6 brands that brilliantly differentiated from the competition, and how you can, too

There has by no means been an even bigger second in historical past when model differentiation was extra essential. The channels we relied on for progress are saturated and more and more much less efficient. And with AI altering how individuals search and make shopping for choices, the race to face out has by no means been extra brutal.

The manufacturers on the high of the meals chain are these we affiliate with a selected drawback. For instance, if I would like trainers, I’m going to Hoka. For skincare, I’m a Byoma girlie, and if I’m craving apple juice, Harmless cures my thirst.

However how do these manufacturers differentiate in a crowded market house? What makes them so memorable?

On this article, I’ll share my favourite examples of firms smashing model differentiation and provide you with actionable recommendations on tips on how to stand out from the gang.

Desk of Contents

Differentiator: Product-led progress that turns clients into advocates

In a earlier Moz Whiteboard Friday, I stated an important strategy to construct model authority is to have an amazing product. There’s no workaround for this. An excellent product retains individuals in-app and coming again. That’s why I really like Revolut.

After I moved to the UK in 2022 and wanted a banking resolution, all my buddies pointed me to the app. Revolut supplied multicurrency accounts backed by frictionless banking, and I’d by no means seen something prefer it.

It appears like an on a regular basis app that mixes banking, funding, and options you’d solely get on a typical bank card.

An excellent product feels two steps forward of you. It anticipates your wants, gives options earlier than you ask, and will get you from A to Z with ease.

Right here’s how Revolut differentiates from different neobanks:

• Frictionless UX.
• Intuitive budgeting instruments.
• Multicurrency accounts.
• A plethora of funding choices you’d normally discover on BlackRock or Vanguard.
• Cashback gives and buy safety much like a bank card.
• All-in-one wealth administration app disrupting conventional banking and funding sectors.

The Branding Differentiation Lesson

No quantity of promoting or marketing spend can save a nasty product. Put money into your core expertise. Construct options that meet the usual, and go additional with future-forward innovation that retains individuals within the app.

2. Higher Path: Win with unforgettable content material.

Differentiator: A singular mix of schooling, design, and storytelling

I first heard about Better Trail’s content within the TOFU community when David Broderick used them for instance of intuitive content material. So, I took a glance, and I used to be totally impressed.

Google is beginning to floor longer solutions by AI Overviews and AI Mode, cannibalizing visitors that will normally go to web sites. Higher Path, a evaluate web site that is dependent upon visitors and commissions for survival, is doing one thing totally different to draw and preserve customers.

Right here’s how Higher Path differentiates from different evaluate websites:

The UX is wonderful, and I really like the way it makes the content material look extra like {a magazine} than a weblog put up. If you wish to rapidly scan the suggestions, they have you with skim.

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Want a little bit bit extra element? Select medium. And when you’ve got time to learn the complete factor, they have a 14,000-word banger for you.

Higher Path skips all of the pointless website positioning optimization of “what’s” and “tips on how to.” The positioning as an alternative goes straight to an outline of mountaineering shoe superlatives, so you’ll be able to rapidly make a alternative.

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When shopping for a mountaineering shoe, you search for particular options, like consolation, foot safety, and sturdiness. Higher Path makes use of a scoring system to price every function, making it straightforward to decide on based mostly on what’s essential to you.

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Mainly, they’ve supplied the knowledge individuals search for when buying a product and eliminated boundaries that forestall a sale, multi function go.

The Branding Differentiation Lesson

You’re not going to capture and hold attention in case your content material appears like everybody else’s. You want a format that feels recent and distinctive.

Anticipate the choices persons are attempting to make and provides them solutions earlier than they even know what to ask. Lastly, construction your content material so it really works for scanners, researchers, and energy customers alike.

3. Gong: Humanize your model with inside specialists.

Differentiator: Turning inside SMEs into multi-channel influencers

Revenue Intelligence is a closely saturated area of interest with many rivals offering comparable function units. Gong sits inside that area of interest as one of the vital costly choices. So, the model differentiates and captures market share by prioritizing relationships and human-led conversations, not simply pricing or options.

