It can be tough to make your product stand out from the crowd. Whatever product you sell, markets are getting more and more competitive every day. As new retailers set up shop and consumer demand thrives in some of the world’s fastest-growing economies, new goods are flooding the market at breakneck speed. In this context, it can be incredibly difficult to make sure your product stands out from the crowd, but the cost of being left behind can be dramatic. In many ways, your business depends on your ability to differentiate what you’re selling from the rest of the pack.
Price or quality
If all buying decisions were based purely on price, the cheapest products would always be the best sellers. But in reality, this simply isn’t the case: customers are looking for the right balance between quality and affordability. Profit margins don’t always allow you to be the least expensive option, especially when you have to make a living as well as covering costs in a small business. In practice this means that although your price structure needs to be reasonable for your product, you need something else with which to differentiate yourself.
Maybe it’s your customer service, or perhaps your fast shipping times or better functionality, but once the price has been set, you need to give customers another good reason to choose you over any other company.
Establish a USP
If your product is going to outsell the others, it needs to have a unique selling point (USP) that will draw customers away from your rivals and towards what you can offer. What is special about your product that competitors don’t have?
There are some things to bear in mind when determining your USP. Firstly, you need to be able to distill it into an objective claim: a subjective statement such as “we deliver quickly” is far less credible to a reader than “all our goods are shipped within five days”. This also makes your USP measurable, so you can prove to customers that you live up to your claims – but for that very reason you need to make sure it is both accurate and realistically achievable.
Equally, a USP means nothing if it does not impact on customers’ experience, so ensure you sell your products based on their ability to meet the buyer’s needs. For example, fast delivery is important for products that have a relatively short lifespan, while high-value items will look more attractive if customers know they will be shipped securely. If the USP is in the product itself rather than the service, explain why that feature will benefit the customer compared to goods from another seller.
Use it well
A USP is only useful as a means of differentiating your product if customers know about it, so think carefully about how you can incorporate it into your overall marketing strategy. It needs to be at the heart of the message you try to get across to the public, so it should feature prominently in product descriptions both on the packaging and online marketplaces. Beyond that, consider providing extra information such as video demonstrations of the product’s special features to ensure prospective buyers know exactly why you’re the right choice.
Sources:
http://cynthiakocialski.com/blog/2013/09/05/product-differentiation-beyond-pricing/
http://www.lendio.com/blog/diferentiate-competition/
