The Startup Guide To Differentiation

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 1 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

ABOUT COPY HACKERS Copy Hackers launched with a bang on Hacker News in October of 2011. Since then, we’ve had a pretty wild ride – and we owe it all to the tens of thousands of “copy hackers” around the world who recommend us daily via emails, tweets and good ol’ fashioned word of mouth. We believe that the best copywriters are the people who built the product. That’s why we put everything we’ve got into creating actionable blogs, videos, ebooks and courses for you. So you can translate all that’s awesome about your software, apps, info products, goods and services into high-converting web copy. Learn more at www.CopyHackers.com, home to Joanna Wiebe and Lance Jones.

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 2 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

In This Ebook Why You Need to Be Different or Better in at Least One Fantastic & Believable Way ................................ 5 1. Different Market, Audience or Niche..................................................................................................... 17 2. Different Customer Focus ...................................................................................................................... 26 3. Different Design ..................................................................................................................................... 33 4. Different Features or Components ........................................................................................................ 39 5. Different Innovation............................................................................................................................... 46 6. Different People ..................................................................................................................................... 55 7. Different Production or Creation ........................................................................................................... 61 8. Different Price ........................................................................................................................................ 67 9. Different Worldview .............................................................................................................................. 73 Messaging Your Differentiators .................................................................................................................. 81

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 3 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 4 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

Why You Need to Be Different or Better in at Least One Fantastic & Believable Way “There is no such thing as a commodity. All goods and services are differentiable.” Theodore Levitt, Harvard Business Review

IN 2012, BLUE BUFFALO COMPANY launched an advertising campaign for their pet food. In this campaign, they invited people to visit their website to conduct a True Blue Test in which you could compare the ingredients of your current dog food to the ingredients in Blue. When you take the test, no matter which brands you compare, you find that Blue is the only brand where meat is the primary ingredient. Of course, you can only compare the brands Blue lets you compare – all of which happen to be brands from grocery stores and big box stores. Blue doesn’t let you compare their ingredients to those of the better brands you’d find at your vet clinic. The first paid copywriting assignment I ever got was for Champion Pet Foods, makers of vet-recommended Orijen and Acana. I freelanced for them for nearly a decade. In that time, I learned just about everything you can learn about kibble and the way it’s marketed. Two of my biggest takeaways: 1. Fine pet food companies rely on veterinarian recommendations rather than mass advertising COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 5 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

2. Some dog breeds require a diet rich in a balance of select meats, vegetables and grasses – not just a plate full of chicken, lamb or fish Because fine pet food companies don’t advertise to the masses, the masses don’t know what a pet’s diet should consist of. We tend to think of feeding our pets in the same way we think of feeding our children: no high-fructose corn syrup, no corn meal, no byproducts, no hormones, easy on the gluten, plenty of protein. We don’t think of the fact that our Newfoundland Dog evolved from the indigenous St. John’s Dog in the maritime provinces of Canada over thousands of years and, as such, is likely to perform best on a diet of proteins and vegetables native to that area. We think, “That’s a big dog, so we should feed it big animals. Where’s the beef?” Here’s why you should care about this example: unless we’re educated on or passionate about a topic, we know only as much about that topic as marketers tell us. Blue leveraged the world’s general cluelessness about pet food to differentiate themselves in the minds of their prospects. If you’re familiar with the AMC television show Mad Men – and I hope you are – you might think of this as the It’s Toasted Principle. The idea behind this principle is that, when you’re trying to help people understand why they should choose you, you don’t have to be truly original or truly unique; you just have to be the first to loudly claim a benefit, feature or value as yours. One of the biggest questions we’re trying to answer for prospects when we write copy is this: “Why should I choose you?” Your prospects are always asking that question or variations of it. Why should I stay on your site? Why should I come back to your blog? Why should I trust you? Why should I give you my email address, my tweet or, most of all, my hard-earned money? It’s your copy’s job to persuasively answer that question for your prospects. And it’s your job as a marketer to step back and strategically develop the best answer for that question. That is, it’s your job to figure out how to position your startup differently. COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 6 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

