The Copywriter Source

Do you have a product with a lot of competition? Maybe you have the idea for a product or service that is a little bit similar to other ones, but you are not sure on how to advertise the product because you are spending more effort on showing up among the segmentation than on what makes your product different than other brands.

Differentiation is when you make a product stand out from other products in the same industry, especially in industries where the technology is not novel. For instance, let’s say that you sell coffee mugs. That’s great, but a lot of people are selling coffee mugs. What makes your mugs stand out?

Well, while it may seem like people have tried just about everything to sell mugs, it all comes down to differentiation.

You could try a couple of things …

1. Design the mugs with a different type of look from conventional mugs.
2. Use a novel technology that will make the mugs more durable, or have fluids stay hot or cold for longer periods of time.
3. Branding with a logo, and this can either go along with the technology or quality of the product.

So, sourcing and engineering technologies is out of my scope for advice.

However, I know that copywriting and branding a product as common as coffee mugs can be difficult because there is a high volume of competition. People can even customize their own mugs, or personalize them. This is actually an older approach, because personalized mugs have been around for a couple centuries.

So, you have to think about what really makes your coffee mugs stand out from all of the other choices. Why would people buy your coffee mugs?

If you can’t find a reason why, then you need to go back to the brainstorming. Take a look at your current idea for coffee mugs. Is there something unique about them? Why did you start making them in the first place?

Selling Your Product as Unique

Before you begin to use differentiation, your product has to have something unique. This could be a feature, price, benefit, or any quality that you can think of. It may not always be easy to find the unique qualities in your product that differentiate it from the rest.

First, think of these three differentiating categories.

• Features that other products do not have

• Price or economic differentation

• Benefits that other products do not have. This can also be a customer service benefit.
  

Second, list the qualities of your product by asking yourself these questions.

• What seems to stand out from the competition?

• Can you find features, prices, or benefits that stand out?

1. Differentiating Qualities

Let’s say that you sell mugs or t-shirts that say particular things.

Realize that anybody can type in ideas for things to have written on a coffee mug using a search engine where they can have them designed for themselves, using something like Vista Print, or Canva. This is where your brand’s uniqueness comes in.

What makes your mugs different from what anybody else is able to do? That’s what you need to think about.

Some people believe that copywriting is about throwing some attention-grabbing thing out there without a reason. If the “attention-grabbing” headline doesn’t tell the customer what makes the product stand out using a few words, then it is ineffective. It is better to use a headline that informs with attention than informs with confusion.

So, a lot of companies and businesses like to impress people by making advertisements or packaging that is purely design-oriented without telling people what the product does.

They will print words with huge letters in all caps, or maybe something that is brazen and audacious. The idea is that the attitude will sell the product. This is a 20th-Century approach, if you ask me, and we are sort of seeing a transition where people are getting a bit bored of all of the attention economy, and want a return to ads where people are actually told what the product does, or how it is actually going to ad value to their life. They don’t want to spend money on pretty junk, so don’t advertising using arbitrary, attention-grabbing approaches unless everybody is familiar with your product.

Many people don’t want to tell the buyer what the product does because they are afraid that it will be “boring”. There is a way to advertise products, tell the buyer what the product does, and still get their attention in a way that doesn’t communicate that the customer is a dope.

Hire a copywriter who takes a different approach to help you make a difference and sell your unique idea to the world.

2. Differentiation is a Marketing Strategy

Differentiation is a strategy, so it has be based off of observable facts that prompt the customer to take action. Therefore, it has to be carefully thought about and then implemented, so that the differentiating selling point can be repeated along any marketing channel.

Marketing channels are any platform or outlet that allows you to sell or advertise your product, and can be anything from social media, television, content, SEO, or email marketing. The differentiation strategy should communicate the differentiating features on any of these channels.

3. A Strategical Framework

You may have heard about so-called SMART goals. SMART is a project-management framework in which a leader asks herself four important questions to help with achieving a strategy or project. Here, the goal is to find your differentiating strategy. In order to do this, you can prompt the SMART framework to think about

1. Specific/Unique

What are the specific things that make your product stand out? Don’t think about the product by itself — that does not have to be unique. What makes the product unique can be a specific feature that caters to a specific problem, that distinguishes the product from the other products out there.

2. Measurable/Factual

When goals are measurable, it offers an opportunity to be able to present credible and trustworthy results in product claims.

This can be found by asking yourself questions, like …

• Are the differentiating variables real?

• Are they instantly recognizable?

• Is the cost-efficiency of the product factual?

• Are the benefits measurable?

• Does it achieve measurable results?

• Does the product help save money?

3. Achievable/Attainable

Can the differentiating strategy work? If it is something that actually does make your product stand out, or is it merely a superlative claim?

4. Time-Sensitive

Does the differentiating strategy depend on something that is time-bound? Can you implement the strategy in time before disruptive innovation approaches? Are you offering a seasonal sale that the competition isn’t offering?

