Читать книгу Launching & Building a Brand For Dummies - Amy Will - Страница 48

One of the biggies in branding is differentiation — the process of identifying or creating and then promoting the unique characteristics of your business, product, service, or yourself. You need to figure out what’s different, special, and better about what you bring to the market.

An effective approach to differentiation is going small. Instead of trying to be everything to everybody, aim to be something special to a small segment of your market. Identify or create a niche — a narrow opening or unique opportunity in the broader market you’re pursuing. Narrowing your focus increases your impact while (counterintuitively) expanding, not limiting, your opportunities. It enables your brand to stand out in the global marketplace, which is crowded with competitors vying for consumers’ attention.

To find a niche, start by answering the following questions:

 Does your brand offer a unique solution to a problem, and if so, how is it unique?

 What does your brand offer that competing brands don’t?

 What are your brand’s use cases (different ways that my products/services can be used)? List your products/services, and identify all possible use cases for each.

 How is your brand different from and better than the competition?

 Does your brand fill an unmet need in the marketplace or serve an underserved group of consumers? If so, how?

 (For a personal brand) What makes you so special? Think in terms of appearance, personality, knowledge, expertise, and skill set — every ingredient that goes into making you you.

 Who’s going to buy what you’re selling?

 Why do people need or value what your brand offers?

Examine your answers to these questions, and look for patterns or areas of overlap, which is usually where you’ll discover your niche. For my Girl Gang brand, I knew that women empowerment was a big and growing movement and that women like to make fashion statements. In those two areas of overlap, I recognized an unmet need: Women needed a way to express and demonstrate their support for female empowerment, and they could do that through a fashion statement and by supporting women-owned businesses. I had discovered my niche.

In the following sections, I cover specific approaches to identifying or creating a niche.