How to use your brand positioning and brand identity to stand out in a crowded market and win premium clients, effortlessly
Almost every advisory or consultancy business operates in a crowded market, with greater competition for businesses and greater overwhelm for clients. For any service based business without robust brand positioning and iconic branding, this leaves you vulnerable to competing on price - not happy days for anyone.
We can all identify with the decision paralysis caused by having too many options. Consider this: you visit the ice cream shop to find 5 classic flavours on offer. Making your choice is easy! You visit the following week and they’ve expanded the menu to 30 flavours. Suddenly, making your selection is harder. With so many options, how can you be sure of which you want?
This analogy applies directly to our businesses. When we operate in a crowded market, our buyers are faced with an impossible task - to find the right fit, when there is seemingly endless choice. Suddenly, their deciding factors fall to things like price, convenience, or maybe the company they simply liked best. Deeply uncomfortable variables to compete on, and bad news for your business.
I can’t tell you how many times clients have come to me with a list of industry-favourite websites which they want to emulate. And while the human desire to fit in makes this an obvious approach, attempting to look and sound the same as your competitors is no good for anyone.
Here’s what to do instead
The best way to stand out in a crowded market is to focus on what makes your business unique. It lies in the intersection of these four factors:
What you do
How you do it
Who you do it for
What they value about your service
To illustrate my point, I’ve expanded on this below, with my answers for Ditto in italics.
What you do
This one’s easy. What services does your business offer? What can your clients do as a result of working with you that they couldn’t do before? Be as outcome-specific as you can, and weave in emotional outcomes too.
We provide brand strategy, brand design and websites which help our clients claim an impressive market presence
How you do it
The value of your unique view and intution must never be underestimated - its your secret weapon. What is it that makes your approach distinct? Is it your training? Your previous career experience? Your perspective?
Our approach is to work as a personal partner to our clients, asking the right questions and connecting the dots to reveal a perspective that’s impossible to land alone, before using a design process underpinned in human psychology to create emotive and compelling brand identities which build trust and credibility.
Who you do it for
Who are your clients? What characteristics do they share? Do they all come from a similar industry, or share the same aspirations? Often, the key factor which unites them can be hard to spot, but it’ll be there - keep brainstorming the traits of your best clients and you’ll soon find some commonality
We work with the ambitious owners of boutique businesses who seek to raise the bar, attracting higher paying clients without the need to compete on price
What they value about your service
What are your clients hoping to achieve as a result of buying from you? What’s the outcome they tell you that they value the most?
An impressive brand identity and website is the very obvious outcome - the less obvious benefit is the confidence that this gives our clients to approach clients that they wouldn’t have felt bold enough to speak to before - and the opportunities this opens up as a result. Having worked with us, clients can drive greater revenue by focusing only on their most profitable work.
The takeaway
To stand out and win premium clients without the aggro, put your business in a category of its own.
If you’d like to explore how we can support you in doing just that, please start a conversation with me by emailing hannah@ditto.uk.com
Hannah Belton is a brand consultant and creative director at Kent-based branding agency Ditto Creative. She specialises in helping clients founders and business owners to build high end brands through strategic brand positioning and visual brand identities, working with clients across professional services, lifestyle brands and not for profit organisations. To enquire, please click here.
