When I ask clients about their challenges, one difficulty in particular comes up again and again: differentiation. Most firms struggle mightily to explain how they differ in a meaningful way from their competitors.
I’ve written about this challenge before, including a strategy to differentiate the undifferentiated firm. But today, I want to introduce a different approach. One that we’ve begun using with our clients—with excellent results.
We first encountered this concept in The Brand Flip by Marty Neumeier. If you aren’t familiar with Marty, he’s written some of the most insightful and accessible books on branding of the past 20 years.
The idea is simple, but its potential is incredibly powerful: What single claim can you make about your firm that none of your competitors can match? The trick is to formulate it as a concise statement:
We are the only [your category] that [your primary differentiator].
Filling in the first blank is easy. It’s the second one that trips up most leaders. They will either throw up their hands or try to load it up with a raft of flotsam, jetsam and cliches.
The problem is that most firms in a given category aren’t that different from each other. Your Only Statement is a simple tool that can help you crack free of the logjam and set your own course.
You have two levers here:
- Your category (how you define what you do)
- Your differentiator (the one thing you do differently from others in your category)
If you are struggling with differentiation, you can adjust either of these levers—or both. Let’s look at each in turn.
The Category Lever
Suppose you run a CPA firm. You could narrow your category by specializing in a specific industry (such as startup technology companies) or service line (such as fractional CPA services).
Note that adjusting your category likely means committing to real change—not just a new set of marketing messages. It almost certainly means shrinking your potential audience. The upside, of course, is that the audience you serve will consider you better qualified than a generalist firm. This perception can make it easier and faster to grow within the category. You may even be able to command premium pricing.
The downside is that, depending on the makeup of your category, specialization may make your business more susceptible to market fluctuations. This vulnerability is especially true for firms with a strong industry focus. This weakness, however, is offset somewhat by your perceived authority.
The Differentiator Lever
Once you have settled on your category, you can tackle the second blank in your Only Statement. You will likely have a list of potential candidates. If not, sit down with your team and draw up a list.
Next, evaluate each candidate and ask these three questions:
- Is this truly unique?
- Is this something your audience really cares about?
- Is this hard for another firm in your category to copy?
If an item on your list seems to meet all of these criteria, try it out in your Only Statement. How does it sound? A successful Only Statement should send a shiver down your spine and make you wonder, how did I not think of this before?
If none of your candidate ideas fit the bill, keep trying. Use the three questions above as guides. Look around at firms in other industries for inspiration. Maybe there’s a business model that’s never been tried in your niche. If you’ve conducted research on your clients, read the verbatims. Or just pick up the phone and talk to your clients. Why did they choose you? What makes your firm special? What could you do differently that would change the game?
What Does a Real-World Only Statement Look Like?
It’s one thing to talk about an Only Statement in abstract. But what do real ones look like? Let’s consider my firm, Hinge. We made deliberate decisions that affected both our category (who we choose to compete against) and our core differentiator.
Here’s our Only Statement:
Hinge is the only research-based branding and marketing firm for professional services designed to elevate the visibility of firms and their experts.
Notice how we define our category. “Branding and marketing” is too broad. “Branding and marketing for professional services” would work, though it includes a dozen or more major competitors.
We believed we could define our category even more narrowly.
Most of Hinge’s clients are attracted to the independent research we conduct on their industries. Each year, we produce our signature High Growth Study, and from time to time we release smaller studies on specialized topics. We build and adjust our programs and advisory based on this body of research. Because conducting this kind of research is hard, very few firms do it—in fact, none of our competitors do.
So we decided to define our category as “research-based branding and marketing firms for professional services.” We are in a category with exactly one member—us. We enjoy dining alone.
Now, not every firm will be able produce a category this tight, and that’s perfectly okay. Remember, your category is just one lever. Now let’s see how Hinge handled the other one.
When it comes to our core differentiator, we chose Visible Expertise®. We not only wrote the book on it, we have designed our two signature programs around this concept: The Visible Firm® and The Visible Expert®. Nobody else offers marketing programs like these. And because we went to the trouble and expense of trademarking the term Visible Expert, nobody else can use it.
Let’s look at a couple of other examples.
Populous is an international architecture firm with a difference:
We are the only global architecture firm that specializes exclusively in stadiums, arenas and events.
Their category is “global architecture firm.” Most firms their size have achieved their scale by adding more and more services. That’s what makes Populous’ core differentiator so effective. Even with more than 1,500 employees and 32 offices on four continents, they have maintained a laser focus. They specialize in designing sports and entertainment venues, as well as producing large-scale events.
Not all firms can have such a strong industry focus. But that doesn’t mean they can’t have a killer Only Statement. Here’s an example of the Only Statement for a customer experience (CX) firm that brings a unique set of services to the marketplace.
We are the only CX consulting firm that provides all the advisory, research, training, certifications, technology and implementation expertise a business needs to deliver an efficient, coordinated customer experience.
This firm’s category is “CX consulting”—one that has many competitors. However, they create barriers to competition by offering services that require non-typical specialized expertise, such as CX certifications and research. Because they offer a complete suite of CX services—from CX training to technology integration—they stand alone in the traditional CX consulting category.
Creating an Only Statement for your firm will expose the strength or weaknesses of your firm’s positioning. For firms with weak positioning, this exercise also provides the clarity you need to begin the process of changing your firm so that it can compete in the marketplace on its own terms. That’s the promise and the power of your “only.”
