It can be difficult to find a distinguishing factor for your professional services firm. A lot of companies have a hard time coming up with a differentiator that set them apart from others.
How to Evaluate a Differentiator
To be successful, a differentiator must meet three important criteria:
- It must be true. You can’t simply make it up.
- It must be important to potential clients. If not, what’s the point?
- It must be provable. If you can’t demonstrate that it is true, it won’t be believed.
Differentiation strategies are important for companies to stands out from the competition, but not all strategies are effective. Some strategies may be more important to invest in than others. The following paragraphs discuss the different strategies and the key advantages and disadvantages associated with each one.
1. Specialize in an Industry
Differentiating your company by becoming a specialist in your industry is an easy and successful way to attract customers. However, you need to be careful not to try to become a specialist in too many industries as this will make you lose credibility.
2. Specialize in Serving a Specific Role Within Your Client’s Organization
This careers specialization that is based on roles is also quite successful, especially when it is combined with a focus on an industry. If you are in charge of IT at a law firm, it can be comforting to know that there is a service provider who specializes in helping people who have a similar job as you.
3. Specialize in Offering a Particular Service
If your service is rare and hard to find, this can be quite successful. However, be aware that unique services can quickly become mainstream. Examples of this include Sarbanes-Oxley compliance and social media marketing.
4. Offer a Truly Unique Technology or Process
An approach that is entirely different from the traditional assessment-monitoring-adjustment process that offers a unique and beneficial solution to the client.
5. Focus on Understanding a Particular Target Audience
Some companies set themselves apart by having a deep understanding of a particular audience. For example, your company might specialize in marketing to Baby Boomer women. Your clients might be retirement planners, insurance companies, or clothing retailers.
6. Specialize in Serving Client’s Size
having a specialty can be an advantage over firms that don’t have a specialty
7. All of Your Staff Shares a Specific Characteristics or Credential
Everyone thinks that their team is great, so it’s hard to make that a selling point that sets you apart from the competition.
But what if you could prove that all of your programmers have PhDs in Computer Science? That would be both meaningful and relevant to a potential client. Alternatively, you could try to prove that all of your project managers are PMPs. That’s not as distinctive, but it’s still provable and would be seen as relevant by potential clients.
8. Specialize Clients that Share a Common Characteristics
This differentiator is focused on a characteristic of your clients that is different from their industry or role. For example, you might provide accounting and tax services for expatriates. They might be from any country, in any industry or any corporate role, yet you will have a competitive advantage.
9. Focus on Solving a Specific Business Challenge
In this situation, the focus is more on the business challenge the client is facing rather than the client themselves. The challenge must be something that can be easily identified and would be difficult to solve without the necessary skills and experience. An example of this would be helping a company get their first government contract.
10. Have One or More Specific Individuals Who are Visible Experts in Their Field
This is a strategy that has been tested over time and is very effective. Having the country’s leading expert in your field is a very powerful competitive advantage. Many companies have been built on this differentiator alone. If you have multiple experts who are highly visible, you will have a brand that is very compelling and valuable.
11. Offer a Unique Business Model
If you want to be unique in your profession, try billing by a fixed fee instead of hourly. This will help you stand out and be easy to prove. However, be aware that if it works well, you may get imitators.
12. Have a Specific Geographic Focus
Even though technology and common business practices are making geography less important, there are still situations where local knowledge or face-to-face interaction is vitally important to clients.
13. Offer Access to a Unique Set of Information not Available Elsewhere
Do you have any information that could be valuable to potential clients? Some companies have created very successful businesses by using data that is not easy to replicate.
14. Offer a Unique Set of Contacts or Relationships not Easily Accessible
What sets your public relations firm apart from the competition? Do you have strong relationships with reporters and editors that you can use to your advantage?
15. Do Business with a Distinctive Level of Service
Most businesses offer good customer service as it is the cost of doing business. Everyone does it, or at least says they do. In order to make your business stand out, your level of customer service must be exceptional. Can this be accomplished? There are still some businesses who excel in customer service.
16. Distinguish Yourself by The Clients you Have
Some firms distinguish themselves by the clients they work with. Having clients who are prestigious or well-known can make a firm more attractive to potential clients. For example, a firm that works with clients in the higher education market who are also Harvard, Yale, and Stanford would be seen as more successful.
17. Focus On the Size of Your Firm
If you want to be successful, it’s a good idea to choose a niche and become the largest company in that area. This will show potential clients that you’re doing something right, and Combining this with a specialization will demonstrate both your relevance and success.
18. Emphasize Relationship With a Parent Firm or Partner
Being closely related to a parent company can have both positive and negative effects. Some potential clients may feel that you are not objective about other technologies, while others may see it as an asset. Knowing the ins and outs of the technology can be a big differentiator in situations where your firm is a value-added partner rather than a subsidiary.
19. Focus on a Notable Signature Accomplishment
Some companies build a strong brand by achieving a noteworthy goal. Companies that invent new technologies or solve problems for high-profile clients are examples of this. This sort of notoriety can be used to advantage by the company in its industry and over time.
