Differentiate yourself from the Competition!

When you run a business you need to know who your target clients are – that’s absolutely crucial otherwise how will you know whose problem or pain point you’re aiming to solve ? How will you know how to communicate with them and where? How will you deliver your product or service to them ? How will you know who your competitors are? How will you be able to differentiate your products/services?

Today I’m going to look at differentiating your products. What if you have a stand selling fruit and vegetables amongst many other lookalike stands also selling fruit and vegetables? How would you stand out from the crowd and attract people to come to your stall and buy from you?

I was wondering this today as I walked through a fruit and vegetable market in Split (Croatia) where I’m teaching an intensive marketing course.

How could a stallholder differentiate themself from all the others?

I looked around but I couldn’t see anything obvious that they were doing. If you don’t sell all your fruit and veg then not only do you not make much money but you also have to throw a lot of your produce out. It’s an open air market and quite warm – the temperature was about 27C.

I went back the next day – a Sunday – and there were only a few stall there. One of them had really made an effort at displaying her fruit and veg as oyu can see in the photo below.

So I started to think about ways a stall holder could differentiate themselves from the others. These were some of the ways I came up with – many of which are applicable to all businesses.

• have consistently high quality produce
• sell at competitive prices
• clearly display your prices
• let people taste a sample
• build a relationship with regular customers – always easier to keep a customer than get new ones and it also brings WoM
• have the same pitch each time so people can find you
• put up a sign with your trading name
• display the fruit and veg so they stand out and look appetising
• provide nutritional advice
• provide recipes
• make vegetables into packs of the right quantities for a particular type of soup together with a recipe
• keep the flies off  (it’s very offputting to see a box of nectarines covered in flies – makes me wonder whether they’re a bit over ripened)
• splash your produce with cold water to keep them as cool as possible and looking fresh
• always be smiling and courteous
• learn to recognise regular customers and make it worth their while to be loyal – maybe give an extra fruit or something new to try
• have paper bags to put things in (in Split there seems to be a plastic bag for each type of produce that you choose – not good for keeping the produce fresh in these temperatures and not environmentally friendly)

I’m sure there’s lots more ways you can think of. why not share your ideas for the benefit of other readers?