How do you make your business stand out?

How do you make your business stand out?

From infusing your brand with offbeat humor to branding yourself as the product, here are 25 unique and distinctive ways you can make your business stand out from your competition.

• Infuse Your Brand With Offbeat Humor
• Leverage AI and Dive Into the Future of Customer Personalization
• Create Unique Content Consistently and Often
• Constantly Experiment and Test New Methods
• Pride Yourself on Honesty and Integrity
• Become the Company People Come to for Answers
• Use Storytelling to Share Your Unique Brand Image
• Understand Your Competition’s Point of Differentiation
• Admit Mistakes and Fix Problems
• Share the Competition With Your Audience
• Bring Memorable Experiences to Your Audience
• Provide Data-Backed Guarantees That Favor Customers
• Cement Your Expertise in Your Field
• Project Joy in All You Do
• Root Yourself to Your Broader Community
• Offer Short-Term, Trial ‘Sprints’ Over Long-Term, Untested Contracts
• Put Customers’ (and Their Pets’) Needs Above Profits
• Offer Your Employees Customized Career Development Support
• Don’t Limit Marketing to Just the Marketing Department
• Break Down Traditional Barriers to Purchasing
• Promote Tools and Resources That Grow Business
• Empower Customers With Tailored Recommendations
• Strive to Improve and Innovate
• Brand Yourself as the Product
• Integrate Into in-House Teams and Established Policies

Infuse Your Brand With Offbeat Humor

At our company, we quickly realized that offbeat humor was the key to standing out from the competition. We updated our social media accounts to add a bit of wit and off-color humor that may not have been everyone’s cup of tea, but it certainly got people talking and noticing us. In just a few weeks, our customer acquisition rate had skyrocketed—something I’m very proud of! Our experiment into presenting our brand with unusual, offbeat humor helped make our business stand out in all the right ways.

Antreas Koutis, Administrative Manager, Financer

Leverage AI and Dive Into the Future of Customer Personalization

We offer personalized skin care packages using AI to diagnose and treat customers through personalized treatment plans created by real dermatologists. I want our brand to stand out in the skin care market because of our personalized, customer-centric approach and our natural partnership with AI technology to efficiently meet our customers’ needs. Both AI and personalization are major business trends this year because each one optimizes a business’ performance.

We wanted to get ahead of the trend, so we founded our entire business model on these principles simply because they maximize customer satisfaction. Today, customer-centric businesses thrive, whereas non-data-driven companies struggle to understand and meet their customers’ expectations. Embrace every tool available to your business if you expect consumers to pay your brand any mind.

Guna Kakulapati, Co-Founder and CEO, CureSkin

Create Unique Content Consistently and Often

We create podcasts, which undeniably demands a close attention to detail and immense creative effort. But by being selective with our clients, we can give each episode our all and it’s been a game-changer. We came in with one aim—to create the best podcasts on the internet and nothing less. We have stayed ahead of our competition and given the best brands a run for their money by striving to create something truly unique that delights audiences.

Harry Morton, Founder, Lower Street

Constantly Experiment and Test New Methods

We realized early on that constant experimentation was critical in the ever-evolving SEO landscape. By constantly trying out new things and making tweaks along the way, we were able to refine our current strategies and become much more adaptable. It’s like a never-ending game of trial and error, but the results are worth it because with every new experiment we gain valuable insights into what works and what doesn’t. This helps us execute SEO strategies backed by our very own data and experiences.

Jess Rodley, Director of Operations, Dialed Labs

Pride Yourself on Honesty and Integrity

We have a good reputation for being reliable and honest with our transactions. This reputation took both time and effort to build, and it’s one of my greatest prides. Being in the real estate business, your words should always be spoken for the client’s best interests. They’re investing a great deal of money and looking forward to having their own home, so you shouldn’t disrespect their intentions nor take advantage of their hopes.

Buyers aren’t stupid, after all, and they’re more likely to trust those who are honest and operate with integrity. Sure, if you hide a home’s imperfections, you can sell it more quickly, but if you can be honest from the start and present which areas will need work on later, you’ll be considered much more reliable than the other agents on the market.

