You may think your offering and brand in the marketplace is something special. It’s easy to feel this way when you are thinking about yourself so much over the weeks and months of doing business. After all, that’s where your focus and energy should be.
However, the perspective that gets lost over time is how a first time buyer sees you. It’s a hard viewpoint to remember when we are living inside the familiarity of our own brand and world. To the casual buyer, you and your competitors look the same. In the mind of the buyer, they seek to categorize brands into understandable labels – cheap, luxury, easy, fun, etc. They are looking for the best, which can mean different things to different people.
When all things are equal in the mind of the buyer between you and your competition, it is critical to create uniqueness in the mind of the buyer with the following:
- Emotion. Your brand has to make an emotional impact. Everything that your buyer absorbs through the senses – look, touch, feel, etc. – has to create emotion that invites them to further experience your offering.
- Position. The worst position to take is to be general. Being all things to all people is vague, confusing and ineffective. Determine your specific and singular position in your market and ensure all your copy, branding and messaging reflect this position. Think about what you are the best at compared to your competitors and shout it from the rooftops. That singular focus is what will get burned into the mind of the buyer.
- Leadership. Demonstrate you know what you are talking about and show leadership, especially thought leadership. Remember, when buyers are researching, they are reading. They are looking for information to help orient them to how an industry works. Take the leadership position with meaningful and abundant content that speaks about innovation and applications of your product or service.
- Connection. To create a customer, you have to turn a stranger into a friend. Friendship happens by connection. For your buyer to become a friend, help them connect with your story and how you see the world. Tell your story repeatedly and tell the stories of your customers. Those that get you will naturally connect.
What you are to yourself matters very little compared to what you are to your customers. They get you and do business with you because of something shared that reflects their values. As the world continues to get increasingly competitive, stay focused on wooing and winning the buyers that will exclusively get you.
What can you do to better position in the mind of your buyer?
