Differentiation Demands Diverse Thinking
By Jeffrey Baumgartner
Read blog posts and articles on "How to differentiate your business" and you'll get an amazing amount of useless advice. One post that I saw, suggests you reduce prices to be more competitive. Unless your prices are absurdly and truly unbelievably low − like a new car for a dollar fifty − that's not very original. Another blog suggests that you should offer incentives like free shipping or discount coupons because that's what other successful businesses are doing. Someone needs to inform that ding-a-ling of a blogger that copying what others in your business are doing is not differentiation, it's being a copycat!
Differentiating your business, your brand, your products or you is about being different from the competition in a meaningful way. Copying the competition or the trends within your industry is not being different. It is not differentiation. It is being just like everyone else. You can not be the leading business in your field if you follow someone else.
If you want to differentiate your business − and in order to succeed, you must − you need to be different from the competition in a meaningful way. To do this, you cannot follow the precise instructions of a ding-a-ling blogger. Instead, you need to use your creative mind to discover and define a new niche especially for your business.
This niche could be in the kind of product you provide, the way in which you provide your product, the way in which you sell your product or the way in which you deliver your product to the customer.
So, get creative! How could you define your product in a new way? How could you deliver your product in a new way? How could you sell your product in a new way? How can you stand out as special?
The answer, my friend, is in your creative mind.
--
Erps-Kwerps, Belgium
August 2016
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