Stephen Keighery, CEO and Founder, Home Buyer Louisiana

Become the Company People Come to for Answers

Advice can demonstrate expertise. In our particular corner of the business world, showing your expertise can yield big returns when it comes to fielding interest and engagement from potential clients. People will always have questions about businesses, be it legal advice, information about a service, or comparisons between products—you name it and there are people out there looking for those answers. By becoming a source that is willing and able to happily impart a bit of your wisdom, you’ll stand out from your competition.

If you can provide solid factual information in a friendly and open manner, you’ll be building trust long before any products or services change hands. This makes customers and clients more willing to trust you when it comes to their needs, which can be a strong contributing factor in being chosen over a competitor. So, build your authority in your field by sharing your expertise, and you’ll start standing out from the pack.

Max Schwartzapfel, CMO, Schwartzapfel Lawyers

Use Storytelling to Share Your Unique Brand Image

Great story-telling makes your brand compelling to your visitors by adding context and value. The modern consumer wants to know more about the businesses they deal with, so sharing the unique origin story of your business and its path to how it came to be today is an excellent way to stand out from your competition. The more compelling your story, it’s all that more likely the people listening will become loyal customers.

Use this opportunity with a captive audience to start a conversation; story-telling helps your audience connect your brand with a solution they need. And remember, it’s important to stay honest and transparent when you craft your story. Customers will always want to deal with businesses that reflect their own values.

Anthony Martin, Founder and CEO, Choice Mutual

Understand Your Competition’s Point of Differentiation

While you shouldn’t obsess about your competition, it’s always a good idea to keep an eye on them from time to time. Knowing your competitors’ points of differentiation can be especially beneficial in determining what sets you apart from them. Start-up companies can become engrossed in the excitement and the strain of their new endeavor, so they need to remember that there’s still competition out there. In fact, there is so much competition.

This competition might come from other entrepreneurs developing comparable solutions or well-established corporations with an early advantage. Examining what your competitors are doing successfully (and poorly) might help you develop new ideas for your firm and set up your competitive difference. Where can you find these points of differentiation? Well, review sites and forums can provide insights into the weakest areas of your competitors’ products and services, which gives you a competitive advantage if you can avoid (or improve on) their flaws.

Samantha Odo, Real Estate Expert and COO, Precondo

Admit Mistakes and Fix Problems

Customers connect with brands and experiences. If customers have even one negative experience with the brand that’s not resolved to their satisfaction, they’ll abandon that brand. In today’s world, unfavorable reviews spread quickly on social media and through word of mouth. In order to improve the customer experience, you need to be at the top of your game, which means sometimes going above and beyond.

You should acknowledge your mistakes, whether or not they were your fault. Customers prefer companies who take responsibility for mistakes and take action to address them. If your staff handles a crisis effectively, customer relationships may even be stronger than they were before.

Isabella Meyer, Editor, Art in Context

Share the Competition With Your Audience

I think if you embrace the competition, perhaps even feature them on your channels, you can grow your business in an organic way. We are a recipe resource and we create our own content, but what sets us apart is we aren’t afraid to refer visitors to other websites and content that we find reflects the same creativity and quality we value. If we find a great recipe for a cocktail on someone else’s blog, we have no qualms about sharing it with proper attributions in our recommendation lists.

Paul Kushner, CEO, My Bartender

Bring Memorable Experiences to Your Audience

In order to stand out in the minds of your audience, you need to offer something other companies don’t. Finding that particular something can be difficult though, so even the smallest differences can make a sharp impact on people’s perception. To that end, you’ll want to study your audience and understand what appeals to them. You’ll also want to study your competitors, and see how they’ve grown their brand and what sort of presence they have. From there, you can design a unique approach that makes use of what works best for engagement with your audience and focuses on places where your competition might lack.

For example, your company might be known for its better customer service experience when compared to a competitor, even if your products are functionally similar. It really doesn’t take much to separate yourself from the pack. Do some research and pick an element you can focus on to bring the most memorable experience to your audience that you can.