If people don’t know what’s different about you, how are they supposed to know why they should choose you? Suffice it to say, there are countless ways that you could differentiate your business in the minds and hearts of your prospects and customers. Blue Buffalo Company differentiates themselves primarily on features – they claim to have the most of a highly desirable ‘feature’ in their recipes: meat. In the Mad Men example, the client differentiates based on how their product, a cigarette, is produced: it’s toasted. If a business stands out from its competition, it is usually because they have differentiated themselves in a meaningful way that their market desires. Taco Bell stands apart from other fast food chains – though not necessarily from other Mexicaninspired fast-food – with Think Outside the Bun. 7-Up stands apart from colas by simply stating that they’re The Uncola. And Target, with their increasing focus on great design at mass consumption prices, stands apart from both low-price and high-price departments stores; they are where you go if you expect more but want to pay less. How will you stand apart from your competition? The chapters and worksheets that follow in this book are designed to help you sort out your key differences – and to keep you from just pulling an idea out of a hat and differentiating based on that idea. That said, if you’d like to get a sense for the various ways you could distinguish yourself in the minds of your prospects, voila. You could be: □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □

Built to last Less expensive Better value for money Faster Safer Hassle-free Friendlier Most helpful Always available Most responsive Best-selling

□ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □

Most loved Most trusted Most frequently used Used by the most people Used by experts Used by authorities Built with advanced technology Brand new Damn old The most fun Super gorgeous

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 7 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

□ □ □ □ □ □ □

The easiest to assemble Produced differently Packaged differently Smaller than expected Larger than expected Environmentally conscious Socially conscious

□ □ □ □ □ □ □

Certified by more groups Most ethically run Created by a unique group Run by a celebrity Open longer Conveniently located The original or the official

In looking at that list, you might start to notice some points of differentiation that apply to you – and some that seem ridiculous. For example, the idea of differentiating based on being ethically run may be odd for your SaaS business, but it could be an excellent way for an oil company to differentiate themselves or for anyone in a traditionally unethical space to stand out. Now, it’s no good to simply pluck an idea from that list – or from any of the chapters in this book – and run with it. The thing that’s different about you needs to be something your prospects want or care about if it’s going to resonate and positively impact conversion. For example, you may have built the only app on the market that lets people subscribe to get 850 new songs every month. This makes you different in your space, where no other subscription service lets people access quite so much audio content. However, does your target market give a hoot about getting 1000s of songs on their iPhone? You would have to be able to market to some insanely passionate audiophiles (with massive available storage) in order for that differentiator to pull.

Before You Start Pulling Ideas Out of a Hat… There are two basic starting points when you’re considering how to differentiate your startup – and neither lets you throw stuff at the fridge to see what sticks. Each of these two starting points comes with one or more questions that you should answer to help you turn the grey area of differentiation into a sharper shade of black or white. COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 8 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

STARTING POINT A: ALL ABOUT YOU Ask yourself: 1. What gets me stoked? STARTING POINT B: ALL ABOUT THEM Ask yourself, in this order: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Who’s my target marketing, audience or niche? What do I offer them (in a nutshell)? How is what I offer them different from what others offer them? What would they say is the most important thing I help them do or outcome I help them reach? 5. How do I help them do that thing? Between these two approaches, I favor Starting Point B because it’s almost always better to start with your target audience and build from there. In fact, the Differentiation Interview worksheet that accompanies this book is based on Starting Point B. That said, some of history’s most notable game-changers seemed to favor Starting Point A. Ford and Apple are two great examples of companies that are founded on passion by visionaries – leaders who knew what we wanted long before we did. Whichever approach you take, your answers should help you arrive at what makes you different. Which will help your prospects, first and foremost, because they’ll have little doubt as to what they’ll get when they work with you. Knowing what makes you different will also help you know how to focus as a business – what initiatives to invest in first, what new products or services to launch next and where to focus your efforts from this point on. To say nothing of how it’ll help you pitch.

Could It Be That You’re Totally, 100% the Same? In the following 9 chapters, I’m going to help you find one solid way to differentiate your business from your competition – even if you don’t think your prospects care about your competition, and even if you don’t think you have any competition. Your prospects may COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 9 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