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I haven’t seen one other model lean into LinkedIn the best way Gong has with its inside SMEs. The primary time I heard about Gong was by Udi Ledergor’s LinkedIn content material. He was so partaking that I had to take a look at his profile.

Since then, I’ve seen different internal SMEs, like Brian LaManna (104k), JC Pollard (48k), and others put up considerate, related content material.

Their audience (gross sales leaders) spends numerous time on LinkedIn, so it is sensible for Gong’s AEs and advertising and marketing leaders to construct a presence there.

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In addition they present up by activation occasions just like the Rejoice Convention, which platforms Gong’s management group alongside exterior specialists.

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As well as, there are ongoing webinars. These digital gatherings are normally co-hosted by one Gong SME and a recognized business voice. The model additionally hosts smaller in-person occasions that create house to work together with its viewers.

It’s good, actually. Folks belief individuals, and Gong empowers their inside specialists to construct thought leadership and keep high of thoughts.

The Branding Differentiation Lesson

Determine specialists inside your organization who need to develop their personal profiles and leverage them to strengthen the general model picture.

Permit them to talk in their very own voice, and don’t attempt to censor their content material. Create a program that helps them unfold their affect externally by podcasts, webinars, and even public talking.

In the event that they present up within the locations your viewers is already hanging out, that’s a win on your model.

4. Fenty: Stand for one thing greater than your self.

Differentiator: Inclusive merchandise and campaigns that guarantee holistic illustration

Earlier than Fenty, magnificence manufacturers bought away with exclusion for many years. Deeper basis shades have been an afterthought and barely existed. Even worse, the individuals creating merchandise for BIPOC girls weren’t a part of our communities, and it confirmed within the current vary.

Rihanna noticed the hole and constructed Fenty to shut it.

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She launched Fenty Magnificence in 2017 with 40 basis shades on day one as a result of she knew what it felt like to not discover your shade of make-up within the retailer.

Personally, I used to be excited! She was a disruptor, making inclusive merchandise that clients had been begging for, however nobody had created. And all of a sudden, manufacturers that had by no means prioritized inclusivity scrambled to develop their shade ranges.

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It’s a wise transfer as a result of Fenty wasn’t attempting to compete with the massive names. They targeted on creating merchandise for BIPOC girls with shades you couldn’t discover elsewhere, which allowed them to carve a distinct segment for themselves.

Inside 40 days of launching, Fenty had $100,000,000 in revenue, proof that there’s a marketplace for numerous magnificence merchandise.

However, it’s not simply inclusive shades. Fenty has persistently featured plus-size fashions, disabled fashions, and expertise from throughout the gender spectrum.

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Everybody will get to see themselves in Fenty as a result of the model is intentional about illustration.

It additionally helps that Rihanna makes use of her private model to maximise visibility for Fenty. She makes tutorials displaying individuals tips on how to use the merchandise, which builds a way of possession and neighborhood round each launch.

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Nevertheless, this solely labored as a result of the product is improbable.

Fenty additionally offers again by the Clara Lionel Basis to fund local weather resilience, well being initiatives, and schooling for marginalized communities.

The Branding Differentiation Lesson

You’ll be able to’t simply add a worth or mission statement to your web site and name it an inclusive model. It’s good to begin on the product stage and be sure that your audience is represented within the inside groups.

Illustration and belief go hand in hand. When carried out proper, they construct a motion that turns clients into model evangelists.

5. OpenAI: Turn into a behavior, not only a product.

Differentiator: A device that’s seamlessly embedded in on a regular basis workflows

There’s a YouTube video from 2018 the place Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, talks about what makes an amazing product. He says, “If a product is so good that folks spontaneously inform their buddies about it, you’ve already carried out 80% of the work.”

Mates, I’ve been on the prepare, within the air, and on the seaside, and at every of those places, somebody was speaking about ChatGPT.

