Marta Peral Ribeiro
- Communications Consultant -
It's important for a brand to have a good business plan. It's also important to have a good marketing strategy, an interesting product/service and an appealing design.
But what really makes a brand different from others? And does the target audience recognize that difference?
Marta Peral Ribeiro
- Communications Consultant -
It's important for a brand to have a good business plan. It's also important to have a good marketing strategy, an interesting product/service and an appealing design.
But what really makes a brand different from others? And does the target audience recognize that difference?
Watchword: Differentiation
The idea is to reveal your brand's personality to the target audience and position it ahead of others in certain market segments.
There are many variables through which brands can develop differentiation:
- the values
- innovation
- reinventing a product
- the services it offers
- the purpose
- credibility
- the convenience offered by a product/service
- the community it integrates
- the image/design
- a mascot
- the business model
- the contents
- brand specialization
- breaking with the conventional
- a charitable action resulting from the sale (giving back to the community)
- brand sustainability
- product availability limit
- the market niche
- association with a place (cultural, for example)
- the connection to a certain emotion
Generally, companies end up involving more than one differentiating aspect.
However, there is one factor that conditions everything: what the client captures.
It's essential that your target audience perceives what makes you different. And to do that, it's important to define what really sets your brand apart.
The differentiation strategy
Start by defining why your brand exists.
- How did your brand come about?
- What is the company's philosophy? What is its purpose?
- What was missing in the market that motivated the existence of a new product/service?
- What are your company's values? Are they consistent with the type of business you offer?
Secondly, it is important to establish this concisely:
- The main benefits of your product or service;
- Solutions created to meet customer needs;
- Why customers choose your brand.
Search
Once you've identified what makes your brand unique, you need to make sure that these elements match what your ideal target audience wants.
The more you know about your target audience, their needs and preferences, the better you'll know how to differentiate your product.
So you need to analyze your traffic. Use Google Analytics, Facebook Analytics or the statistics provided by the blog where you publish your brand - if your company already uses these communication channels.
You then need to identify the users on your mailing list. What is your profile of the users looking for your services and products?
Remember that, at an early stage, you still don't really know your target audience, even if you think you do.
Enhance the user experience
The idea is to make user/customer interaction a unique experience.
By effectively trying to provide a good experience for your customer, you will be adding points to their consideration.
This approach can even involve literally making people's lives easier by creating a service tailored to their needs.
On the other hand, this should also include the user's mental availability. In other words, we can choose to treat the attention we gain from our customer as precious, rather than demanding their interaction at all times.
Examples
Ben & Jerry's is an ice cream brand that has several differentiating elements, from its values (sustainability, fair trade) to the creative names it gives its products.
At the same time, it stands out for its dynamics of giving back to the community and for limiting the availability of products in a fun way:
Source: Benandjerrys
Nintendo, for its part, is the leading international brand in the interactive entertainment industry. Several years on, it continues to reinvent itself and value the opinion of users, and is always winning over new audiences.
Source: Nintendo
We can see this in the consoles it creates, whose software is user-friendly, or when it innovated by developing a hybrid console (which works as a TV console and is also portable). More than being user-friendly, it's family-friendly.
On the other hand, Nintendo tries to develop and remake classic games requested by users, which shows the value it places on the customer.
The brand's success can also be seen in the diversification of market segments in which Nintendo exists.
And what is this brand's motto? "Making people smile".
In short, your differentiation strategy should be based on why your brand exists - from its values to its mission and its unique history. Then you need to align that "why" with the challenges, desires, preferences and interests of your customers.
