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Is your brand different? How about distinctive? You may have used these terms interchangeably to describe your brand’s uniqueness, but there’s a key difference to how differentiation and distinctiveness can apply to your brand and business.
Without differentiation, you and your competitors are selling the same product or service, to the same people, in the same way - the only difference may be price. Most businesses get this, and are able to differentiate their offerings, setting themselves apart from the competition with a unique product or service, or unique target market.
So your brand is different from its competitors, what’s missing?
Buyers are often only ‘in-market’, and ready to make a purchase 5% of the time - for example most people only purchase a new car once every eight years, but that doesn’t mean a car brand should only be promoting itself to the people who are ready to buy now.
When it comes to making a purchase decision, will customers remember your brand first? Not if it looks like all your competitors! This is where distinctiveness comes into play.
Your brand’s distinctiveness is its ability to stand out from your competitors in a memorable way. A distinctive brand is more likely to pop into someone’s mind when they are ready to purchase.
Visual distinctiveness (such as your logo, colours, fonts) is important, but your distinctiveness can go further than that, it’s how your brand talks and presents itself as a whole that can be memorable and unique.
Distinctive brand assets, when rolled out consistently across all touch points, build salience and memorability for your brand. So when your audience is ready to purchase, you’re the first brand who comes to mind.
