Don’t want to read? Listen to the AI audio summary here!

Finding a new idea for a business is difficult. It’s hard to provide something that doesn’t already exist and to get something new off the ground requires a level of investment and capital that most people don’t have.

So if you want to launch a business, it’s highly likely you’ll be launching into an industry that already has well-established businesses in operation.

Prepare for a long, hard road ahead. Not only are you going to have to establish a brand presence; you’re going to have to market yourself as well.

But what’s even more important is that you need to tell your audience why you’re better than what’s already out there.

You have to have a deep understanding of your point of difference, and why that difference solves a pain point your audience has.

So how do you discover your point of difference?

Don’t Subject Yourself To The Subjective

Throughout my time in marketing, I’ve asked hundreds of businesses what they do differently from their competitors. Why would we choose you for a particular service instead of your highly-reviewed and long-standing competitor?

I received some very fluffy and generic answers.

“We give better service.”

“We actually answer the phone.”

“We work harder.”

“Some of our services are cheaper.”

I have a few issues with this sort of difference.

First, none of these are particularly exciting. The customer mostly assumes that the above is already true. You’d hardly admit that your service was rubbish, your team is lazy, your voicemail is full and you charge more, so simply saying you’re the opposite of bad isn’t going to get anyone’s pulse racing.

The second problem is that all of this is subjective.

You might give better service, but better service than what? What does “better service” actually mean? There are common things like turning up on time, being polite and friendly, and knowing how to do your job. But customers’ expectations for what counts as “better service” vary wildly, so saying you give better service is more truthfully saying you give better service to some people depending on what they like.

People can quite easily debate whether you give better service. There’s also a very good chance that all your competitors are also saying they give better service as well, so it becomes a meaningless statement.

Similarly, you might have cheaper services, but you might not. There is always someone who can do it cheaper so unless you have a very generous price-beat guarantee, saying you’re cheaper or that you give better value for money is fluff as well.

When it comes to marketing, these points of difference are very difficult to promote because most of your audience won’t care. It’s meaningless, fluffy marketing speak and they’ve seen it all before.

Understand Your Objective Benefits

So if you can’t use subjective benefits to your service, then we need to focus on the objective.

And this is where it gets tricky because, as suggested earlier, it’s hard to do what hasn’t already been done.

But the question you should ask yourself is what do I do that is undoubtedly different to most if not all of my competitors?

What can I say about my service or product that no one can deny? Something no one can tell me isn’t true?

I worked with a lawyer once whose point of difference was that they were “No Fee”. 

Now at a quick glance, that might not be too interesting but when he said “no fee” he meant “no fee.” Win or lose, you would not have to pay him a single cent for his service. While he was arguing your case, he would add his fee on top of the sum of money he was trying to win for you. If he won, you still got your full payout, and he got his fee on top of that. A perfect win-win for all involved. If he lost, you wouldn’t have to pay anything either.

It is significantly different from the No Win, No Fee lawyers that plague our media constantly encouraging us to sue each other. You might not have to pay if you lose but, boy, those fees come thick and fast if they win.

That was his objective point of difference. It couldn’t be debated – no customer ever paid him for his services, and it was this point of difference that made him very successful.

It was also very easy to advertise this because it was such a simple concept. Our biggest difficulty was that people thought it was too good to be true, so much of our advertising was spent writing copy that explained why it wasn’t.

What About Other Industries?

But for other businesses, you need to figure out your own no-fee differences.

If you’re a tradie, perhaps you only use a certain standard of materials or abide only by certain ISO codes. Perhaps you only hire subcontractors with a certain type of length of experience. Or guarantees that you won’t go over budget. Or that you’ll finish the job within a certain timeframe.

If you’re a restaurant that delivers food, you might offer guarantees over delivery times, or guarantee that you don’t inflate prices for delivery services. What you pay for delivered food is the same as what you’d pay in store.

A florist might advertise a freshness guarantee such as flowers that were picked less than 24 hours ago. Or flowers that, if looked after properly, are guaranteed to last a certain number of days.

A real estate agent might guarantee to sell your house within its valuation price range or their fee decreases.