There’s a sample I’m seeing as I write this text, the place one of the best model differentiators are disruptors that innovate with a product so good, it turns the business on its head.

OpenAI has carried out that with each product they’ve launched, together with:

• ChatGPT
• Sora
• DALL·E
• Whisper
• Codex
• The API
• AI Brokers

Particularly, ChatGPT has change into an on a regular basis app. For instance, I exploit it to seek out wholesome recipes, troubleshoot points with my washer, automate content material workflows, and even assist with fundraising for my nonprofit, The FCDC.

OpenAI just lately launched ChatGPT Pulse. Pulse will ship personalised updates based mostly on the consumer’s conduct. For my part, this new function will increase app utilization and additional embeds ChatGPT as a part of individuals’s every day routine.

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Manufacturers that differentiate are these whose merchandise change into habits. Behavior is the way you rank within the consumer’s thoughts earlier than they begin a search. You need to be the primary title out of their mouth when a pal asks for a suggestion.

The Branding Differentiation Lesson

Essentially the most highly effective type of differentiation is when your customers do the advertising and marketing for you. Concentrate on constructing a product so good, individuals evangelize with out incentive.

6. Liquid Loss of life: Make FUN your technique

Differentiator: Punk rock branding for canned water

Water is crucial to life. It’s one thing we’re all informed to drink extra of, but not everybody enjoys it. A poll by CivicScience revealed that just about half of U.S. adults eat far under the beneficial quantity of eight glasses per day.

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The core drawback is that many individuals don’t see water as one thing they need however as a routine they’re speculated to do.

Liquid Loss of life got down to break the mildew after they launched in 2019. In a U.S. market flooded with nearly 3,000 bottled water brands, the model discovered white house by making water enjoyable.

Each time I hear the phrase “liquid loss of life,” I think about myself swinging a solid-body electrical guitar and enjoying with Brian Might. That’s the model picture that Liquid Loss of life has constructed.

As an alternative of fresh, serene packaging, they gave us tallboys with flaming skulls and taglines like “Homicide your thirst.”

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Their content material is ridiculous, in one of the best ways. They’ve dropped a metallic album about hydration, launched a youngsters’ cartoon referred to as “Murderverse,” and even paid individuals to get Liquid Loss of life tattoos.

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And, it really works. Liquid Loss of life now has over 14 million followers on Instagram and TikTok. In 2024, they pulled in over $333 million in retail sales, up 26% from $263 million the 12 months earlier than.

Whereas most CPG manufacturers are nonetheless attempting to determine tips on how to join with Gen Z and Millennials, Liquid Loss of life has already constructed a cult following. The model reveals that an anti-corporate tone can work.

The Branding Differentiation Lesson

One motive individuals do not join with branded content is as a result of it isn’t partaking. Typically, interactions really feel faceless and boring.

Make your model enjoyable. Liquid Loss of life’s content material works as a result of it’s true to their model and carries over into their product, advertising and marketing, and brand identity. Even water can change into a behavior when it’s marketed in an enticing approach.

The 8 Steps to Model Differentiation

These steps are based mostly on ideas from “The Distinction Engine”. It is a mannequin of differentiation greatest practices based by HubSpot Diamond Solutions partner, Articulate Marketing.

To start out, let’s view the eight steps from a excessive stage. Then, we’ll dive into the small print, together with examples you should utilize to encourage your personal efforts.

1. Your Mission

Google’s mission is to arrange the world’s info and make it universally accessible and helpful. This Google instance showcases just a few key components that will help you outline your mission:

• Recognizability: You learn this, you realize it’s Google’s mission.
• Ambition: “The world’s info”.
• Actions and outcomes: “Set up” “accessible”, “helpful”.
• Context: Business place (on this case, the tech sector).
• Quick is greatest: A dozen phrases.
• Readability: It’s straightforward to learn and perceive.

Your mission ought to be a central aim. From right here, you’ll be able to place your services and products, construct out yearly targets, quarterly objectives and metrics for fulfillment, and develop your methods. This is step one. You’ll need to use this construction to outline your ambitions.

