“‘stand-out from the crowd’, boring!
If there’s one thing that bothers me it’s when a people say, I want to ‘stand-out from the crowd’ or ‘stand-out from my competitors.’”
We hear and read about it a lot in the creative and marketing business. My advice is to focus on doing things better than your competitors.
By things, I mean everything from marketing to customer service, processes to delivery.
Align your brand values, get amongst the mix and do things properly and then you’ll stand-out.
Branding
Align your values and vision
The term ‘standing out’ in branding doesn’t mean being wacky or different for the sake of it.
Your brand should be aligned to your philosophy, values and vision, that’s a given. Importantly, it should be executed perfectly with precision, accuracy and consistency by experts.
Brand guidelines, employee understanding, simply living and breathing your brand values goes a long way in making you stand-out.
Tell me more about great branding
Websites
Be true to your brand and audience
Fancy effects and all things whizzy going on come to mind when the term ‘stand-out from your competitors’ is spoken or written.
The objective of your website should be to organically increase site visitors and allow paid for visitors to experience a fast website without becoming frustrated.
With all things fancy and whizzy going on in the way of animation, not only can this slow down page loads, but it can distract your users (potential customers) from the very thing
they came to your site to view. Quite possibly, it may prevent them from enquiring, booking or ordering.
Be found online, present your brand clearly with well written content, captivating imagery and simplicity of use. This will make you stand-out amongst competitors.
Leave an impression for your website visitors, be true to your brand and audience.
Websites are an investment – Discover more
Marketing
Focus on quality not quantity
‘stand-out amongst your competitors’, this doesn’t necessarily mean do more.
Analyse your strengths and assets, put plans and a strategy in place to market your businesses USPs.
Create captivating visuals with engaging content, whether that be imagery, videos, printed materials, online advertising or promotion.
Target new and potential customers, reward and keep informed your existing customers. Re-enforce your brand. Do things properly by setting out objectives and goals
and then roll out over periods of time. Deliver quality to your audience, not volume for the sake of it.
Live your brand
So I’ve written this article because the term ‘stand-out’ has bothered me for sometime. Quite often I see graphic designers write proposals suggesting to their clients that they should ‘stand-out’. I also see images, similar to the one below, scattered everywhere with the words ‘stand-out from your competitors’.
Unqualified, and some qualified, graphic designers and marketing departments use these types of images and I'm quite sure others do to. Crikey, I've even used them when learning my trade some 15 years ago! Sadly, there is nothing new or innovative about these images. They're simply an old cliche that have been around for years.
And so on a more positive note…
My opinion is to get right amongst your competitors by living your brand and doing things better than them.
DO things better than your competitors
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