not care about the other guys now, but the other guys are going to work to make them care. And you may not have any direct competition now, but there’s always some form of competition – whether it’s the old familiar way of doing things or a lack of awareness that the pain you eliminate can be eliminated. There is always a need to differentiate or distinguish your solution as the one that most desirably does X. You are not the exception to this rule. Now here’s the thing: What if there’s nothing really special about you? What if you’ve built a photo-sharing app that’s a total knock-off of Instagram? You built it because you wanted a project to work on. Now you think it could be cool to get some users, so you have to market it. But you have no idea why a person should install your app, which has one 4-star review, over Instagram, which is a household name. Your product is built. You’ve launched. And you’ve found yourself standing in what appears to be a House of Mirrors but is actually just the space your competition fills. You have to figure out stat how to set yourself apart. So how do you make your solution stand out… without changing it? This is a classic marketing challenge. This book and the Differentiation Interview worksheet will help you find the story that distinguishes your solution without changing it. Of course, if you’re able to make tweaks to your product or service here and there, you may be better able to land on a meaningful differentiator you can shape your company around. Now, you could be in the other camp – the luckier camp. You could be in an idea validation stage, and you could have plenty of time to build a key differentiator (or two) into your product or service. Consider yourself blessed. Know that you’re envied. In each of the following chapters, you’ll find examples of how startups and growing businesses in these 4 worlds are differentiating themselves today: 1. Software as a service (SaaS) 2. Downloads & installs

3. Hard goods 4. Other (e.g., offline business)

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 10 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

If you’re already knee-deep in your business and you’re finding it hard to communicate why someone should choose you – you’re working on your pitch deck or you just want to draft a few compelling USPs to test on your site – then you’ll find that here. In fact, you may find a half-dozen ways to differentiate yourself. Yes, you can differentiate in more ways than one. That said, I recommend you choose a key differentiator and roll with that. So people have a firm grip on what you do differently and better. But don’t feel the need to limit yourself too much. The final worksheet, titled What Makes Us Different & Better, will help you prioritize the ways you’re different. Let’s be very clear: you should probably not try to differentiate in a half-dozen ways. One way is great. Two ways is perfectly wonderful. Three is starting to push it. Remember the goal of differentiation: to help your prospects know why to choose you. The enemy of decision-making is too many options. So try to stick to no more than three differentiators grand total for your startup, okay?—unless you have reason to do otherwise. WITHOUT FURTHER ADO, let’s see how you can be desirably different – even if you’re exactly the same as the next guy. Remember, I’ve included specific examples for startups in SaaS as well as ecommerce, downloads, installs and services. By the time you finish all 70 pages that follow, you should have arrived at one solid way to differentiate your startup… as well as a few supporting differentiators. The final chapter will help you make sense of writing copy that effectively highlights your differentiator.

THESE EBOOKS COMPLEMENT The Startup Guide to Differentiation Where Stellar Messages Come From and The Great Value Proposition Test Find them here COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 11 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

Your First Action Item PRINT OFF THE FOLLOWING WORKSHEET, titled Differentiation Interview, or have it open on your computer so you can type directly into it. Throughout the following chapters, you’ll need to refer to the worksheet and complete sections of it. Why? So you can arrive at a shortlist of ways to differentiate yourself – and, with a little work, even find the best possible key differentiator for your startup. NOTE: This worksheet is also available as a separate Word document among your file downloads for this ebook. Check your receipt link to find it.

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 12 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

DIFFERENTIATION INTERVIEW This interview is a companion to Copy Hackers: The Startup Guide to Differentiation. All question numbers correspond to the nine differentiation strategies in the book. OUR NAME OUR COMPETITORS’ NAMES Incumbent: Other Direct Competitors: Other Indirect Competitors:

IS THIS SOMETHING UNIQUE OR DIFFERENT FOR US? 1

WHOM do we serve primarily?

What others in our space serve them directly or primarily?

1.1

Name three (3) niches in this group.

Which one (1) of these niches makes the most sense for us to focus on, if any?

2

How do we offer outstanding SERVICE to this group?

Which of our competitors can say the same or better? Why or how?

3

WHAT do we serve our audience with (i.e., product, service)?

Which others market the same or a very similar product or service to our audience?

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 13 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

MIGHT THIS BE A DIFFERENTIATOR WORTH PURSUING?

3.1

How is our product or service focused on DESIGN, whether interface, interaction or experience?

How do we know our audience cares about design?

4

What is our one (1) unique product or service FEATURE?

What key problem does this feature solve for our audience?

5

What is most INNOVATIVE about our offering?

Which of our competitors can say the same or better? Why or how?

5.1

HOW do we serve our audience? What adjective can we use to describe how we do what we do?

How is the way we serve them different from the way others serve them?

6

WHO internally/externally makes our product or delivers our service?

Which of our competitors can say the same or better? Why or how?

6.1

What is unique or interesting about the PEOPLE that created this product (e.g., about our team or founders)?

Why does this difference matter to our audience?

