiate its products on two fronts – first from dairy milk brands and then from other milk alternative drinks. It developed a chatty, irreverent brand voice that doesn’t take itself too seriously and a bold visual style that stands out on supermarket shelves and online adverts.

Oatly’s changing packaging designs demonstrate the evolution of its brand identity. Source: The HMT aka HealthyMarketingTeam

Oatly also recognized the opportunity to stand out with its packaging designs. Many companies play it safe with the copy on their packaging, sticking to ingredients and a bit about the company. In contrast, Oatly uses effective copywriting to inject humor and playfulness into its packaging and set it apart from its competitors. This irreverent personality is best demonstrated by a short video on its website’s “about” page, titled ‘Why does Oatly’s packaging look so weird?’

For physical products, a strong visual identity – such as bold colors or a striking illustrative style – will make your products stand out on shelves in retail stores where they’ll sit alongside similar products. Online, a unique brand identity will mean customers are more likely to recognize your adverts, emails, or social media posts, even if they don’t mention your products.

If you’re looking to differentiate your brand by strengthening your unique brand identity, it’s best to explore that as part of a bigger rebranding project. Start by analyzing your competitors’ visual identities, and identify opportunities to set your brand apart from theirs in a way that still feels authentic to your brand values and personality.

3. Share Your Customers’ Values

According to a 5W Public Relations report, 73% of consumers prefer buying from companies aligned with their values, so developing strong values can set your brand apart from other companies in your space. In addition, shared values help you build an emotional connection with your customers because they value your company for more than just the product they bought.

Ice cream brand Ben & Jerry’s shares its progressive values – and causes it supports – prominently on its website. The brand also makes frequent corporate statements on social and political issues and events. Ben & Jerry’s CEO Matthew McCarthy explained, “We do these things not to sell more ice cream but because we care about people and have values. All businesses are collections of people with values; it’s a force that’s always there. But … companies usually make their values known through things like lobbying: money that never sees the light of day.”

Ben & Jerry’s supports several movements that align with its progressive brand values. Source: Ben & Jerry’s

Shared values can be the reason a customer chooses your company over a competitor. If your company has values and supports causes that align with their personal values, customers will feel like you’re the best option for them. Your brand values can make customers more likely to buy from you in the first place and make them more likely to remember your brand in the future.

To differentiate your brand based on your values, start by defining your brand values internally. Make sure you choose brand values that you truly believe in and align with your company’s mission. Otherwise, you’ll end up with a set of values that feel inauthentic to your brand – and customers will be able to tell. Authentic brand values can help you connect with customers, but inauthentic values will put customers off and make you stand out for all the wrong reasons.

4. Support a Charity or Cause

If you have strong brand values, you can further differentiate your brand by supporting a charity or good cause. Many companies say they support various social causes, but far fewer take action and invest their hard-earned budgets in charitable giving. Supporting a charity will help you build stronger connections with current and potential customers, as your connection will be built around a shared sense of purpose rather than just a transactional relationship.

For example, video conference software Whereby launched a tree-planting initiative at the beginning of 2021. Whereby’s limited-time campaign helped it stand out during the COVID-19 pandemic when many people relied on video conferencing tools for work meetings and social interactions.

Whereby’s campaign to plant “one million trees just by hosting a free meeting” gave it a unique differentiator against other, bigger-name video conferencing tools like Zoom or Microsoft Teams. It made it as easy as possible to support the cause: customers could use Whereby’s free plan and plant trees at no cost to them. So, while Zoom may have been the better-known option, Whereby gave potential customers a values-driven reason to choose its product rather than those of its competitors.

Whereby differentiated its brand from better-known competitors by supporting a climate-positive cause. Source: EuroNews

Research by Clutch found that 75% of people are “likely to start shopping at a company that chooses to support an issue they agree with.” Supporting a charitable cause helps communicate your brand values and means your customers know you for more than just your products or services.

While some companies may have the budget to donate a percentage of their profits to charity each year, there are many different ways to use charitable support to differentiate your brand. For example, you could partner with charities for specific campaigns (or on a long-term basis). Alternatively, you could set up regular donations or take part in team volunteering days with local charities or causes to build connections in your area.

5. Provide Exceptional Customer Service

A great customer service experience can turn a negative experience with a company into a positive – and become the thing the customer tells all their friends and family about. As well as differentiating you from your competitors, providing exceptional customer service makes it easier for you to retain more customers.

Zappos is well-known for delivering excellent customer service. Its number one company value is to “deliver WOW through service.” Since it was founded in 1999, Zappos has made customer service a top priority. As a result, it has built a reputation in the Ecommerce space as a leading example of a customer-focused business.

