Why should your ideal customers choose your brand over the competition?

That’s the most important question every person on your team should be able to answer — in a single sentence.

Your ideal customers have hundreds of options to solve their pain points and can find them in seconds using Google or ChatGPT. Meaning, you need to present a clear reason why they should buy from YOU.

And that’s where the problem lies.

Most B2B service founders (and marketers, for that matter) don’t know what makes their business unique or how to find it.

It’s why they settle for lazy differentiators. Things like:

• We care about our customers
• We are the industry leaders
• We provide the best quality

All good things. But none of them are technically differentiators. They are basic expectations customers have when they give you money.

Think about it. What business is out there looking for a vendor that hates them, treats them like dirt, provides sh*tty quality, and generally sucks at what they do?

No one.

When you try to make that your differentiator, you’re really communicating that you do the bare minimum and treat it like it’s something amazing.

The trick is to find something you DO that makes you different — and that thing is often hiding in places most founders never look.

What is Brand Differentiation?

Before we dive into where your differentiation is hiding, you need to understand what you’re looking for.

Brand differentiation is the process of establishing a unique, compelling value proposition that your ideal customers care about and your competitors can’t or won’t copy. It’s the reason why ideal customers choose your brand over other alternatives in the market.

Real brand differentiation sits at the intersection of three things:

• What your business does exceptionally well. Repeatable, reliable, something you can deliver 99% of the time.
• What your competitors can’t or won’t do. Not just don’t offer, but physically can’t because of their structure, or won’t because it conflicts with their model.
• What your ideal customers actually want or need. Something enticing enough to get them to want to buy.

You need all three to make a differentiator.

Because if your competitors can copy it, if your customers don’t care about it, or you can’t replicate it for every client, you don’t have a differentiator. You have a strength, but not something that makes you stand out.

3 Places to Find Your Differentiation

So, where do you find the thing you do that your customers want or need, and that your competitors can’t or won’t copy?

Here are three places I look when trying to extract a differentiator for our BrandOS clients.

Place 1: Your Delivery Process

Your differentiation is something you do. So the logical first place to look is your process.

Onboarding, research, workshops/meetings, deliverables, checklists — any and every step you take clients through when delivering your solution. Your differentiator is often found there.

Take one of our clients, Define Instruments.

They are an IoT remote monitoring company that works with OEM service providers (think mosquito-spraying systems, ice vending machines, wastewater companies) and builds systems to collect data from their machines.

Every IoT remote monitoring company does that.

But during our Offer Workshop, we uncovered something unique. Rather than just pulling data to a dashboard and creating alarms, Define takes its system a step further.

They create a prioritized to-do list for their clients: Pick lists. Service schedules. Consumable reorders. Their system tells customers what action to take based on the data.

We didn’t come up with that idea for Define. We just found it in their process.

The Exercise: Process Mapping

The easiest way I’ve found to do this is an exercise called Process Mapping.

Use a whiteboard (or Miro) and document every step of your process:

• Name the step
• Document what it entails
• Explain what it accomplishes

Be as detailed as possible and go in order!

Somewhere in that map is something you do that your competitors can’t or won’t. It’s much easier to find when you have your entire process laid out.

Place 2: Your Methodology

Next, you want to look at your methodology — the structured, repeatable system of principles, practices, and rules you follow to deliver on your promise.

Methodology is not your process but the “how” behind it.

This is where Shft’s differentiator lies.

Most branding agencies focus on branding your why — your purpose, vision, mission, and values. They subscribe to Simon Sinek’s “Start with Why” framework, which posits that people care about your why.

We focus on branding your how — believing that customers care more about what you do for them than why you do it.

It’s a principle, practice, and rule we follow here at Shft that drives our process. It’s why we don’t start with your why; instead, we research your competitors and dive into your offer.

Those practices and principles are hard to replicate.

The Exercise: Process Mapping How

Struggling to understand your methodology?

Take the Process Mapping exercise from above, go through each step of the process, and document why you perform that step.

Understanding the why behind each step will help you understand the principles, practices, and rules your team follows.

Place 3: The Boring Thing You Excel At

Lastly, look at the things you do that don’t feel special.

The boring steps, the seemingly lackluster deliverables, the things your team just does every single day that feel mundane.

Your differentiator is often something you do so often that it just feels normal.

Every client I’ve worked with has experienced this.

When we do the two exercises above, I often point out something they’ve been doing for years that none of their competitors are doing and that they just didn’t see as unique.

Take Metallurgical High Vacuum.

They manufacture and remanufacture vacuum pumps that power vacuum furnace applications — the equipment that puts the shiny coating inside your chip bags, for instance.

When remanufacturing a pump, MetHiVac has an extensive checklist they follow, checking every nut, every bolt, every component for tolerance levels and replacing anything that is slightly out of tolerance.

Talk about boring.

But when we did our research, we found that their competitors focus on symptoms, not a full tear-apart and check.

What MetHiVac did for years didn’t seem special. But no one else in the industry was doing it.

The Exercise: Process Mapping Boredom

Seeing those boring things you do can be difficult because they are just ingrained in how your team operates.

The easiest way to uncover them: go back through the process mapping exercise, look at each step, and document every boring thing you do.

Ask your team what feels unnecessary, repetitive, or boring to them.

Your differentiation may likely be hiding in those mundane tasks.

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Is It Copyable?

Once you’ve found something you think might be a differentiator, it’s time to test it.

I’ll save the full breakdown of tests for another email. But there’s a simple question you can ask to determine if your differentiator is easily copyable.

What would a competitor have to change about how they work to copy us?

If the answer is ‘nothing,’ keep digging. Your competitors will easily copy what you do and steal your position.

But if the answer requires significant change, you might be onto something.

Remember, a great differentiator is something your customers want or need and your competitors can’t or won’t copy.

Find what makes you different and own it in everything you say or do.

That’s how you become the only choice for your ideal customers.

Need help finding and owning your differentiation?

​Book a call to see how we can dig into the three areas above and build a BrandOS that makes your differentiation clear and gets your ideal customers to choose YOU.

Until next week,

#SassyJason out.

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