How Strategy Is Differentiating Brands in a Sea of Products
How Strategy Is Differentiating Brands in a Sea of Products. Lesser-known brands need a differentiator to succeed, and strategy is a resource-efficient way to set a brand apart.
Small businesses with fewer than 100 employees make up 99.9 percent of American businesses. There are currently 30.2 million American small businesses in operation, with new ones starting every day. As digital life steadily intensifies competition and consumers become both more empowered and more jaded toward marketing messages, it’s critical that small businesses differentiate themselves to succeed.
“If you want to get consumer attention, you have to start with a bang,” says Udit Goenka, CEO and co-founder of PitchGround, a company that helps startups take root with early adopters. In a saturated or unproven market, entrepreneurs stand to make an impact — or nothing at all. Without an early and consistent identifier, small businesses are taking a big risk without the resources to back it up.
Small businesses, however, are absolutely capable of creating differentiators for themselves. It all boils down to strategy that doesn’t cost a dime.
Outthinking the Competition to Outlast It
When your business is at risk of blending into the crowd, here are three approaches that can set it apart — without diluting your limited resources.
1. Hit the ground running by attracting early adopters with a “lifetime deal.”
Growth has to be fast and aggressive, particularly in a saturated market, so you have to hit the ground running. One strategy for early growth is to engineer a “deal of a lifetime” for early customers. This might be a lifetime subscription for a one-time fee, an ongoing discount for early adopters, or other perks to incentivize sign-ups in the beta stages.
“Attracting early adopters brings the influx of cash a young company needs to continue development. It’s a bit like an IPO that way,” explains Goenka. “But it also gives you a broad user base early on that provides valuable data about how users interact with your brand. This is also critical for development, and that’s why an LTD [lifetime deal] is so important for early growth.”
