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Home » Business And Finance Articles » Define Your Difference To Stand Out And Make Your Business Shine

Define Your Difference To Stand Out and Make Your Business Shine

Thoughtfully defining your business-and your differentiation-will help you to understand who you are, what you do, and what makes you different. Not many small businesses take the time to answer those core questions about their business, but those answers are essential to creating a strong brand identity, focused messaging, and effective marketing materials. Having these will make a stronger impression on your target audience-once you stand out, they'll be more likely to remember you when they have a need for your products or services.

Taking this step will make you stand out from your competition. Just think of your competition-and how they communicate about and market their businesses. So many people are out promoting their business without knowing these basic facts about their businesses, that if you have these elements in place, you'll outshine your competition.

In order to define your business's difference, you need to:

Determine your business's characteristics:

- Who You Are: What is your business all about? What is your mission, and what are your values? - What You Do: What are the unique services and/or products that you offer? Study and contrast your business with the competition:

- Who Is Your Competition: Who offers the same or similar services or products as you? Who are you consistently quoting your service against, or competing with for shelf space? These are your closest competitors, the ones with which you should be most concerned in the definition process.

- What Makes You Different: How are you different from those competitors? Do you have a specific area of specialty, either in the industry that you serve, problem that you solve, or the service/product that you provide? Do you serve a certain geographic area? Be careful to avoid the differentiators "better," "faster," and "cheaper"-they're either too subjective or too difficult to maintain as your business grows and matures. Your differentiators should stay with you for the life of your business.

Plan for your best customers:

- Who You Can Best Help: Determine who makes up your target market. It's best to determine both their demographics-facts like age, race, sex, occupation-and their psychographics-their motivations, hobbies, desires, and other factors that make up their personality.

- How Best to Reach Them: Once you know who you want to help, the next step is to determine how to let them know that you can help them. This means determining how to market your business and which types of media are best to get your message out.

- Which Differentiators Will Compel Them: Creating differentiators will also help your target clients to identify with you. If you tell them that you specialize in their industry and their problem, then they're much more likely to hire you. Defining Your Difference by answering all of these questions allows you to thoroughly understand your business and to better communicate with your customers. When you are specific about what you do differently from your competition, customers can easily identify you as the most appropriate business to meet their needs. It truly simplifies your marketing, promotional, and passive income processes.

And, when you Define Your Difference first, before creating your brand or marketing materials, you will ensure that your brand and marketing efforts will make you stand out from your competition just by communicating these elements of your Brand Differentiation.

And here is another random article you might be interested in...

How CEO's Can Use Axiology To Improve The Bottom Line Part I

In today's fast-paced business world, CEO's are trying to keep up with change and adapt to the global marketplace, constantly searching the horizon for an edge over the competition.

One thing they overlook is very close to home. In fact it is just down the hall from them.

It's their very own employees.

By learning how to unlock the hidden potential of your employees and executives you can create multiple leverage points for your business that your competition cannot duplicate because it's unique to you. Your employee mix is yours and yours alone. You owe it to your company to get the best from your employee's; their minds, their strengths and their keen abilities.

Imagine if all employees utilized all their strengths and could know and understand the roadblocks that hold them back? Playing at the "top of their game" they would make better decisions for the company, help reduce expenses and contribute to higher profits.

So much can be achieved by simply knowing a person's strengths. It can help build confidence in their ability to make and carry out decisions. It's as critical to know the areas in which they need help. Create an atmosphere where people are not afraid to ask for help or guidance.

Employees become more willing to ask for help before a situation becomes critical if they accept, that like others, they are not perfect and nobody really "knows it all". This fear of asking for help holds people back and stunts the growth of companies. When nothing holds a person back, he/she can surge forward with the power and confidence of someone on a mission.

So the question to ask is, "How do we structure a program for our people to discover their true strengths and their roadblocks to achievement?"

The answer is a little known science called Axiology, the study of values and judgments. The Value Profile is the tool of Axiology that unlocks a person's hidden value. It reveals how you can make better decisions based on how you think and what you value.

Here is a scenario to give you an idea on how Axiology and the Value Profile help CEO's obtain greater leverage from an employee's strength.

The CEO, lets call him Richard, has to make a tough decision. He needs to expand his company in order to keep ahead of the competition. Richard decides to put someone in charge of a Special Projects team to determine where the company's best opportunities for the future are.

Using the Value Profile, Richard can accurately measure and compare possible candidates for the position. There are 120 different critical areas with pinpoint and objective information that can be obtained from each individual.

The first section of the report determines a person's skill in Deciding What Needs to Be Done. This report measures a candidate's ability to decide what issues are relevant and what issues require attention. The findings would provide insight on the candidate's ability to rely on analytical as well as "gut" instincts, both critical allies to executives making important decisions.

The profile also provides laser accuracy into how well a candidate "sees the big picture" and how the pieces of the picture fit together to make a whole.

Added insights include measuring ability to use practical thinking and the ability to project a goal into the future and develop a plan to attain it.

In the second section of the report, Developing a Strategy, Richard gains insights on the candidate's ability to plan and manage the project. This is the only tool that provides you with specifics of how each candidate can plan for consequences of actions and decisions, and how he reacts to crises. As a CEO, it's more important than ever for you to know which candidate best knows how to quickly identify the source of a problem and the factors relating to the problem.

You can know which candidate has the best combination of skills to manage the project and move your company forward if you know who has the ability to come up with alternative solutions for problems and who can control the flow of events.

But it doesn't stop there. You can take an even closer look at your selection of candidates. In the third section of the report you take out your magnifying glass and see the management abilities of the candidates.

Utilizing this section of the report, Richard can benchmark each candidate's ability to identify problems and critical issues. You know how well they can determine what needs to be done and whether or not they know how to do it in the most effective manner.

Another component of the report tells you if they can determine and understand what is needed to carry out your objectives, whether they are clear about potential problems and the abilities of their people to resolve those situations.

The last part of this section provides Richard with a clear picture of which candidates are best equipped to create an efficient process or manage a system that others can follow.

These are a few of the many insights Axiology and the Value Profile can provide Richard and other CEO's who want to fulfill the vision they have for the future of their company.

There's more to come; this is the first part of a three part article series. In the second article Richard, our CEO, will discover how he can assess the candidates' organizational abilities, inner drive to succeed, and how much of a self-starter each candidate is.

(c) 2004, Team Results Inc. and Axelrod & Associates, All rights in all media reserved. Reprint rights granted so long as the article and the by-lines are reprinted intact.