Differentiating your brand is paramount to building a powerful and compelling brand, and elevate your brand from competitors.
High-growth companies are three times as likely to have power brand differentiation strategies. Why not join them and target your marketing efforts into a brand differentiation strategy that will grow your brand.Wondering how you can do it? Look no further as we unpack seven of the best ways to distinguish your brand from its competitors.
Table of Contents
Price Differently
One of the most effective brand differentiation strategies is varying the prices of your products or services compared to your competitors. Pricing products and services differently, either by being the economy bestseller at the lowest prices, or offering a premium brand at higher prices. Many businesses have used this pricing strategy to elevate their brand allowing them to charge premium prices.
Brand Mascots
Brand mascots are powerful brand differentiators, brand mascots are able to bring a sense of humour to brand perceptions, strengthen brand identity and help create long-lasting narratives based on your brand mascot. Brand mascots have worked very well for companies such as Ronald from McDonalds, and Micky Mouse from Walt Disney.
Product Personification
Product personification, which is similar to brand mascots, are when brands create a made-up character that represents the unique characteristics of a brand. This method helps personalize your brand, and the association of a relatable character with your target audience can grealy differentiate your brand.
Distinct Logos
Related to brand mascots and product personification, brand logos can be inspired by unique brand mascots or product personifications. Business and brand logos can be directly linked to product personifications or brand mascots, which is why designing a logo to match those elements of your brand will exponentially proliferate the differentiation of your brand. It is possible to design logos without mascots of personifications, in such case the brand logo must be entirely unique from competitors to stand out. A very useful tool, the TRUiC logo maker is an easy-to-use, free of charge logo design tool that generates thousands of business logo ideas, based on inputs like business names and taglines and different graphics and visual icons that users can add to match their brand mascot.
Unique Packaging
Unique brand packaging is a concrete way to differentiate your brand, a unique brand packing with stand out in shopping aisles among other competitor products. By using different colors, themes, and other design elements in packaging, consumers will naturally be drawn to unique packaging and remember it for its uniqueness the next time they find themselves in that aisle.
stand out on shelves.
Appeal To Emotions
Brands often stand out because people associate an emotional experience with your brand’s product and services. Brands that appeal to people’s emotions focus on associating a positive atmosphere or emotion as people encounter their products and services. This is a very effective strategy as emotions are a strong motivator; consciously or not, if people have emotional attachments to a brand, it is unlikely that they will switch to a different brand. Coca-Cola does this very well, over time they attached feelings of refreshness, happiness, and the notion of sharing Coca-Cola with others using various advertisement platforms.
Go Green
We are currently living in a time where more and more people are becoming concerned with healthy eating and environmental preservation and protection. People are increasingly becoming interested in environment-friendly products, which is why differentiating your brand by using green packaging, green manufacturing, and promoting environment charity is one of the best ways to differentiate your brand from your competitors who may not be as environmentally conscious compared to your brand.
Choosing A Differentiation Strategy For Your Brand
A few of the strategies listed above may relate to one another while others are independent strategies to help differentiate your brand. Regardless of the method you choose, it’s important to find the one that differentiates your brand the best, and this will also depend on the nature of your business and target audience, and the marketing strategies of your competitors. The aim is to develop and apply the most effective branding strategy that reflects your brand’s personality, values and key characteristics the best.