4. Is Your Competition in a “Red Ocean”?

Differentiation can lead you out of the so-called “red ocean”, a framework that describes an industry that has a high level of competition. That is, you have several companies competing for the same customers. Often, these products are not very different from each other, and have minor differentiation variables that allow them to be considered among the high level of competition. A red ocean can make it difficult to differentiate a product from the others.

Getting out of the red ocean is more of a realization than a marketing tactic.

Sometimes considering that maybe your product is so unique that it is actually in a different market is a better way to sell and find your target customers.\

For instance, the Apple iPhone was technically a PDA, but Apple brought this device into the phone market, which at that point was still implementing phone lines. Many PDAs attempted to implement phone features before, but they were often not considered to be the most important functions. It is important to realize that in doing this, it was factual that the iPhone was, indeed a phone. This allowed the iPhone to sell outside of the market of just being an mp3 player or PDA with a phone capability.

5. Require Customer Input to Help Develop a Differentiation Strategy

Smaller businesses often figure that they can’t offer anything unique from their competition, which often leads to an adhesive, “take-it-or-leave-it” attitude. This is an attitude that is conveyed by telling the customer “if you don’t like our product, you can try the competition.”

This attitude is not a customer-friendly attitude, and implies that the owners of the company are not thinking about what makes the business different from the competition. For instance, you can let the customer know that your business stands out. A good sales person or customer service representative can ask the customer questions to get a better idea about what the customer wants. This is qualitative data that can be recorded and considered to help make your product better.

Ready to Develop a Copywriting Strategy to Help Your Business Stand Out?

Engaging Content

Content that is intentional and engaging is a way that small businesses and startups can get an advantage against competition and even bigger companies. The reason why is that engaging content has value. Arbitrary content that is simply thrown onto the website is not engaging content.

1. Engaging Content is the Future of Business

A lot of companies want content but they don’t want to make it intentional and engaging. They want the keywords, and the information, but they don’t want to put the work and effort into it. Companies that put effort into their content will have much better branding, and will succeed in optimizing their branding for the future of business, while companies who neglect creating original and intentional content won’t have this advantage. The best way is to make content that does more than solve problems for the user, but prompts the users to think more critically about the topics of your content.

We’re talking about company websites that create content for marketing, but have little input in what that content is doing. They simply want the SEO, but they would probably do a lot better if they created intentional and original content that is free of doublespeak, boilerplate language, and jargon. In addition, they should also be using inbound marketing to generate leads. Content is one of the most effective inbound marketing strategies, in addition to newsletters and video content.

By producing original content, you’ll be more successful and gain an advantage over the competition by giving your brand an identity, which will increase the differentiating qualities that can help your business stand out. Companies that rely on shortcuts may create lower-quality content and products. This can also result in higher bounce rates, decreased brand awareness, and lowered click-through rates on all of your marketing channels that you use to create brand awareness.

2. Inbound Marketing

While we’re on the topic of engaging content, we briefly mentioned inbound marketing. This is a form of marketing popularized by companies like Hubspot and Airbnb. It simply means that rather than an aggressive outreach to customers and clients, you simply create a culture around the industry that caters to your business and everyone interested in it. This refers to things such as newsletters, videos, blog articles, social media groups, whitepapers, and several other things. This content is also a form of product, but is much more engaging.

The Copywriter Source is using inbound marketing right now with this article, because I use the space within the paragraphs to occasionally inform the user of our copywriting services, and and also our other content. Note that not everybody who views your content is going to purchase your product, software, or anything else that you are selling, and that is fine, and even encouraged. Rather, your content can help solve the problems of people who are not interested in your products.

Companies have been doing this for decades. In the computer industry, successful companies like Nintendo and Sony used to use inbound marketing by making paper magazines for video games, that give users the latest updates about the latest gadgets and tips on how to win. These days, a lot of companies have moved that strategy online, where it is more cost-effective in some areas. In some ways, inbound marketing happens naturally because the industry culture is simply there before you built your business.

Small businesses can use an inbound marketing strategy by creating content, such as YouTube channels or even Email marketing strategies. For instance, a plumber can make a Substack newsletter, or a landscaping company can make short TikTok videos. Whether these outlets are the right choice often depends on the industry. But, has we mentioned before, sometimes getting your product out of the red ocean is a good strategy. Using differentiation strategies with your content is also a good idea.

Inbound marketing on its own won’t help you differentiate unless you focus on creating unique, original, and helpful content that can help establish your business among the many competitors.

Here is an Informative article on the importance of blogging for your audience.

• Click Here to Learn More About Blogging for Inbound Marketing

List of Inbound Marketing Channels

• Video
• Newsletters
• Email
• Social media
• Infographics
• Whitepapers
• Webinars
• Slideshare
• Streaming media

Inbound marketing is about serving your customers and clients as an audience, and not about interrupting them with ads.