Max Ade, CEO, Pickleheads

Provide Data-Backed Guarantees That Favor Customers

We have made our business stand out from the competition by offering a ROI guarantee for our SEO services. We believe so strongly that our services will provide a positive return on customers’ investments, we’re willing to guarantee to our clients that they’ll see a specific level of return on their investment in our services. We calculate the value of an SEO MQL (marketing qualified lead from SEO) and determine how many of these we’d need to bring you during the campaign to meet our agreed ROI threshold. If we don’t, our clients get a full refund!

Jaya Iyer, Marketing Assistant, Teranga Digital Marketing

Cement Your Expertise in Your Field

I work in a field of therapy that utilizes tarot and psychic readings. Competition in this field is fierce, and all too frequently people pop up from nowhere who have decided on a whim to take this on as their “profession” too. I stand out because I’ve been in this line of work full-time for over forty years, so I offer a great deal of experience and am not amateurish. I’ve been tested and come recommended by experts across newspapers, magazines, television, and radio. I’m both qualified and acknowledged by my peers.

I’m also one of a small number who have asked experts to extensively test them and I’ve passed those tests with flying colors. To further cement myself in my field, I’ve written articles and appeared on television and radio programs. What I’ve done must be having an impact, because junior psychics and tarot readers will come to me for advice on how to improve their readings or ask me for help on how to build up their business. Ultimately, what it comes down to is long-standing expertise and how you present that to the world. To back up my claims, I’ve taken courses and exams for therapy. It helps my services are also diverse and able to meet customers’ needs both online, through phone, or in-person.

Beth Shepherd, Private Agony Aunt and Therapist, The Society of Accurate & Caring Psychics

Project Joy in All You Do

We make sure to project joy in everything we do. From our choice of colors in our marketing materials to maintaining our brand’s upbeat voice, we put the focus on the joyful experience that our products help facilitate. Of course, our products are high-quality and natural, but we stand apart from competition by marketing the way families feel when they gather to share our tasty treats. For us, it’s all about the joy!

Kenneth Lin, CEO, BOOP Bakery

Root Yourself to Your Broader Community

One unique way we’ve made our business stand out is by rooting ourselves in the community—we’re a service-based business, and we’ve built our brand identity on being seen as community helpers. There are a few tactics you can utilize with this strategy. One that we’ve seen resonate with our community the most is our program to provide discounted dental services to the struggling members of our community.

Hitesh Gupta, Dentist, The Smile Factory

Offer Short-Term, Trial ‘Sprints’ Over Long-Term, Untested Contracts

We’re an SEO agency that uses sprints instead of retainers. Rather than trapping prospects into long-term contracts without having any experience working with our agency, we focus on short, high-powered sprints to knock out tasks. Work gets done in weeks instead of throughout the year. Plus, we take on more of the risk. This model allows clients to choose whether or not they continue working with us based on budget, experience, and results.

James De Roche, Managing Partner, Lead Comet

Put Customers’ (and Their Pets’) Needs Above Profits

The pet wellness industry is flooded with faceless retailers simply looking to turn a profit. But at our company, personalization differentiates us from the competition and defines our customer experience. We understand how important it is to approach sensitive topics such as anxiety or aging in pets with care and without judgment. That’s why we pay attention to the signals customers leave behind via their social posts and purchase history.

We want our solutions to be right for each customer’s situation, so if it doesn’t appear to be a good fit for their beloved furry family member, we let them know. By taking this kind of thoughtful approach, we’re demonstrating that our #1 priority is helping customers learn how to better care for their pets rather than simply giving them an automatic path to conversion.

Josh Weiss, Founder and CEO, Reggie

Offer Your Employees Customized Career Development Support

We’ve made SEO Ant a true outlier in our industry by offering our employees customized career development through our in-house training and support program. Not only does this distinguishing feature help us develop our employees’ skill set, in the process they’re utilizing those skills and providing valuable expertise to the clients we serve. In the long run, we end up with happier and more skilled employees who are satisfied with our concern for their career development. In turn, they go above and beyond with our customers, setting us apart from our competitors.

Alvin Wei, Co-Founder and CMO, SEO Ant

Don’t Limit Marketing to Just the Marketing Department

We’ve set it up so that all of our employees are also marketers. We don’t have a separate marketing division, but each of our sales agents use their expertise in the business to boost our marketing efforts. Instead of letting our sales be driven purely by competition and getting consumed by a “dog-eat-dog” mentality, everyone is concerned about the interests of the team as a whole.

