In a market saturated by competitors, one of the biggest challenges you’ll face is identifying your brand difference.
But knowing what sets you apart from your competitors—and leading from that place of expertise—elevates your messages, builds authentic relationships with your audience, and carves out a space in the industry that is distinctly your own.
But how do you do it?
Find Your Points of Light
Figuring out your brand difference is all about showing what makes you different—not telling.
If you’re an established brand, the first step in the process is sifting through all the content you’ve developed over the last couple of years and identifying the assertions you keep repeating.
For example, if you notice you’ve frequently referred to yourself an “innovator” in print collateral, email campaigns, and landing pages, it’s clear that’s an element of your brand difference you’re trying to convey. It’s one of the “points of light” that illuminates your brand difference.
But it’s time to stop telling people you’re an innovator—it’s time to start showing—and that’s only achieved by focusing on what you’ve done that makes you one.
From being the first-to-market on X to enhancing or improving on existing technology, understanding why you keep making this assertion will help you to illuminate this part of your brand difference. Once you’ve zeroed in on the evidence behind your claim, it’s time to start imbuing your messages with proof that supports it authentically.
Think of it this way: You know what the point of light is, so use evidence to make it shine brightly.
After all, you can say something about yourself all day long, but when you show it, it says it for you. And that’s more compelling and authentic.
Side note: Most brands have more than one point of light that makes up their difference. On average, three to four points are enough to build a strong brand difference—any more and you risk diluting your message and confusing your audience.
Lead from Your Difference
You know the points of light that make up your brand difference, now get comfortable leading from that space—and that space alone.
Leading from your difference means leveraging your expertise (which you’ve illuminated to your audience with hard evidence) to lead the conversation occurring in and around your industry.
When you do this enough, your audience will begin to look to you as a thought-leader—and that will strengthen the impact of your message and ensure it resonates.
Think of it this way: A professor can only teach the subject to which they hold a Ph.D. Why? Because they intensively studied a single subject—their Ph.D. proves that. When that professor speaks, her students listen because they trust she is an expert in her field and believe the knowledge she is imparting to them is valid.
But a math professor can’t fill-in for an English professor or vice versa; while both hold a Ph.D., they are experts in completely different academic areas.
The point of this aside?
If you try to lead from a space that isn’t truly your expertise, the message falls flat or fails to resonate because you don’t have the hard knowledge, or evidence to back it up. Without both you can’t build a relationship of trust with your audience.
Deliver on Your Promise
The key to building a relationship of trust with your audience is delivering on your promise.
If you fail to deliver the goods, despite your hard work, it won’t take long before your audience realizes that you’re smoke-and-mirrors—no substance—and starts to look elsewhere for thought-leadership.
Think of it this way: You can only gain traction with your audience if your brand difference is real. It can’t be manufactured.
So, if you’re an innovator, delivering on your promise means: answering questions before they’re asked, offering insights into your innovations that further prove your assertion, and actually deliver—and keep delivering—innovations within your industry.
Don’t Let the Message Go Stale
Once you’ve carved out your niche, get comfortable—but not too comfortable.
To stay relevant, you need to keep growing your brand difference by finding new and exciting ways to tell the story of that difference.
Think of it this way: You can’t repeat the same message over-and-over-and-over without it getting redundant—and boring the hell out of your audience.
The trick is to find the right balance between consistency in messaging and originality.
This is where a strong creative team makes a big impact. In concert with strategic marketers, your creative team will help find new and compelling ways to convey your brand difference and help you maintain strong, authentic relationships with your audience.
Rhiannon Pickus 