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 14 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

7

How do we MAKE the product or DELIVER the service?

Which of my competitors use the same method of production or service delivery?

8

What do we CHARGE?

Why is this price attractive to our audience?

9

What is our point of view, perspective or WORLDVIEW?

Why does our audience care?

9.1

How are we socially conscious?

Which of our competitors can say the same or better? Why or how?

9.2

How are we environmentally conscious?

Which of our competitors can say the same or better? Why or how?

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 15 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 16 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

1. Different Market, Audience or Niche EVERYONE’S BUILDING A PRODUCT FOR SOMEONE, and it could be that you and your competitors are building a product for exactly the same market or audience. If that’s the case, you may want to focus on a niche, serve them well and create the platform you need to expand into more niches and eventually claim market share. Why might you want to differentiate based on niche? Let’s consider the world of invoicing and accounting software, as an example. This is a world I came to know very well during my five years at Intuit. In this space, QuickBooks is the incumbent, with FreshBooks, Less Accounting, Xero and Kashoo – among others – biting at their heels; collectively, their primary target market is small businesses. Providers of accounting software tend to differentiate based on features and user experience design; for example, FreshBooks has perfected invoicing, which is one of many “features” of COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 17 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

QuickBooks, and Less Accounting offers a better experience design – they stand out as the unboring solution. When everyone in your space is serving the same market, a strategy for differentiating your startup could be to focus on a segment of that market, or a niche. Seem obvious? That’s probably because, when we’re in the earliest stages of building a product or developing a solution, we naturally find ourselves deciding to “go vertical” or “go horizontal”. It’s an organic question to ask early on: Will we serve an industry segment (vertical) or will we offer something to the entire industry (horizontal)? Two great ways to know if you should serve a niche are 1) if it is underserved by the incumbent or off their radar and 2) if it has specific needs you can serve. Not to overuse the Intuit examples, but, in Canada, there is no QuickBooks or TurboTax product for Mac users. As of June 2013, Mac users in Canada are not a large enough market segment for Intuit Global Business to create products for. This makes Mac users in Canada – especially Canadian small business owners who use Macs and need accounting software – a particularly interesting, underserved niche; it’s a niche too small for the incumbent to worry about but large enough for a startup to address. (Plus, when you differentiate based on a niche the big guys can’t serve well, you often position yourself well for the ultimate exit: acquisition by said big guys.) Who will you serve? Can you better serve a narrower segment of the audience you were planning to serve? Would serving a segment or niche help you: • • • • • •

Better target your messages and use more specific, meaningful language? Better pinpoint highly qualified prospects to cold call? Make smarter pricing decisions? Spend less on PPC ads by purchasing more long-tail keywords? Become a hero among a niche, resulting in more tweets, shares and likes? Gain the traction you need to become profitable and grow? COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 18 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

The examples that follow will help you see how other startups are niching to grow.

SAAS If you decide to hitch your wagon to someone else’s horse, you’re essentially niching. With an attach strategy, you’re saying, “Hey, a bunch of people are using X product. Some of those people might want to do more with X product, so I’m building Xy product to help them do that.” Let’s look at an example: Vancouver’s Postach.io, which turns your Evernote notebook into a blog or CMS. Evernote serves a rather broad market, and Postach.io servers a sliver of that market: people who want to publish their notes. If you don’t use Evernote, you can’t use Postach.io. But if you do and you want to self-publish, Postach.io can help you.

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 19 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

A great time to differentiate by niche is after you’ve learned that a certain niche most appreciates your product. Photo editing solution Aviary didn’t launch as a solution for developers, but now the second-most prominent message on their home page, immediately below the hero section, is this:

DOWNLOADS & INSTALLS Calculators are all essentially the same. But Digits, the Calculator for Humans, does a rather solid job of convincing the world otherwise. It’s $0.99 in a world of free calculators – including the one that comes installed on your iPad – and it’s rated at a solid 5 stars, with 225 reviews as of May 2013. People love it. People pay for it. It’s a calculator for humans. That’s smart marketing.

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 20 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

GameChanger is a sports app focused not on the major leagues but on youth sports.

