Comments on: So You Think You’re Different?

By: Goforsale

Goforsale — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 11:05:18 +0000

I think differentiation in advertisements make no sense anymore for small businesses.. Differentiation starts with “word of mouth” and spreads everywhere..And It is just related with how good you are doing your job and how much your customers satisfied with your job. You do not need to invent anything new to differentiate and effective marketing..

By: Bengt SEO

Bengt SEO — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 22:04:19 +0000

Hahaha, I ask SME business owners all the time what is it that you do that makes you unique and they say what you say. Its our great service. This does not help when marketing, but when a company deals with you, make sure the service relative to the cost is what they expect and they will always use you.

By: Marc Thalheim

Marc Thalheim — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 17:36:22 +0000

Although I completely agree with what you are saying, it is easier said than done. I am currently trying to start my own social networking site, rectivities.com. It is under development so I don’t want to give too much detail for obvious reasons, but let’s just say it is a site which helps people find others nearby to play sports with. Now there are already many sites like mine, including meetup.com, so it was, at first, very difficult to see how my site is different. To solve this problem, I found a niche where I could start my company, and so far it has worked very well.

From my experiences I have found that finding a niche market is the best way to stand out in any industry. Having a more specific target leads to a faster understanding of the market and the ability to market your products directly, and fulfill your customers needs. If you have any questions relating to my experiences, you can follow/message me @garbarrassing on twitter.

P.S. You mention in your article that changing price is the worst way to differentiate, and then at the bottom you recommend changing the price. You may want to fix that.

By: Joe Dager

Joe Dager — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 01:19:19 +0000

9 out of 10 times when I see a company in trouble or needing marketing help it is a result of differentiation. It is hard sell to tell a company that they need to say no and narrow their focus. On the flip side, when companies take off it usually is a result of a narrow focus.

I was just amazed that you could go through the whole article and not use the word, differentiation. Thanks for the spell check!

By: Shannon Cherry

Shannon Cherry — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 23:27:51 +0000

Good article and yes, you need to stand out to be noticed especially owning your own business!

By: Bill Bennett

Bill Bennett — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 21:26:22 +0000

I don’t have so much of a problem differentiating my business, my problem is differentiating my name. Because I’m a writer, my name is my brand, but there are a lot of other Bill Bennett’s out there, some in similar lines of work others in different areas of activity but with a much higher profile.

So far the only strategy I’ve come up with is to make a bit of a joke out this problem and add a Bill Bennett disambiguation page” to my web site.

Funnily enough I’ve been getting better and higher quality traffic since I added the page, but for the life of me I don’t really understand why this should happen as I still don’t appear on the first 10 pages if I google “Bill Bennett”. I can only guess that the new page must include some magic keywords.

By: bruce colthart

bruce colthart — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 19:43:38 +0000

I just read Creating Competitive Advantage by Jaynie L. Smith. While geared perhaps towards larger companies, it did a good job of showing that one’s business differentiation pretty much already exists, that it just takes some focus to find it or just articulate it. But John I do like how you constantly emphasize the folly of competing on price (unless you’re Wal-Mart, of course). Not only is what you say true, it compels a small business owner to look deeper at what advantages they truly possess and should exploit.

By: J. Campbell

J. Campbell — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 18:10:11 +0000

Terrific article on differentiation. I find that a lot of small businesses focus more on just getting their name out there rather than creating a true distinction from their competition. For entrepreneurs that need a little help, the SCORE Association has a great article on niche marketing, http://www.score.org/m_pr_5.html.