For example, a sale written by one person is a win for the team. We have a broader and long-term view of success. As a result, each sales agent makes sure to contribute to the overall marketing efforts of the agency, whether that’s by writing website content, promoting content on social media, or networking within our field—whatever’s needed to make our firm stand out!

Veronica Moss, Sales Agent and Marketing Coordinator, A Plus Insurance

Break Down Traditional Barriers to Purchasing

Our business stands out by taking a product that’s typically only available through wholesale channels and making it accessible to all customers. We’ve also removed order minimums, which further expands our accessibility. By breaking down these traditional barriers of purchase, we’re able to provide greater convenience for our customers, which often leads to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Additionally, our unique approach differentiates us from our competition and helps establish our brand as a leader in our industry. Following these strategies of accessibility, we’ve been able to gain a competitive advantage and grow our customer base.

Tomislav Golubovich, Head of Marketing, Ninja Transfers

Promote Tools and Resources That Grow Business

One unique and distinctive way I’ve been setting myself apart is by offering “blogging deals”. Since most of my clients are bloggers, they don’t only need an attractive and functional website, but also tools that enhance their blog’s performance. So, we began offering discounts and running promotions for popular website tools, such as SEO optimization software, theme builders—anything that can boost performance on our client’s blog.

As a result, this has set my business apart from other web development companies who only offer website design and development services. It’s also helped the company both attract new clients and retain existing clients all because we provide them with valuable tools and resources to grow their own business on a reasonable budget.

Sunny Kumar, Founder and Marketing Specialist, TheWPX

Empower Customers With Tailored Recommendations

We’re all about personalization. Our company leverages data about consumers’ homes and energy usage, then combines that data with machine learning models. As a result, we provide people with personalized insights and recommendations uniquely tailored to their needs. Many of our competitors don’t prioritize personalization as much as we do. But we work and exist for our customers. Our mission is to empower consumers so that they can make the best decisions for themselves.

Andrew Meyer, CEO, Arbor

Strive to Improve and Innovate

Large and established businesses don’t have time to rest on their laurels. They strive for excellence through innovation. For a business to survive and thrive, it needs to constantly innovate so customers will keep coming back for more. It’s not only the offerings that need to be constantly improved, but the customer experience as well.

You want to provide a service or product customers can’t find elsewhere. Give them something they’ll ponder over: “What is it about this business that I can’t find in others?” If you know what that wow factor is, your business won’t be left drowning in the sea of competitors. Innovation gives you the authority to be on top of your competitors.

Becky Moore, Founder, Global Grasshopper

Brand Yourself as the Product

When I sold high-ticket coaching, there were plenty of people offering solutions to insurance agents on how they could generate leads. Some competitors sold penny leads, while others charged high fees for lead generation. For myself, I chose to brand my business in a way that no one could compete with. I chose to brand my business around who I am, my expertise, and my experience as a former insurance agent. Building the “know, like, trust” factor with my audience allowed me to attract those who actually wanted to work with me personally, and my branding repelled insurance agents who weren’t a good fit from the outset.

Why did this work, if it was repelling potential clients? Because I shared my personal experience as an insurance agent. I offered my audience a lead magnet, “6 Secrets to Unlimited Leads”, which grew my email list to 800 subscribers and a Facebook group of almost 800 members. I went live daily in my group to problem-solve and connect with my audience. The result of this dedication was four-figure high-ticket coaching sales and numerous referrals. Ultimately, the way to differentiate from the generic competition is to brand yourself as the product.

Jeannine Betts, Owner, Jeannine’s Advice

Integrate Into in-House Teams and Established Policies

My company has come a long way. In just five years, we’ve grown our company to over 250 employees and serve thousands of clients. One of the most unique ways we stood out from the competition was that we were always an agency that integrated into the client’s team.

We would study the client’s product specifics, marketing materials, and the company itself to become an extension of their in-house team. This is quite unique and distinctive from what other B2B agencies are doing, and it secured us hundreds of long-term clients and resulted in new business year after year.

Michael Maximoff, Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Belkins

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