How to stand apart from your competitors

Let’s play a game.

I’ll name a category and you need to tell me brands that fall into that bucket.

Category: Fashion.

Brands: River Island, H&M, Topshop, Zara, Old Navy, Express and Forever 21.

Category: Beauty.

Brands: Fenty Beauty, Naked, Benefits, MAC, Huda Beauty and Makeup Forever.

Ok, now one more.

Category: Bakery.

Brands: Magnolia, Billy’s Bakery, Insomnia Cookies, BakedbyMelissa and Laduree.

Delicious chocolate buttercream cupcakes.

Now what was the point of that exercise? To illustrate that for every category, the list of brands that fall into each can be endless. I only named a few but I’m sure you could think of loads more.

So with that many competitors out there, how do these brands stand out? How are they still making money if someone already owns that space in the market?

They each find a way to make themselves unique and speak to a particular type of customer. They aren’t catering to all people because any brand that does that will fail. It’s impossible to please everyone (didn’t you learn that life lesson yet?). You need to understand what makes you, you as a business and why other people should care. If you can’t tell potential customers what makes you different then how do you expect to survive next to all those other brands?

If we go back to the game, Magnolia and BakedbyMelissa both do cupcakes but they are very different.

Magnolia is known for their banana pudding and their cakes are classic NYC. They are known for being chic and tasty. BakedbyMelissa is all about tiny, bitesized cupcakes that come in a variety of flavors. They make cakes but they are very different about how they make cakes. Everything from the branding, the flavors and more all add up to little distinctions that make the cupcake brands unique.

There is a way to enter a market, even one that is full of competitors but you need to ask yourself the questions that help you understand two things: what makes you unique and how does this translate into the customers you want to attract?

Once you have the answers, the way you construct your emails or email templates will come a lot easier and you’ll start to see positive results.

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