I heard a story years ago of a professional service (I can’t remember which vertical) that was struggling to find their objective difference because, realistically, they didn’t have one. One day, they decided that they were only going to hire people with a Master’s degree in their field, and that became their difference overnight.

What if you don’t have a point of difference?

Sometimes it’s difficult to discover your point of difference. Sometimes you feel like all you can say is that your service is better and that you’ll pick up the phone.

In this situation, you’re probably going to have to change something about how you operate as a business.

It all comes from understanding your customer’s pain points.

The easiest way of doing this is to attach a KPI to the more subjective benefit of your service to turn it into an objective difference.

If customers are sick of sending in support tickets and hearing nothing back:

Saying you give better customer service is meaningless, but saying that your customer service guarantees your issue will be resolved in 48 hours or less becomes objective. If that’s too hard to manage, then you have a guaranteed 60-minute response time from a human (not an autoresponder).

If customers are price-conscious and will sacrifice quality service for price:

Saying you’re cheaper than everyone is dangerous because it puts the value focus on your pricing rather than the quality of your service, so saying you’ll beat any genuine competitor’s price by 5% becomes objective.

If customers are sick of businesses not answering the phone:

Saying you’ll actually answer the phone is subjective, but saying that your phone lines are open 24/7 becomes objective. If that’s not realistic, giving yourself a KPI around returning customers’ calls within a certain time during business hours becomes more interesting.

If your industry is famed for a low quality of work:

Saying you do a higher quality of work is boring, but attaching a satisfaction guarantee to it makes it real. If you’re not happy with our work, we’ll give you some of your money back.

You started your business for a reason. And that reason was most likely because you felt you could offer more to your industry. You felt you could do something better.

Figure out how that “more” helps your customers. Think about how to make your “better” exciting and noticeable.

If you’re struggling to determine your difference, think about how your service solves your market’s problems. Then place a KPI on the solution.

Borrow Your Benefits

Something that you might find helpful is to look at other industries for ideas. It can be hard to look to your competitors to find your point-of-difference because they’ve been successful without the guarantees or benefits. Your industry might have tried and failed to implement them already and, admittedly, you open yourself up to risk when you start offering guarantees or promises, particularly when they are tied to your customers’ money.

Thus, it can be helpful to look at what works in other industries. Look for ideas, offers, or securities that other industries offer their customers.

For example, instead of promising 30-day returns or a price-match guarantee for your online fashion store, could you offer a subscription model where you send out seasonal clothing bundles the wearer would appreciate every three months?

If you’re a mechanic, could you offer a “No Fix, No Fee” for certain vehicle issues, borrowing the idea from the legal industry?

Taking the learnings from one industry and adapting them to yours can be the easiest way of finding your difference. You might need to do some restructuring and redevelopment of your business, but fortune favours the bold, as they say.

Realistically, Can We Offer That?

For some of these, you might think “We can’t offer that,” or “promising that is unrealistic.” 

But that’s what you need to figure out.

If you want to be different, you have to do something different and that means, somewhere down the line, you have to take risks. Customers will pay to have their problems solved by a service that navigates around their fears. You might lose money on one or two deals if you can’t keep your promises, but the amount of work those promises bring you means the losses are negligible.

It’s businesses that disrupt a stagnant industry and break the norms that stand the biggest chance of success.

Change and Adapt

Remember, you don’t have to stick to your ideas. If you add a guarantee to your business and it doesn’t work for you, change it.

If you find no one cares about the point-of-difference you thought was special, replace it.

Nothing is saying your unique customer benefits can’t adapt to the market or change as your business grows. It’s an ongoing process and what you offer now may not work for you in two years’ time.

If it doesn’t work for you, move on to the next idea.

What’s Next?

There’s no CTA at the end of this blog encouraging you to get in touch because, while I can suggest points of difference, you have to come up with them yourself.

You know your capabilities, your strengths, weaknesses, and limitations.

Whatever you offer, figure out your point of difference. Make it real to people. Make it important. Make it something easy to market, easy to understand, and exciting to use.

While you think about that, I’ll be off thinking about what Stark Digital’s point of difference is…