Written by Perryn Olson, President & COO of Brand Constructors

If you've read anything regarding brand marketing or modern business development tactics, you are probably familiar with the term "differentiation". It is simply educating your clients and prospects about why you are a better fit for them over your competition. Usually, when marketers speak about differentiation, they are usually speaking about your company's universal differentiation to use in your marketing materials. Your differentiation will vary from prospect to prospect because the needs and wants of each prospect will vary. Also, they will weigh each factor differently then the next prospect. For some, they care about speed while others care more about quality or sustainability.

A good business developer can usually find out their prospect's hot buttons and will ensure a proposal speaks to each of those issues. The next step is looking at your competition as well. For each opportunity, review who you expect to compete against and how you stack up against them. You can utilize a SWOT analysis where you review your company's Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats compared to your competition. Likely, your competition will vary between market sectors and locations so your strengths will also be different.

For example, my team generally competes against other marketing firms. Sometimes we compete for a prospect out of state against firms located near that prospect, but they do not have the expertise we do in the construction industry, so they can only compete on price and geography. Recently, I was competing locally against a web development firm from Baton Rouge for a new client. The prospect wasn't quite construction, so our expertise didn't carry as much weight as usual, but I focused on the fact that we are a brand marketing firm and we look at the big picture, not just the website. I also pushed the fact that we're local, something I'm not used to doing as we've grown our firm nationally. Our new client said they chose us because we were the logical choice because we fit their challenges (which we knew).

How does your differentiation vary against different competitors? How does it vary between clients?

Perryn Olson, president and COO of ABC member, Brand Constructors, holds the designation of Certified Construction Marketing Professional (CCMP) from the Construction Marketing Association and the Certified Professional Services Marketer (CPSM) from the Society of Marketing Professional Services). He currently serves on the board of SMPS Southeast Louisiana and is the past president of Executive Connections, a business networking organization in New Orleans.