Standing out in a crowded marketplace can be a daunting task. Yet, with the right strategies, it's entirely possible. Discover how to differentiate your brand, captivate your audience, and carve out your unique space in the market.
Bottom Line
To implement a successful customer-centric brand strategy, companies need a foundation of operational excellence
- They should be exceptional on practical points, such as product offering or omnichannel experience, so they have a basis from which they can reinvigorate and maintain customer engagement.
Winning the brand challenge
With a plan centered on first defining a customer-centric strategy, then bolstering operations, and then continually checking and protecting your reinvigorated brand identity, you’ll be on the path to lasting differentiation
A framework for success
Evaluate your strategic and operational performance separately, and give yourself a ranking for each, using a scale of 1 to 4, in which one equals basic capabilities and four equals differentiated capabilities
- To come up with your rankings, assess your company’s effectiveness in four components of brand strategy: identity, value, perception, and awareness
- Also assess it in six components of operations: product offering, strategic pricing, digital engagement, loyalty programs, omnichannel experience, and supply chain
Don’t try to do it all, operationally
Operational excellence doesn’t require differentiation in all six components (product offering, strategic pricing, digital engagement, loyalty programs, omnichannel experience, and supply chain).
- PwC’s assessment of 20 brands found that for a brand to be considered operationally differentiated, it needed to excel in at least two of the six components.
Becoming a Differentiator
The path to differentiation depends on whether your company is currently a hopeful, a doer, a visionary, or a differentiator.
- Hopefuls: Define a strong brand identity and identity
- Doers: Benefit from a capabilities-driven strategy
- Visionaries: Build operational capabilities
- Differentiators: Grow strategically through innovation, strategic alliances, and more
Keep evolving
Brands that already have a differentiated strategy must stay vigilant.
- Embrace disruption: Digital disruption from new entrants continues to blindside traditional brands, even differentiators
- Capture growth opportunities: Acquisition targets can come into play if they leverage or enhance your existing capabilities
- Know your competition: Differentiators should scan the marketplace to identify emerging direct, indirect, and adjacent competitors
Background
Isaac Krakovsky has more than 25 years of experience in the retail, consumer, and private equity industries.
- A principal with PwC US in the consumer markets deals practice, he is based in New York, and consults with clients across the consumer market deals practice.
Evidence that differentiation matters
Differentiators exhibited a higher rate of growth than those in other groups
- Median five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for differentiators exceeded that of all other groups, at 10.9 percent
- Companies that ranked high in brand strategy achieved stronger growth, regardless of how well they executed
How to build strategy, then operations
Focus on what you do best for your customers
- Realize that value involves more than just price
- Get the word out
- Make sure you know who your customers are
- Build out operational components, such as digital engagement, that will help execute the strategy