20. Specialize in Producing Unique or very Valuable Result
You can focus on a valuable result that comes from overcoming multiple business challenges, rather than just one challenge. For example, you might specialize in turning average growth clients into high-growth firms. This could involve solving a wide range of business challenges, rather than specializing in solving just one challenge.
21. Look or Act Differently Than All of your Competitors
Many professional services firms resemble one another because they have been in the industry for a long time or because deviating from the norm feels risky. Having a unique appearance can help these firms stand out from the competition. When coupled with other distinguishing factors, a company can develop a significant competitive advantage.
6 Ways to Differentiate your Business from the Competition
1. Product Differentiation
There are many ways that products can be differentiated from one another. The most visible is probably through physical differences, though these can also be acquired through advertising. Product differentiation can take the form of features, performance, efficacy, meeting specifications, or a number of other criteria.
This is the area where most marketers spend the majority of their time and dollars.
The issue is that product differentiation does not last long. It is easy to copy almost any product innovation. Even though the western world has laws that protect intellectual property, they are not difficult to bypass.
Many businesses choose not to patent their product innovations because it tells competitors exactly how to duplicate the advantage. A product innovation is only protected for the life of the patent, and if a patent does not exist, anyone with enough capital to buy a machine may be a competitor in a matter of days or weeks.
2. Service Differentiation
Differentiation of service includes not only delivery and customer service, but also training, installation, and ease of ordering.
To many people, the basic components of a business are the less important aspects that can be handled without much sophistication. However, McDonald’s is a business that understands how to provide excellent customer service. McDonald’s locations across the United States generally offer the same products and level of service, so customers know what to expect no matter where they go.
In every location, the fries will be prepared in the same way, will have the same amount of salt, and will be served immediately after being fried.
3. Distribution Differentiation
Differentiation through channels of distribution can be effective in providing coverage or availability, immediate access to expertise, greater ease of ordering, and higher levels of customer or technical service.
It is not possible for manufacturers to reach the end user if the market is fragmented. For example, building materials have to be moved from the factory plant to the contractor. These types of products typically go through two stages of distribution, which include master distributors, specialty dealers, and retailers.
4. Relationship Differentiation
Employees, associates, or team members who interact with customers can help a company stand out by being competent, courteous, credible, reliable, and responsive. These employees are responsible for communicating with customers on a daily basis and act as a link between the customer and the product. If this link is broken, the business will fail.
An excellent sales representative, CSR, or technical service representative will create strong emotional bonds with their customers by ensuring that products are delivered on time and working as they should, while also quickly and accurately resolving any issues.
Differentiating based on the quality of your customer service is closely related to focusing on the people you serve. Customers want to do business with people, not an institution. Building these relationships takes time, but ultimately establishes a highly differentiated position.
5. Image/Reputation Differentiation
Some businesses distinguish themselves from others by their image, which may be part of another way they differ from others, or may be a separate strategic goal. Usually, an image is created by other factors such as high levels of service, superior product quality, or performance.
The image of a business is controlled and managed by symbols used in communications, advertising, and all types of media, as well as the atmosphere of the physical place where customers encounter the business. This is not limited to retail businesses only.
Entering markets where DuPont is present can be daunting for new entrants because the company has a strong reputation as a technical powerhouse. DuPont employs a large number of engineers, scientists, and product development experts, making it difficult for new companies to compete.
The sales representatives for Milliken and Company often have a lot of technical education or experience, and the company’s products are seen as being at the forefront of innovation. For a new company wishing to compete against Milliken and Company, often the only option is to use a type of guerilla warfare.
A brand by itself does not make a company stand out from its competitors. The brand has to be representative of something, recognizable to the company’s target audience, and communicate something that makes it unique compared to other companies.
It requires a lot of money to market something successfully. You need to repeat a message seven times before people will even start paying attention to it. Branding is more than just making a logo. It’s about communicating your company’s values in a way that is both meaningful and effective.
6. Price Differentiation
Differentiating and segmenting your market is the key to success when competing on price. By offering each segment a differentiated product at a different price, you come as close to maximizing your potential revenue as possible.
The practice of setting different prices for different customers recognizes that the value of goods is subjective and varies depending on the customer, the situation, and the environment. In the business-to-business world, prices are often negotiable, and some customers are willing to pay more than the current market price.
In other words, price discrimination allows a business to charge consumers different prices for the same good or service, based on the consumer’s willingness to pay. This results in the business being able to capture the consumer surplus, or the difference between the amount consumers are willing to pay and the amount they actually pay.
Factors to Consider for Differentiation
A difference is worth establishing when it meets at least one of the following criteria:
Valuable: the perceived benefit exceeds the cost
Important: delivers a benefit critical to success
Distinctive: unique or offered in a distinctive way
Superior: better technology, faster
The emotional tie is the bond that we have to a core emotion. This could be love, hate, or desire. This connection is what drives us to feel certain ways and behave in certain ways.
Communicates: understood and visible
Preemptive: cannot be easily copied
Affordable: customers can pay the higher price
Profitable: contribution (margin times volume) exceeds cost of difference
0 comments