“Don't knock your competitors. By boosting others, you will boost yourself. A little competition is a good thing and severe competition is a blessing. Thank God for competition.” - Jacob Kindleberger

There is a healthy place for competition among brands and businesses today when you find that sweet spot, your brand will thrive.

When you are running your business, you will find that there will be a lot of other businesses providing the same services as you. This leads to fierce competition as you’ll all be fighting to secure customers, clients, and brand dominance in the marketplace.

The good news is that there some great ways that you can make your brand stand out from your competition from providing new products and services to trying new marketing strategies and more. Find out some of the tips here.

Study your Competitors

One of the first ways that you can make your brand stand out from your competition is by making sure you have a look at your competitors and find out exactly what they are up to. When you do this, you can see what is working for them and what isn’t.

You don’t need to speak ill of your competitors to win the market, hey maybe doing some things wrong, but that’s not your job to trumpet those ills to your advantage, rather learn from them.

George Matthew Adams, rightly stated “There is a tendency among some businesses to criticize and belittle their competitors. This is a bad procedure. Praise them. Learn from them. There are times when you can co-operate with them to their advantage and yours! Speak well of them and they will speak well of you. You can't destroy good ideas. Take advantage of them.”

If you find something that they don’t offer or lacking, use that information to make your brand shine.

There are several social listening tools and brand monitoring tools to spy on your competitors such as; SEMrush, Social Blade, Ahrefs, NetBase, Twitonomy, etc

Define Your Unique Selling Proposition(USP)

To begin with, it’s your USP that largely distinguishes your brand from that of your competitors. If you have a look at your business competitors and notice that they all focus more on certain products and services then, you should have a look and see if there is anything that could be seen as your USP.

You’ll want to promote this as best as you can to make your brand stand out. When it comes to promoting your services you will need to make sure you utilize Social media so you can create ads and use social media to push and promote your services.

Use Price Differentiator

Sometimes, just sometimes the only way to win the competition is by towing the pricing route. Either you lower the price of your products and services marginally or set a premium price to distinguish them.

Be reasonable with your pricing; depending on your target market you are serving; you can easily stand out from the competition by making your prices reasonable. If you make your prices affordable and reasonable then, you will find that more people will be inclined to use your services over others.

In all ensure that your products and services match up with the prices – offering valuable services not just cheap stuff in the name of lowering prices or overpriced products just in the name of branding. Value sells and value speaks!

Make sure not to drop your prices too low, of course, as this can affect your profit.

“Don't overprice your products & services just in the name of branding - deliver value!” ? Bernard Kelvin Clive

Raise Brand Ambassadors and Introduce benefits

If you are wanting your business to be successful and stand out from others then, you will need your employees to do as much work as possible to take on new tasks and clients. To get your employees motivated to do more, you should consider introducing employee benefits to your team.

Consider using an employee benefits platform to provide tailored benefits to your employees. You can also motivate them by hosting team days and setting goals to make your brand one that matters. See the benefits and roles of brand ambassadors.

Follow Your Intuition

Some ideas come to us by intuition and meditation, never disregard those ideas, they may sound absurd but hey, give it a shot, it may turn out to be your breakthrough strategy.

To make your brand stand out and not look the same as your competition, you must try and stick to your ideas instead of copying others. This is because it will make your brand look different from the others in your industry. It will also be a lot more personal to you as it will be all your creative ideas and not from others. Put a face on your company and use this to get some customers on board.

Here is the thing, you can go the ‘Richard Branson’ way, using your personal brand to outwit your competitors, if it works for you, great!

Be different at all Cost

Overall, there are a lot of different brands out there that you will need to compete with and you need to make sure that you stand out. Brand awareness is one of the key things you’ll need to focus on so don’t forget to put some strategies in place from the get-go.

Do some competitor research and motivate your staff if you want to beat the competition and make your brand stand out.

Remember that “Companies aren’t families. They’re battlefields in a civil war.” - Charles Duhigg

Keep fighting for your territories and consistently standout!

The best is yours!

Recommended Resources:

Branding Course: visit www.BKC.name/courses

Digital Disruption Book http://bkc.name/ebook

Bernard Kelvin Clive is an Author, Speaker, and Corporate Trainer. Africa's foremost author[ity] on Personal Branding and Digital Book Publishing. An Amazon bestselling author of over 40 published books. As a speaker & trainer he has been known to simplify complex ideas about branding and life and present them to audiences in clear, actionable steps. He has over a decade of experience in digital publishing and has globally consulted for entrepreneurs, pastors, and people like you to write books and build brands. He hosts the number one ranked Career & Business Podcast in Ghana. Bernard is a brand strategist at BKC consulting and runs the monthly Branding & Publishing Masterclass.