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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.

Erin Ferree, Founder and Lead Designer of elf design, is a brand identity and
marketing design strategist who creates big visibility for small businesses. Erin
helps her clients discover their brand differentiators, then designs logos, business
cards, and other collateral materials and websites to reflect that differentiation, as
well as to increase credibility and memorability. This can help you to increase your
sales and put more ease into your sales cycle. To learn more about defining your
difference, check out our eBook, Stand Out, at:

http://www.stand-out-branding.com For more information about elf design,
please visit: Logo design at http://www.elf-design.com

Important Note!
Realize Your Personal, Professional, and Business Potential
With A Little Help From Your Friends.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 1st, 2008 at 7:59 am and is filed under Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.