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 21 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

HARD GOODS You don’t always have to serve a narrow niche; you could also focus on serving a segment of a large market, which is particularly common among consumer goods providers. Examples include: • Juicy Juice, which promises 100% juice for 100% kids – not for moms, not for athletes, not for scholars but for kids who act (and play) like kids • Trix Cereal, which, like Juicy Juice, is for kids; yes, all sugary breakfast cereal is made for kids, but Trix is the one who says it • Harley Davidson, which speaks to Americans first and rebellious people second • The Sharper Image, which offers unique gifts for a specific market segment: people trying to buy gifts for those annoying semi-affluent folks that have everything One of my readers Jaimie has a consumer electronics startup, where she and her husband have patented the only attachable camera flash for iPhone. Their market is very narrow. To use their product, you need to: Have an iPhone

Love taking photos on it

Want to take the best photos on it

For that specific niche, Jaimie is solving a real problem. And she is the only one solving it with an external flash for iPhone. Jaimie and her husband may not have set out to COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 22 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

differentiate themselves in this way, but they would be wise to use this particular differentiator as a key part of their messaging for new visitors.

SERVICES There are something like a million startup incubators – I think it’s nearing a quarter billion now, in San Francisco alone – but Stained Glass Labs stands apart as a different kind of incubator. (For now, at least.) They are an incubator dedicated to a specific niche: startups in wearable computing.

Just as there are countless incubators, there are countless dating sites. Personal matchmakers are carving out part of the online dating market by serving people who are tired of the online dating scene, and within personal matchmaking we see further niching. Like Geek’s Dream Girl, designed to help geeks find love. It is founded and run by the copywriter for ThinkGeek.com:

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 23 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

More Takes on Differentiating by Market, Segment or Niche So far, we’ve talked about differentiating based on your end user or paying customer. But here are two other spins on this: 1. Differentiate by Who Your Audience Wants to Be Crisco vegetable shortening promises that “Cooks who know trust Crisco”. If you are selling a product or service to a group that uses your solution to reach an aspiration, you could differentiate by connecting that aspiration with your solution. Further to this, you could differentiate based on the influential people – or authority figures – that use your solution. 2. Differentiate by Whom You’re Not For For years, Oldsmobile marketed itself as “Not your father’s Oldsmobile”. (Whether that was believable or not is another story.) Secret antiperspirant was “Strong enough for a man. Made for a woman.” Have you considered trying to align yourself with one niche by openly resisting another or the larger market?

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 24 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

Isn’t This Just Market Segmentation, Joanna? Well, yes. Discussions of market segmentation and product differentiation have traditionally gone hand in hand. But we’re not here to get bogged down in terminology or academia; there are loads of marketing books and university courses that will complicate the practicalities of differentiation, if you’d like to go there. I wouldn’t. My goal is to help you figure out what’s different about you – so you can message your most desirable difference and, in doing so, help prospects know why they should choose you – not to wax theoretical about segmentation versus differentiation. In fact, most marketers that talk about segmentation and differentiation get rather confused. Because there’s so much overlap. Especially when we’re not talking only about “product differentiation” but also about the many other critical ways to differentiate: brand, service, packaging… and niche.

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 25 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

2. Different Customer Focus IT’S EXPENSIVE. IT’S TIME-CONSUMING. It’s an eternal commitment. And your customers will love you for it. Naturally, we’re talking now about differentiating yourself as the business in your industry or market that focuses on customers. On selflessly helping customers. On continually supporting customers. On consistently giving back to customers. On doing all of these things (and more) in ways and to an extent that your competition doesn’t match. Now, if you ask a startup founder if she’s focused on customers, you’d be hard-pressed to hear her say anything but, “Yes!” We all believe we’re focused on customers simply because we think about our customers: we design our websites to help them; we offer support FAQs for them; we answer their questions via email; sometimes we have live chat available on our sites; we offer money-back guarantees. But that’s not a customer focus. That’s just keeping your prospects and customers satisfied. COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 26 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