When you’ve recognized your mission, everybody in your online business might be singing from the identical tune sheet. Your collective voice will carry. Stations play your tune on the radio, the album goes platinum, you change into the subsequent Adele of … HealthTech.

It’s all inside attain should you make it your mission to get there.

2. Expertise and Tradition

There are two sides to any model. The primary is the model identification because it pertains to clients.

The second is how your model is positioned inside your neighborhood, as an employer, and as a worldwide citizen. In different phrases, the tradition of your organization.

Too many organizations pay lip service to tradition. They provide fundamental advantages and put up a “values” chart on the wall. It’s not sufficient. Gifted workers will go elsewhere. However workers that get pleasure from an amazing firm tradition are 3.8 times more likely to be engaged. And engaged and gifted individuals make for an distinctive enterprise.

The truth is, shoppers are beginning to concentrate to office tradition, too, as a result of they need to work with joyful, supported, and empowered groups — whereas additionally having enterprise companions who’re dedicated to shared values. It’s now not nearly value and outcomes, however in regards to the forms of firms individuals need to companion with for the long-term.

Suggestion: Contemplate third-party certifications, as supplied by the likes of Investors in People and B Corp. Their evaluations depart nowhere to cover, in order that they preserve you trustworthy. Such certifications are the proof that you simply actually do enterprise otherwise.

3. The Toolkit

One of the best companies use one of the best instruments.

Take Ecologi’s story for instance. Ecologi has established a improbable model differentiation technique. They provide unparalleled transparency round carbon offsetting and tree planting with expertise that showcases the nice work they do. Their climate-positive mission is well timed and well-targeted. What they provide is in-demand given the present environmental disaster. In order that they started experiencing fast progress. Companies need to do their half to realize internet zero. Ecologi gives the means to get there.

Though they’d skilled success with HubSpot Sales Hub, they relied on a number of programs for advertising and marketing. This meant helpful information was falling by the cracks. They’d restricted advertising and marketing intelligence and patchy lead seize compliance. Any adjustments relied on dev help.

As soon as they have been efficiently introduced onto HubSpot’s Marketing Hub, nevertheless, their group discovered they might observe lead sources in addition to align their advertising and marketing and gross sales processes. By profiting from the instruments, they noticed accelerated outcomes.

Now, they will personalize campaigns to focus on sectors, lengthen their attain, and develop their repute as a model.

That instance is only one approach that instruments empower a model to face head-and-shoulders above the remainder. So, step three: audit your toolkit.

4. Strategic Blueprints

You need to have a strategic blueprint for all components of your content material and communications. These are the core guides on your positioning.

A strategic blueprint is an up-to-date doc that everybody in your group can entry.

It’s as much as you what you want a blueprint for. Most companies can have these:

• Personas: A illustration of your ultimate clients
• Messaging: The important thing messages you need to get throughout to your viewers
• Tone of voice: The angle of your online business; the way you discuss on all platforms
• Writing style: The phrases and grammar you utilize
• Buyer journey: The steps from first touchpoint to paying buyer

Consistency is integral to differentiation. If in case you have a constant model, then it’s going to be simpler to acknowledge, whether or not your viewers is studying a Tweet or watching a video.

These strategic blueprints ought to be utilized with such regularity and enthusiasm that an outsider might guess their contents.

Let’s put that concept into observe. Do that train. Take considered one of these robust manufacturers that you simply’re acquainted with and sketch out a persona and the journey they go on to purchase, three key messages, 5 angle phrases and a few notable kinds, corresponding to the usage of formal/casual phrases:

1. Harmless Drinks
2. Previous Spice
3. Apple

When you’ve carried out that, attempt to do the identical for your online business.

5. Model Structure

Step 5 is all about establishing your visual brand. It is a big matter, however let’s ask ourselves some key questions.