Customer service is so important to Zappos that the logo on its home page includes the tagline, “Powered by service.” You can read blog posts and watch videos to hear different members of the Zappos team discuss the importance of exceptional customer service, which further demonstrates how it’s a priority for everyone in the business.

The Zappos logo highlights how important customer service is to the company. Source: Zappos

But while great customer service can help you attract new customers, poor-quality service can lose them. Zendesk found that 61% of customers would defect to a competitor’s product or business after just one bad experience with your company.

If you want to differentiate your brand by providing first-class customer service, it needs to be a priority for the whole business. That means allocating budget to your support team rather than taking a race to the bottom and seeing how cheaply you can provide customer support. Companies like Zappos succeed at customer service by investing in it early and making it a company priority owned by the C-suite to ensure the rest of the team understands its importance.

6. Create a New Product Category

Category creation differentiates your brand by taking you out of a crowded market and starting your own niche. The goal of category creation is to become known as the leader in that space, not an also-ran in your original market.

For example, software company Drift created the conversational marketing category to set its products apart from other popular live chat tools. By redefining its product, it moved away from the traditional users of live chat tools – customer support teams – and engaged a new audience of marketers.

Drift coined the term conversational marketing, which became the name for its product category. Source: Drift

The first step in creating a new category is to give it a name. “Defining the name of the category is a big step to helping the world understand the container for the problem,” explains the Play Bigger team, who wrote a well-known book on category creation by the same name. They add, “The category name is often comprised of the market type, the nature of the problem, and the audience who has the problem.”

Category creation is a long-term project (much like building your brand). It won’t be the best option for all companies looking to differentiate their brand because there are quicker and easier brand differentiation options to choose from. Just like brand building, category creation requires commitment, engagement, and consistency from your whole company because you’re creating your own space in the market, which doesn’t happen overnight.

However, companies that succeed in creating and owning a new category give themselves a long-term advantage that customers will struggle to match because you’ll always be seen as the #1 choice in your niche.

7. Rethink Your Pricing Strategy

An often-overlooked opportunity to act differently is your pricing strategy. Switching from one-off purchases to a subscription or recurring payment model changes the relationship you have with your customers and can surprise customers with your innovation.

For example, Dollar Shave Club set itself apart from more well-known shaving brands like Gillette by adopting a subscription payment model. Shaving products are something that people use and repurchase regularly, and Dollar Shave Club capitalized on those repeat purchases by encouraging customers to try its products (at a discounted price) in exchange for subscribing to future product deliveries.

Dollar Shave Club attracts new customers with introductory offers if they subscribe to future shipments. Source: Dollar Shave Club

Taking a new approach to pricing can set you apart if you’re the first in the market to try it out. A new pricing model encourages customers to rethink their relationship with your brand and products. Switching from a one-time purchase to a subscription model makes it easy for customers to keep using your products and stick with you for longer.

Alternatively, if your market is already saturated with subscription offerings and built on a recurring payment model, you can stand out by taking the opposite approach and making your products or services available for a one-off fee.

8. Build Your Brand Story

People connect with stories more than facts and figures, so developing a unique, authentic, and memorable brand story can help customers remember your company and build a stronger emotional connection with your brand.

Nike co-founder Phil Knight elevated the company’s brand story by publishing “Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike” in 2016. The book has more than 20,000 global reviews on Amazon, with 84% five-star ratings. Overall, 95% of its ratings are four-star and above. The book tells the story of the now-global brand’s early days – and struggles. It helps customers build a stronger emotional connection with the brand by changing their perception of Nike, from a gigantic global brand to a plucky startup that’s earned its position through hard work. The book means customers feel like they know more about the brand and are more invested in its continued growth and success.

“Shoe Dog” tells the origin story of the Nike brand, helping customers build an emotional connection with the business. Source: Amazon

Your company may not have the global reach needed to secure a book deal to tell your origin story, but there are many other ways to build your brand story. The “about” page on your website is the perfect place to tell some of your brand story. Additionally, your founder or CEO is the perfect person to tell your brand story on podcasts, blog posts, or on stage at conferences.

9. Become an Expert in Your Industry

If you’re seen as an expert in your industry, you differentiate your brand from competitors who are seen as being less experienced or less knowledgeable. It also helps to build brand recognition as customers see your company name in more places, such as conference line-ups, press coverage, podcast guests, and article bylines.

Basecamp has developed a reputation for being an expert and thought leader in the tech industry. The Basecamp team has written and published several books that are well-regarded in the tech and startup space. The books offer practical advice based on lessons the Basecamp founders (and other senior team members at the company) have learned building the business. “Rework” has a 4.5- out of 5-star rating on Amazon from more than 4,500 reviews, and “It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work” also has a 4.5-star rating from over 1,000 reviews.