There’s a difference between satisfying customers and delighting them. The business that differentiates by customer focus works relentlessly to delight customers. You prove your commitment to their happiness in everything that you do. Let’s take Zappos as an example. Zappos is “powered by service”, and CEO Tony Hsieh is the author of 2010’s Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose. The world already knows about Zappos’s 365-day returns, 24/7 phone support, massive selection and free two-way shipping. But that’s just scratching the surface. To support Zappos’s customer focus at a deeper level, they have: • Created a line of clothing called DH, which is branded “Apparel for a Happier World”. One hundred percent of their net profits go to the Delivering Happiness movement, which promotes happiness at non-profits, businesses and schools. • Ensured every person hired, no matter their position, spends their first four weeks getting immersed in the culture of customer service, which includes taking calls in the contact center. If you’re above talking to customers, you’re not right for Zappos. • Set an internal goal of product delivery within 4 days of ordering. This means that, unlike other online retailers, they warehouse their entire inventory, taking on the expense of investing in stock so they can offer it speedily to their customers. • Offered as many as four years to return a product. Yup, if you order on February 29 (in a leap year), they will give you until the next February 29 – four years later – to return your unworn order. • Eliminated the bad parts of phoning a company’s service line. That is, service reps don’t have to follow scripts, stifle their personalities or hurry off the phone. • Ensured refunds are returned to your credit card within 7 days. Not 30 days. Not 60 days. Not some unknown random date out there. Within 7 days, you’ll have your money back on your card. • Shut down operations in countries where they can’t offer the level of service they want to. Unfortunately for me, that means there’s no Zappos Canada. Most businesses try to solve for these three stakeholders, not necessarily in this order: i.

Employees

ii.

Customers

iii.

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 27 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

Shareholders

If you’re differentiating by customer focus, you’re solving for customers first. The good news is that, if you have an obsession with making your customers happy, your employees and shareholders will usually benefit. That said, they’ll need to buy into your strategy as much as you do – because employees will have to love customers, and shareholders or investors will have to be okay with spending cash to keep customers overjoyed.

SAAS 37signals has taken an interesting and transparent approach to customer focus. In their marketing, 37signals often uses imagery of actual product users, especially on Basecamp.com.

Although their customers’ happiness is their priority, they have famously rejected customer requests for new features in Basecamp – not because they don’t like their customers but because they know better than to do whatever they’re asked. They make all their customers happy by not listening to what one or two of them have to say. As I said, it’s an interesting approach – and one that’s paid off for them, with millions of COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 28 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

users in over 30 countries. Here’s what they have to say on their home page about their dedication to customers: Our customers are our investors Our customers fund our daily operations by paying for our products. We answer to them — not investors, the stock market, or a board of directors. Perhaps most notably, 37signals is ubertransparent about how they make customers happy (not just satisfied). At any point, you can go to this page and see an up-to-date report of how happy their customers are with their support. They explain on the page – so there’s no need to guess and nothing left implied – why they share this happiness report: Full transparency and accountability We’ve made these ratings public so everyone knows how we’re doing. We want to be held to the highest possible standards for customer service. Full transparency keeps us honest. A screen capture of their report for May 30, 2013 is shown to the right.

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 29 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

DOWNLOADS & INSTALLS You don’t get to be a highly respected customer support platform without caring about customers. In 2011, Zendesk released its first iOS app to help customer support agents respond to support requests quickly, even when they’re away from their computers.

Beyond their apps, Zendesk supports their customers with insanely useful free content, such as their very popular high-quality infographics on topics like service report cards, how to build customer loyalty and how to know if your customers are tired of being surveyed.

HARD GOODS When LL Bean was late delivering a canoe to a customer, one of the LL Bean employees strapped said canoe to his car and drove from their headquarters in Maine to New Jersey to deliver the canoe. In person. This is just one example of how LL Bean follows through on their promise of service that “goes the extra mile”. They also offer always free shipping, regardless of your order size. Their relentless customer focus is why JD Power and Associates continues to rank them at the top for Customer Satisfaction, COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 30 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

which, by the way, is a rather persuasive proof point that surely helps them convert more prospects into customers.

SERVICES Differentiators done right are differentiators that solve a real customer problem. Enterprise Rent-a-Car solves a distinct problem for people renting cars: they often have no transportation to the place where they’re supposed to rent the car. Enterprise solved that problem, among many, when one of their front-line employees came up with the idea to pick customers up. Now the #1 car rental company in America with over 62,000 employees worldwide, Enterprise is the car company that will pick you up. This is just one aspect of their focus on customer happiness. Their company philosophy, set forth by founder Jack Taylor is this: “Take care of your customers and employees, and the profits will follow.” Interestingly, Enterprise didn’t start as a rental car company. According to the book “Exceeding Customer Expectations: What Enterprise, America's #1 car rental company, can teach you about creating lifetime customers”, Enterprise was an automobile leasing business that transformed into a loaner business after customers started asking to rent a car while theirs was in the shop. The company pivoted and turned into something both inspiring and hugely profitable (to the tune of $9B a year) thanks to listening to and serving their customers.

