Unless customers perceive something unique about your business or its products they will relegate you to commodity status and make purchase decisions solely on the basis of price.
Discovering and promoting what makes you different, your Unique Core Differentiators (or UCDs), will make your business and your products stand out from the competition. UCDs are powerful selling tools that can be used in all elements of your marketing. They are key contributors to your image, and they are what your customers and prospective customers relate to you and you alone.
Anyone hearing the business’ name should instantly think of the UCD if you get your marketing right.
Your company’s UCD can be a slogan or a graphic. It can be a customer perception of pricing or value. To make it work for you it has to be both factual and demonstrable – a deliverable to the marketplace. Your business name itself can be a UCD.
Take a hypothetical retailer: Bigger Discounts. Their advertising slogan could be ‘<em style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">The name is what you’ll get when you shop with us’. The UCD is clearly articulated in the company’s name and slogan, and is intended to be perceived as a reflection of the store’s pricing policy.
This kind of UCD is simple but appeals to a large segment of the market. It says to bargain shoppers ‘shop here and you’ll save more money than if you shop elsewhere’.
What if you’re trying to be an exclusive retailer of luxury goods where customers want quality and aren’t as interested in price as the Bigger Discounts shoppers? UCDs can be a lot more than just a descriptive name.
Saks Fifth Avenue</street />and Harrods are names that are, in themselves, meaningless but have connotations of wealth and quality going back decades.
The same principle applies to individual products. Scotch Tape and Kleenex Tissues are products whose qualities are known worldwide, and the strength of their branding ensures their success independent of the companies that make them. (Can you name the makers of these two products?). Both names are unique in the minds of consumers and worth millions of pounds. That’s what’s in a name.
Define your own UCD by cataloguing all those things that you think make you better than your competitors: your product mix, your standards of service, your guarantee, the specialised knowledge of your team, or even a service such as free home delivery.
Look also at areas where you may not be better than competitors but can promote differently - there’s nothing inherently different about one builder’s concrete from any others, but one successful marketer painted their delivery trucks a shocking pink and gained all the attention they wanted.
If possible, relate your UCD to something that customers need, or relate it to one of their major frustrations. Try and tell them that they can get what they want from you and that they will enjoy the purchase experience more than if they’d gone to one of your competitors.
What you say must have a genuine appeal to your target audience. And can’t be something your competitors could also say. If you don’t have a real point of difference, invent one. Even if it’s only packaging your products in a distinctive wrapping, get away from the herd!
Integrate your UCD into every part of your marketing. You may not want to change the name of your business but you can certainly adopt a new advertising slogan, graphics style, colour scheme, or amend other elements of your business that will remind customers of your core promise and set you apart from the competition.
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