Four Strategic Ways to Differentiate Your Brand from Your Competitors in the E-Commerce Industry

Strong brands generate interest, attract new customers, and strengthen a business’s overall marketing strategy, so it’s essential to know how you can differentiate your brand from your competitor and carve a niche for your product in the highly-competitive e-commerce industry.

In today’s highly competitive e-commerce business environment, where customers are swamped by too many of product choices and marketing gimmicks, marketers are struggling hard to stand out and survive. In order to grow and be successful, it is imperative that brands distinguish themselves in this crowded marketplace.

Look at this, there are an estimated of more than 12 million e-commerce companies globally today offering plethora of products and services and with more and more being created every single day. So, but of course, customers need a reason to choose your e-company and product over everyone else.

And, that reason comes down to your brand differentiator!

Differentiation is, exactly, what separates your brand from your competition. It is one of the most important contributor to a brand’s success.

Some famous brands like Dollar Shave Club, meesho, Zomato, Casper, and Uber/Ola cabs or for that matter even BookMyShow, successfully managed to differentiate themselves from the crowd; and the common contributing factor seen is the strategies is that they adopted to differentiate their online store.

“If you’re not remarkable you’re invisible.” - Roy Osing (Author of ‘Be different or be dead’)

 Notwithstanding these success stories, it is indeed not easy to differentiate your e-business from competitors in the hyper-competitive business world. So, how can you embark on the journey of finding out what makes their brand different?

To help you out, we bring for you the five unique ways for making your brand to establish differentiation, and which will in turn certainly boost your sales and revenues.

1.    Finding an existing gap in the market

A gap in the market is an area that existing businesses are not offering. They are actually prospects disguised as voids, providing you a chance to create and offer something that customers need but is currently unavailable. This will help you in creating a differentiation for your brand.

But, then how to find these market gaps?

Well, for identifying a gap in the market all you need to do is to perform an analysis keeping three factors in mind:

• Enquiring customers about any value-add or improvements you can provide for a better product.
• Evaluating your competitors’ products and ascertaining unsolved problem that you can resolve.
• Regular tracking of customer trends and industries on the rise and adapt accordingly.

Netflix is the perfect example of finding several gaps successfully in the market and then subsequently filling it with right offerings. Look at this, it began initially with mail-order movie rentals and then shifted its focus completely on streaming platform.

2.    Finding & solving your customers' pain points

One of major ways that can make your brand distinctive is by truly understanding your target audience, especially their needs and pain points.

According to IBM, "78% of customers don’t feel understood by brands".

So, in order to have an edge, you need to gather as much information and facts about your customers and their purchasing patterns and behaviors. Along with these it is also essential that you know what stimulates and worries them, and, more prominently, what makes them to buy from your brand only. Some effective ways of doing so:

• Tailor your solution to their issues.
• Emphasize the benefits of solving the pain point.
• Show how your unique solution is the perfect answer to their pain point/needs.

 

3.    Focus on providing exceptional user experience

Building an exceptional and outstanding customer experience definitely has the potential to set your brand to be distinct in the market. And, when we specifically talk about e-commerce industry, customer service and experience is plays a pivotal role as customers are always actively looking for a great and easy buying experience from the brands they support. Rather, a study by RetailDive depicts that almost “87% of customers abandon their carts during checkout if the process is too long or complicated”. Remember, user experience should not only be confined to how customers feel about using your product, but their experience that embraces every part of your business that your customers is in contact with. So, if you provide a truly exceptional experience to your customers, then they will not even think twice to pay a premium just to buy from your e-store. According to a PWC Report, about, “73% of customers point to experience as an important factor in their purchasing decisions, behind price and product quality.”

4.    Aim to build a higher Customer Net Promoter Score (NPS)

This is an important metric to understand how your brand is performing. A higher NPS score indicates that your customers are satisfied and happy with your brand and overall experience. By delivering great customer support, you can boost your NPS scores and build stronger differentiation for your brand. Moreover, the added advantage it comes along with is the fact that you will be able to build qualitative relationships with your customers effectively, and these customers in turn are likely to be fantastic advocates for your brand, thereby bringing in more business.

So, what makes your e-commerce business different?

Building a powerful brand is paramount to succeed in today’s lucrative e-commerce business environment, and for that a strong and defined differentiation is indispensable. Your customers will simply leave your brand for another if you do not find ways to stand out from the crowd. So, offer some specialization which could be pertaining to your product or your customer experience so that you gain customers’ trust in your business providing you an edge in a competitive market. Always remember whatever your area of expertise be, you need to have the right strategies that focuses on making people think of your product when they have a need in that category.

How do you differentiate your brand from the competition?

Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments.