6 brands that brilliantly differentiated from the competition, and how you can, too

There has by no means been an even bigger second in historical past when model differentiation was extra essential. The channels we relied on for progress are saturated and more and more much less efficient. And with AI altering how folks search and make shopping for choices, the race to face out has by no means been extra brutal.

The manufacturers on the high of the meals chain are these we affiliate with a particular drawback. For instance, if I would like trainers, I’m going to Hoka. For skincare, I’m a Byoma girlie, and if I’m craving apple juice, Harmless cures my thirst.

However how do these manufacturers differentiate in a crowded market house? What makes them so memorable?

On this article, I’ll share my favourite examples of firms smashing model differentiation and offer you actionable tips about the way to stand out from the gang.

Desk of Contents

What’s model differentiation?

Model differentiation is the way you carve out psychological actual property in a market the place everybody‘s screaming for consideration. It’s not simply your brand, your tagline, or your mission assertion. It is the particular purpose somebody chooses you over a competitor when each merchandise may technically remedy their drawback.

Model Differentiation Examples: 6 Highly effective Methods to Differentiate Your Model

1. Revolut: Construct a product folks can’t shut up about.

Differentiator: Product-led progress that turns clients into advocates

In a earlier Moz Whiteboard Friday, I stated crucial strategy to construct model authority is to have an important product. There’s no workaround for this. A terrific product retains folks in-app and coming again. That’s why I really like Revolut.

Once I moved to the UK in 2022 and wanted a banking resolution, all my buddies pointed me to the app. Revolut provided multicurrency accounts backed by frictionless banking, and I’d by no means seen something prefer it.

It appears like an on a regular basis app that mixes banking, funding, and options you’d solely get on a typical bank card.

A terrific product feels two steps forward of you. It anticipates your wants, provides options earlier than you ask, and will get you from A to Z with ease.

Right here’s how Revolut differentiates from different neobanks:

• Frictionless UX.
• Intuitive budgeting instruments.
• Multicurrency accounts.
• A plethora of funding choices you’d often discover on BlackRock or Vanguard.
• Cashback provides and buy safety just like a bank card.
• All-in-one wealth administration app disrupting conventional banking and funding sectors.

The Branding Differentiation Lesson

No quantity of promoting or advertising and marketing spend can save a foul product. Spend money on your core expertise. Construct options that meet the usual, and go additional with future-forward innovation that retains folks within the app.

2. Higher Path: Win with unforgettable content material.

Differentiator: A novel mix of schooling, design, and storytelling

I first heard about Higher Path’s content material within the TOFU group when David Broderick used them for instance of intuitive content material. So, I took a glance, and I used to be totally impressed.

Google is beginning to floor longer solutions by means of AI Overviews and AI Mode, cannibalizing visitors that may often go to web sites. Higher Path, a overview website that relies on visitors and commissions for survival, is doing one thing totally different to draw and preserve customers.

Right here’s how Higher Path differentiates from different overview websites:

The UX is wonderful, and I really like the way it makes the content material look extra like {a magazine} than a weblog publish. If you wish to shortly scan the suggestions, they have you with skim.

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Want just a little bit extra element? Select medium. And if in case you have time to learn your entire factor, they have a 14,000-word banger for you.

Higher Path skips all of the pointless web optimization optimization of “what’s” and “the way to.” The positioning as an alternative goes straight to an summary of climbing shoe superlatives, so you may shortly make a alternative.

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When shopping for a climbing shoe, you search for particular options, like consolation, foot safety, and sturdiness. Higher Path makes use of a scoring system to charge every function, making it straightforward to decide on primarily based on what’s essential to you.

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Principally, they’ve offered the data folks search for when shopping for a product and eliminated limitations that stop a sale, multi function go.

The Branding Differentiation Lesson

You’re not going to seize and maintain consideration in case your content material appears like everybody else’s. You want a format that feels contemporary and distinctive.

Anticipate the selections individuals are making an attempt to make and provides them solutions earlier than they even know what to ask. Lastly, construction your content material so it really works for scanners, researchers, and energy customers alike.

3. Gong: Humanize your model with inside specialists.

Differentiator: Turning inside SMEs into multi-channel influencers

Income Intelligence is a closely saturated area of interest with many rivals offering related function units. Gong sits inside that area of interest as one of the crucial costly choices. So, the model differentiates and captures market share by prioritizing relationships and human-led conversations, not simply pricing or options.

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I haven’t seen one other model lean into LinkedIn the best way Gong has with its inside SMEs. The primary time I heard about Gong was by means of Udi Ledergor’s LinkedIn content material. He was so partaking that I had to take a look at his profile.

Since then, I’ve seen different inside SMEs, like Brian LaManna (104k), JC Pollard (48k), and others publish considerate, related content material.

Their target market (gross sales leaders) spends a number of time on LinkedIn, so it is smart for Gong’s AEs and advertising and marketing leaders to construct a presence there.

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Additionally they present up by means of activation occasions just like the Have fun Convention, which platforms Gong’s management crew alongside exterior specialists.

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As well as, there are ongoing webinars. These digital gatherings are often co-hosted by one Gong SME and a identified trade voice. The model additionally hosts smaller in-person occasions that create house to work together with its viewers.

It’s good, actually. Individuals belief folks, and Gong empowers their inside specialists to construct thought management and keep high of thoughts.

The Branding Differentiation Lesson

Establish specialists inside your organization who need to develop their private profiles and leverage them to strengthen the general model picture.

Enable them to talk in their very own voice, and don’t attempt to censor their content material. Create a program that helps them unfold their affect externally by means of podcasts, webinars, and even public talking.

In the event that they present up within the locations your viewers is already hanging out, that’s a win in your model.

4. Fenty: Stand for one thing greater than your self.

Differentiator: Inclusive merchandise and campaigns that guarantee holistic illustration

Earlier than Fenty, magnificence manufacturers acquired away with exclusion for many years. Deeper basis shades have been an afterthought and barely existed. Even worse, the folks creating merchandise for BIPOC ladies weren’t a part of our communities, and it confirmed within the current vary.

Rihanna noticed the hole and constructed Fenty to shut it.

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She launched Fenty Magnificence in 2017 with 40 basis shades on day one as a result of she knew what it felt like to not discover your shade of make-up within the retailer.

Personally, I used to be excited! She was a disruptor, making inclusive merchandise that clients had been begging for, however nobody had created. And all of the sudden, manufacturers that had by no means prioritized inclusivity scrambled to broaden their shade ranges.

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It’s a wise transfer as a result of Fenty wasn’t making an attempt to compete with the massive names. They targeted on creating merchandise for BIPOC ladies with shades you couldn’t discover elsewhere, which allowed them to carve a distinct segment for themselves.

Inside 40 days of launching, Fenty had $100,000,000 in income, proof that there’s a marketplace for various magnificence merchandise.

However, it’s not simply inclusive shades. Fenty has constantly featured plus-size fashions, disabled fashions, and expertise from throughout the gender spectrum.

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Everybody will get to see themselves in Fenty as a result of the model is intentional about illustration.

It additionally helps that Rihanna makes use of her private model to maximise visibility for Fenty. She makes tutorials displaying folks the way to use the merchandise, which builds a way of possession and group round each launch.

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Nonetheless, this solely labored as a result of the product is implausible.

Fenty additionally provides again by means of the Clara Lionel Basis to fund local weather resilience, well being initiatives, and schooling for marginalized communities.

The Branding Differentiation Lesson

You possibly can’t simply add a price or mission assertion to your web site and name it an inclusive model. It is advisable begin on the product degree and be certain that your target market is represented within the inside groups.

Illustration and belief go hand in hand. When carried out proper, they construct a motion that turns clients into model evangelists.

5. OpenAI: Turn into a behavior, not only a product.

Differentiator: A software that’s seamlessly embedded in on a regular basis workflows

There’s a YouTube video from 2018 the place Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, talks about what makes an important product. He says, “If a product is so good that folks spontaneously inform their buddies about it, you’ve already carried out 80% of the work.”

Associates, I’ve been on the practice, within the air, and on the seashore, and at every of those places, somebody was speaking about ChatGPT.

There’s a sample I’m seeing as I write this text, the place one of the best model differentiators are disruptors that innovate with a product so good, it turns the trade on its head.

OpenAI has carried out that with each product they’ve launched, together with:

• ChatGPT
• Sora
• DALL·E
• Whisper
• Codex
• The API
• AI Brokers

Particularly, ChatGPT has turn into an on a regular basis app. For instance, I exploit it to seek out wholesome recipes, troubleshoot points with my washer, automate content material workflows, and even assist with fundraising for my nonprofit, The FCDC.

OpenAI just lately launched ChatGPT Pulse. Pulse will ship customized updates primarily based on the person’s conduct. For my part, this new function will increase app utilization and additional embeds ChatGPT as a part of folks’s each day routine.

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Manufacturers that differentiate are these whose merchandise turn into habits. Behavior is the way you rank within the person’s thoughts earlier than they begin a search. You need to be the primary identify out of their mouth when a buddy asks for a suggestion.

The Branding Differentiation Lesson

Essentially the most highly effective type of differentiation is when your customers do the advertising and marketing for you. Deal with constructing a product so good, folks evangelize with out incentive.

6. Liquid Demise: Make FUN your technique

Differentiator: Punk rock branding for canned water

Water is important to life. It’s one thing we’re all informed to drink extra of, but not everybody enjoys it. A ballot by CivicScience revealed that almost half of U.S. adults devour far under the really helpful quantity of eight glasses per day.

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The core drawback is that many individuals don’t see water as one thing they need however as a routine they’re presupposed to do.

Liquid Demise got down to break the mildew once they launched in 2019. In a U.S. market flooded with practically 3,000 bottled water manufacturers, the model discovered white house by making water enjoyable.

Each time I hear the phrase “liquid dying,” I think about myself swinging a solid-body electrical guitar and enjoying with Brian Could. That’s the model picture that Liquid Demise has constructed.

As a substitute of unpolluted, serene packaging, they gave us tallboys with flaming skulls and taglines like “Homicide your thirst.”

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Their content material is ridiculous, in one of the best ways. They’ve dropped a metallic album about hydration, launched a children’ cartoon referred to as “Murderverse,” and even paid folks to get Liquid Demise tattoos.

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And, it really works. Liquid Demise now has over 14 million followers on Instagram and TikTok. In 2024, they pulled in over $333 million in retail gross sales, up 26% from $263 million the yr earlier than.

Whereas most CPG manufacturers are nonetheless making an attempt to determine the way to join with Gen Z and Millennials, Liquid Demise has already constructed a cult following. The model reveals that an anti-corporate tone can work.

The Branding Differentiation Lesson

One purpose folks do not join with branded content material is as a result of it isn’t partaking. Usually, interactions really feel faceless and boring.

Make your model enjoyable. Liquid Demise’s content material works as a result of it’s true to their model and carries over into their product, advertising and marketing, and model id. Even water can turn into a behavior when it’s marketed in an interesting method.

The 8 Steps to Model Differentiation

These steps are primarily based on ideas from “The Distinction Engine”. This can be a mannequin of differentiation greatest practices based by HubSpot Diamond Options associate, Articulate Advertising.

To start out, let’s view the eight steps from a excessive degree. Then, we’ll dive into the small print, together with examples you should utilize to encourage your personal efforts.

1. Your Mission

Google’s mission is to arrange the world’s info and make it universally accessible and helpful. This Google instance showcases a number of key parts that can assist you outline your mission:

• Recognizability: You learn this, you already know it’s Google’s mission.
• Ambition: “The world’s info”.
• Actions and outcomes: “Set up” “accessible”, “helpful”.
• Context: Business place (on this case, the tech sector).
• Brief is greatest: A dozen phrases.
• Readability: It’s straightforward to learn and perceive.

Your mission must be a central purpose. From right here, you may place your services and products, construct out yearly objectives, quarterly targets and metrics for fulfillment, and develop your methods. This is step one. You’ll need to use this construction to outline your ambitions.

When you’ve recognized your mission, everybody in your small business might be singing from the identical tune sheet. Your collective voice will carry. Stations play your tune on the radio, the album goes platinum, you turn into the subsequent Adele of … HealthTech.

It’s all inside attain for those who make it your mission to get there.

2. Expertise and Tradition

There are two sides to any model. The primary is the model id because it pertains to clients.

The second is how your model is positioned inside your group, as an employer, and as a worldwide citizen. In different phrases, the tradition of your organization.

Too many organizations pay lip service to tradition. They provide fundamental advantages and publish a “values” chart on the wall. It’s not sufficient. Gifted workers will go elsewhere. However workers that get pleasure from an important firm tradition are 3.8 instances extra prone to be engaged. And engaged and proficient folks make for an distinctive enterprise.

In truth, purchasers are beginning to concentrate to office tradition, too, as a result of they need to work with joyful, supported, and empowered groups — whereas additionally having enterprise companions who’re dedicated to shared values. It’s not nearly price and outcomes, however in regards to the kinds of firms folks need to associate with for the long-term.

Suggestion: Contemplate third-party certifications, as offered by the likes of Buyers in Individuals and B Corp. Their evaluations go away nowhere to cover, in order that they preserve you trustworthy. Such certifications are the proof that you simply actually do enterprise otherwise.

3. The Toolkit

The very best companies use one of the best instruments.

Take Ecologi’s story for instance. Ecologi has established a implausible model differentiation technique. They provide unparalleled transparency round carbon offsetting and tree planting with expertise that showcases the good work they do. Their climate-positive mission is well timed and well-targeted. What they provide is in-demand given the present environmental disaster. So that they started experiencing speedy progress. Companies need to do their half to attain internet zero. Ecologi supplies the means to get there.

Though that they had skilled success with HubSpot Gross sales Hub, they relied on a number of methods for advertising and marketing. This meant worthwhile information was falling by means of the cracks. That they had restricted advertising and marketing intelligence and patchy lead seize compliance. Any adjustments relied on dev help.

As soon as they have been efficiently introduced onto HubSpot’s Advertising Hub, nonetheless, their crew discovered they might monitor lead sources in addition to align their advertising and marketing and gross sales processes. By profiting from the instruments, they noticed accelerated outcomes.

Now, they will personalize campaigns to focus on sectors, lengthen their attain, and develop their status as a model.

That instance is only one method that instruments empower a model to face head-and-shoulders above the remaining. So, step three: audit your toolkit.

4. Strategic Blueprints

You need to have a strategic blueprint for all parts of your content material and communications. These are the core guides in your positioning.

A strategic blueprint is an up-to-date doc that everybody in your group can entry.

It’s as much as you what you want a blueprint for. Most companies can have these:

• Personas: A illustration of your very best clients
• Messaging: The important thing messages you need to get throughout to your viewers
• Tone of voice: The perspective of your small business; the way you speak on all platforms
• Writing type: The phrases and grammar you employ
• Purchaser journey: The steps from first touchpoint to paying buyer

Consistency is integral to differentiation. If in case you have a constant model, then it’s going to be simpler to acknowledge, whether or not your viewers is studying a Tweet or watching a video.

These strategic blueprints must be utilized with such regularity and enthusiasm that an outsider may guess their contents.

Let’s put that concept into observe. Do that train. Take considered one of these robust manufacturers that you simply’re accustomed to and sketch out a persona and the journey they go on to purchase, three key messages, 5 perspective phrases and a few notable kinds, reminiscent of using formal/casual phrases:

1. Harmless Drinks
2. Outdated Spice
3. Apple

When you’ve carried out that, attempt to do the identical for your small business.

5. Model Structure

Step 5 is all about establishing your visible model. This can be a large subject, however let’s ask ourselves some key questions.

When did you final replace your brand? Is it easy, fashionable, and legible? Do you’ve gotten a well-defined visible type all through your web site and different channels? Are issues like your fonts and colour palette outlined in a model ebook?

Has your web site been up to date within the final couple of years? Does it precisely mirror your companies and your story? Is it quick loading and straightforward to navigate?

Like with strategic blueprints, consistency is significant. If in case you have a constant visible model, then it’s extra prone to turn into accustomed to your viewers. Subsequently, they may bear in mind who you might be.

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Past Encryption, a safe communications supplier, took their visible branding a step additional than most firms. Slightly than having one brand and one colorway, they selected to develop an entire model household.

Every of their product strains has its personal brand and design profile; they’re harmonious, but distinct. All of them stream from the identical model methodology, with the principle website model and brand because the “mother or father.”

Past Encryption makes use of this model household to focus on segmented audiences whereas sustaining a transparent, differentiated model.

6. Thought Management

Thought management is a tactic content material entrepreneurs use to construct credibility for themselves or leaders of their firm.

Basically, thought management is model positioning primarily based on experience.

The advantage of experience is, in contrast to positioning primarily based on value, it’s one thing you may leverage in a singular and thought-provoking method. It’s the path to long-term positioning that you simply construct over time, reasonably than a fast and soiled race to the underside.

Actual specialists have information and opinions that different individuals are enthusiastic about studying about. Companies with in-house specialists can differentiate themselves by creating thought management content material, like blogs and white papers, leveraging their experience. This helps you identify credibility together with your viewers.

What we don’t counsel, nonetheless, is positioning primarily based on the idea of experience (“I’m an knowledgeable, so belief me”). Thought leaders exhibit their experience in tangible methods. They’ve certifications, and are evidence-based. They don’t simply say they’re specialists. They present it.

The opposite mistake folks typically make is to confuse experience with complexity. This implies filling your content material with obscure jargon about your companies. That’s not going to work, both. As Einstein put it, “Should you can‘t clarify it merely, you don’t perceive it properly sufficient.”

7. Lead Era

When you’ve acquired your thought management content material out into the world, you may count on to see a rising viewers coming to your web site. From there, you need to seize contact particulars, reminiscent of folks’s names and electronic mail addresses.

Right here is one other alternative to distinguish your self. The lead technology and nurturing course of is the place you begin to see actual engagement together with your model. It’s your probability to construct a relationship with prospects.

So many companies drop the ball right here. They miss alternatives to get leads. Or they dive proper into pushy gross sales techniques as soon as they do get them. Right here’s an alternate method:

• Inform: Present solutions to questions with out asking something in return. Provide assets like eBooks or calculators. Be useful.
• Join: Goal content material that addresses your lead’s wants, implement personalization and make it straightforward to get to know your persona and your folks just a little higher.
• Encourage: Give prospects a method to benchmark their enterprise in opposition to rivals. Provide examples of success tales. Counsel a path to the best final result.

8. Iterative Optimization

Lastly, let’s speak optimization.

Sir David Brailsford leads Britain’s first ever skilled biking crew. On the 2008 Olympics, his crew gained the vast majority of gold medals in monitor biking and did the identical on the subsequent Olympics.

Sir David Brailsford informed Harvard Enterprise Assessment, “It struck me that we should always suppose small, not large, and undertake a philosophy of steady enchancment by means of the aggregation of marginal good points. Neglect about perfection; concentrate on development, and compound the enhancements.”

You don’t essentially must shake up your complete model to distinguish your small business. You possibly can merely make small enhancements that, over time, make an enormous distinction.

In advertising and marketing, this implies observing what works, monitoring and measuring the information, testing variants, and implementing the higher possibility, each time. That’s the way you go for gold.

These eight steps to model differentiation are undoubtedly not for the danger averse. However they’re for bold firms and leaders who’ve a progress mindset.

The distinction between you and each different enterprise out there’s that you simply’re keen to take step one.

Differentiation solely works when it’s disruptive on the core.

You need to bake your differentiating ingredient into your model from day one. It could actually’t be an afterthought. The manufacturers profitable as we speak constructed merchandise that type habits, inform tales value sharing, and stay their mission like a second pores and skin.

Editor’s notice: This publish was initially printed in September 2025 and has been up to date for comprehensiveness.