When did you final replace your brand? Is it easy, trendy, and legible? Do you’ve gotten a well-defined visible fashion all through your web site and different channels? Are issues like your fonts and coloration palette outlined in a model guide?

Has your web site been up to date within the final couple of years? Does it precisely mirror your companies and your story? Is it quick loading and straightforward to navigate?

Like with strategic blueprints, consistency is significant. If in case you have a constant visible model, then it’s extra prone to change into acquainted with your viewers. Subsequently, they’ll keep in mind who you’re.

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Beyond Encryption, a safe communications supplier, took their visible branding a step additional than most firms. Slightly than having one brand and one colorway, they selected to develop an entire model household.

Every of their product strains has its personal brand and design profile; they’re harmonious, but distinct. All of them circulation from the identical model methodology, with the principle web site model and brand because the “father or mother.”

Past Encryption makes use of this model household to focus on segmented audiences whereas sustaining a transparent, differentiated model.

6. Thought Management

Thought leadership is a tactic content material entrepreneurs use to construct credibility for themselves or leaders of their firm.

Basically, thought management is model positioning based mostly on experience.

The benefit of experience is, in contrast to positioning based mostly on value, it’s one thing you’ll be able to leverage in a singular and thought-provoking approach. It’s the path to long-term positioning that you simply construct over time, quite than a fast and soiled race to the underside.

Actual specialists have data and opinions that different persons are desirous about studying about. Companies with in-house specialists can differentiate themselves by creating thought leadership content, like blogs and white papers, leveraging their experience. This helps you determine credibility along with your viewers.

What we don’t recommend, nevertheless, is positioning based mostly on the idea of experience (“I’m an knowledgeable, so belief me”). Thought leaders reveal their experience in tangible methods. They’ve certifications, and are evidence-based. They don’t simply say they’re specialists. They present it.

The opposite mistake individuals generally make is to confuse experience with complexity. This implies filling your content material with obscure jargon about your companies. That’s not going to work, either. As Einstein put it, “In the event you can‘t clarify it merely, you don’t perceive it effectively sufficient.”

7. Lead Technology

When you’ve bought your thought management content material out into the world, you’ll be able to anticipate to see a rising viewers coming to your web site. From there, you need to seize contact particulars, corresponding to individuals’s names and electronic mail addresses.

Right here is one other alternative to distinguish your self. The lead technology and nurturing course of is the place you begin to see actual engagement along with your model. It’s your likelihood to construct a relationship with prospects.

So many companies drop the ball right here. They miss alternatives to get leads. Or they dive proper into pushy gross sales ways as soon as they do get them. Right here’s another method:

• Inform: Present solutions to questions with out asking something in return. Provide sources like eBooks or calculators. Be useful.
• Join: Goal content material that addresses your lead’s wants, implement personalization and make it straightforward to get to know your character and your individuals a little bit higher.
• Encourage: Give prospects a method to benchmark their enterprise towards rivals. Provide examples of success tales. Counsel a path to the perfect consequence.

8. Iterative Optimization

Lastly, let’s discuss optimization.

Sir David Brailsford leads Britain’s first ever skilled biking group. On the 2008 Olympics, his group gained the vast majority of gold medals in observe biking and did the identical on the subsequent Olympics.

Sir David Brailsford told Harvard Business Review, “It struck me that we must always suppose small, not large, and undertake a philosophy of steady enchancment by the aggregation of marginal positive factors. Overlook about perfection; deal with development, and compound the enhancements.”

You don’t essentially must shake up your entire model to distinguish your online business. You’ll be able to merely make small enhancements that, over time, make an enormous distinction.

In advertising and marketing, this implies observing what works, monitoring and measuring the information, testing variants, and implementing the higher choice, each time. That’s the way you go for gold.

These eight steps to model differentiation are undoubtedly not for the chance averse. However they’re for formidable firms and leaders who’ve a progress mindset.

The distinction between you and each different enterprise out there’s that you simply’re prepared to take step one.

Differentiation solely works when it’s disruptive on the core.