Use Your Online Presence to Emphasize Your Uniqueness
Reading Time: 7-8 minutes
How to Talk About Customer Service
How to Talk About Affordability
How to Talk About Quality of Product
“How are you different from anyone else who does what you do? What is unique about you, your business, your services, your background, or even the way you work?”
This is something we often ask new web design or digital marketing clients. We work with a lot of entities that operate in very large fields – think health care companies, construction firms, nonprofit organizations, that sort of thing – so we need to know what differentiates these entities from their competitors, both direct and indirect.
Every organization, regardless of the industry, knows it’s unique. Ask its team, and they’ll gladly provide a list of reasons why they stand apart.
The problem is that if you compare a company’s list of unique traits with that of a competitor, you’ll likely find they are almost identical. People are confident their company is one of a kind in the industry, and they often are, but the reasons they give usually only scratch the surface.
Heavy Claims, Light Evidence
“Our team has a great deal of experience.”
“Our products and/or services are of the highest quality.”
“Our prices are affordable.”
Sound like every sales pitch you’ve ever gotten? That’s because it probably is every sales pitch you’ve ever gotten.
These are all good boasts to make, but they don’t land with much impact when everyone else is making them, too – especially for customers who’ve been burned a time or two (or three or four or five) by a company that made the same claims.
This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t tout your organization’s decades of experience or commitment to customer service. You absolutely should! You just need to be prepared to explain in greater depth and properly relay the one-of-a-kind value propositions that come with these callouts.
To that end, we’re going to look at some of the most common points of pride cited by companies, and make some suggestions for expanding on them. If you’re seeking ways to better spell out what sets your organization apart from all the others, this ought to get your gears turning.
Experience
Experience is, by a comfortable margin, the most commonly touted advantage among clients. And that makes sense; you’d much rather have your teeth examined by an experienced dentist than by a student in their first week of dental school, right? The trouble is, you’re going to need a lot more than that to set yourself apart. Your competitors are, after all, going to be pointing to their experience, too. So what further points can you emphasize?
- How much experience, in years, do you have?
- What is that experience in? You can be specific here if it’s a unique corner of the industry. You can even incorporate educational history if it’s relevant.
- What kind of difference does experience make in your line of work?
- Can you provide examples of how that experience has paid off for your customers? How did this contribute value towards their successes?
- Do you have any kind of specialized knowledge for your industry? If so, elaborate!
- How do you stack up against competitors in this category?
Customer Service
Your organization prides itself on its top-notch customer service, you say? That’s great! We’ve all had enough encounters with poor customer service to appreciate a company that does it right. The trouble is, every company claims its customer service is amazing. Yes, even the ones that suck. Especially the ones that suck. If you want to show that your organization is the real deal, you’ll have to show, not tell.
- What does good customer service mean to you?
- How do you demonstrate that to customers?
- Can you spell out any relevant policies, such as how quickly customers can expect a response (e.g. “We will respond within two business days)?
- What customer service problems do competitors present, and how do you avoid them? You don’t need to (and probably shouldn’t) name the competitors, just speak generally about the shortfalls you see.
- How would you quantify your customer service in a one-on-one conversation? That is, if someone asked you directly, in person, how they can be sure you’ll keep your customer service promises, how would you respond?
- What would you want to know, as a customer, if another company were crowing about its amazing customer service practices?
- Do you have any testimonials from customers highlighting your customer service experience?
Affordability
You want potential customers to know that your products or services fit their budget, but conveying this can be tricky when:
- You don’t know their exact price range.
- Your website’s visible prices may vary, or you simply don’t list any rates at all.
Meanwhile, as with the earlier examples, all your competitors are also claiming their rates are affordable. Even if you don’t display any prices, there are still ways to communicate affordability effectively.
- How do you keep your prices at a reasonable level?
- Why might competitors (again, you don’t have to name them) have higher prices? What are you doing that they’re not?
- On the other hand, how can you assure customers that low prices don’t equate to low quality?
- Have you gotten any positive feedback about the affordability of your products and services? If so, what was that feedback?
Quality of Product
Every company with a product or service to sell will, of course, emphasize the high quality of that product or service. Any customer visiting the website of a company they may patronize will expect to see statements making this point. And though there are limits to how impactful your quality statements can be – reviews, word of mouth, and actual experience with the product or service will make more of a difference than any effusive praise on your part – they do present an opportunity to build trust if you can make them sound convincing.
- How do you quantify the quality of your products?
- What measures do you take to ensure that quality?
- What kind of difference does quality make for the kind of product or service you offer?
- Do you have a process that helps ensure quality? Can you spell it out?
- Do you have any customer feedback relevant to that point?
- How does your quality compare to your competitors’, generally speaking?
More to Spell Out
There are a great many other points our clients like to emphasize that don’t fall into the above categories, but can benefit from elaboration. If you like to use some or all of the below as feathers in your proverbial cap, it might be worth your time to add some detail that will differentiate you from competitors.
- Local business: Is there a tangible benefit, besides general support for the community, to patronizing a local business? What are the company’s local roots? Do you do anything for the community, such as support local charities or high school sports teams?
- Family-owned: Is there a tangible benefit to patronizing a family-owned business?
- Environmentally friendly: How so? If it’s not a central part of your organization, why make it a priority? How do you compare to competitors in general on this front?
- Safety-minded: What does safety mean in your line of work? What do you do to ensure your workplace is safe?
- Evidence-based/relationship-based/data-driven: How do you define these terms? What methodology do you use? Why prioritize these aspects?
Do I Really Need All This Detail?
You don’t need to answer every single one of the sample questions laid out above. But there is definitely value in providing context. Detail-light boasts of the sort seen toward the top of this post are effective for grabbing the attention of both search engines and individual people, but just grabbing attention isn’t as important as it used to be. As we’ve laid out previously, advances in AI are only going to make it easier to find what you’re looking for online, which means the user experience on your site is going to become more important. If someone arrives at your site and finds it short on detail, there’s every possibility that you’ll lose that visitor.
Embrace Your Uniqueness
You may be the person best equipped to explain in detail exactly what your organization does. But if you need a hand with figuring out just how to convey that message, the team at ForeFront Web happens to be very good at that sort of thing. Reach out to us today to inquire about a new website or digital marketing services for your existing website.