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 31 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

NOW IT’S YOUR TURN Refer to your Differentiation Interview. Answer the questions in the first three numbered rows (i.e., 1, 1.1, 2). When you’re completing the rightmost two columns, do your best to be critical about whether 1) you could or already do legitimately serve this group and 2) differentiating this way is likely to be good for your business (i.e., it will help your customers choose you, recommend you and stick with you).

IS THIS SOMETHING UNIQUE OR DIFFERENT FOR US? 1

WHOM do we serve primarily?

What others in our space serve them directly or primarily?

1.1

Name three (3) niches in this group.

Which one (1) of these niches makes the most sense for us to focus on, if any?

2

How do we offer outstanding SERVICE to this group?

Which of our competitors can say the same or better? Why or how?

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 32 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

MIGHT THIS BE A DIFFERENTIATOR WORTH PURSUING?

3. Different Design WHEN WE TALK ABOUT A DIFFERENT DESIGN, we tend to think, “Oh, Apple”. If you value beautiful aesthetic design, you will likely choose Apple products. Apple is a classic case study of committing to visual design as a key differentiator and having the world not only love you for it but pay you twice as much for it while overlooking the unseemly conditions in which those gorgeous designs are brought to life. It’s easy to hold your iPad in your hands and start wandering down the Apple Fanboy path, but let’s consider the other side of design: experience design. Now we’re not talking about visual or user interface (UI) design, which Apple confidently does like no other; we’re talking about user experience (UX) design. The design of the experience. How users and customers interact with your products. This is the other half of differentiating by design. This is the part where we look at our beautiful iPad and ask: COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 33 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

• • • •

How would a new user turn this thing on and off? Why isn’t this very important, do-everything button labeled? What are we supposed to do about all the smears on the screen? How on earth could I possibly know that, if I hold down the unlabeled Home button and click the unlabeled Power button, I can take a screenshot of my iPad?

This is the part where we throw the Apple TV remote control across the room. This is the part where we growl at iTunes and give up. This is the part where we scream at the second iPod we’ve purchased in the past six months as it, too, inexplicably fails to play. Just as we’re about to run a half-marathon. I know, I know: Apple’s amazing and all those problems are somehow my fault. But could an Apple competitor outshine Apple by focusing not on visual, aesthetic or industrial design but on a better user experience? Further, could an Apple competitor, like Samsung, gain market share by offering equally beautiful hardware and an equally beautiful interface… plus a superior user experience? Don’t hate on me for asking the questions. I’m just asking. In this chapter, let’s take a look at how products and services are differentiating by visual design, user/customer experience design or both.

SAAS If experience is part of design, then Salesforce differentiates by design in championing an installation-free user experience: No Software. You’d be hard-pressed to find a company making installed software today; even Adobe is moving fully from a downloaded Creative Suite to the Adobe Creative Cloud. But that COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 34 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

doesn’t change the fact that Salesforce is the one company most loudly and proudly waving the “everything in the cloud” flag. This is the It’s Toasted Principle at work: you don’t have to be the only one to differentiate in X way – you just have to be the first to say it the loudest.

DOWNLOADS & INSTALLS Search “video player” in iTunes. You’ll quickly see that there are at least a dozen free non-descript video players for YouTube, a selection of “best video players”, and then a few that stand out as believably different and possibly better. One of those is Infuse, The Beautiful Way to Watch Videos:

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 35 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

For people who want a more enjoyable video-viewing experience on their iPad, Infuse stands out quickly. Then, when you click to read their description, you find this: “Made for film buffs, design enthusiasts and anyone whose eyes are slowly morphing into screen-shaped rectangles.” People who love beautifully designed interfaces will love Infuse. And the proof is in the pudding: quickly after launching, Infuse became the #1 entertainment app in the App Store.

HARD GOODS European and Japanese automobiles invariably aim to differentiate on design (with luxury vehicles perhaps having more to offer in the way of differentiating on a better driving experience, too). BMW offers the ultimate driving machine while the COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 36 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

Volkswagen Beetle claimed a solid stake in the minds and hearts of Americans by differentiating on their compact design with the Think Small campaign of the 1950s. Mercedes Benz draws you into their dealership based on visual / aesthetic design but sells you on their car with experience design. Sports car modeling means the seat hugs your body when you sit. They hold patents on every safety feature except the seatbelt, making a Mercedes a confidence-inspiring car to drive. AMG models take the driving experience to a new level with four handling modes, including the not-for-the-faint-of-heart Sport Plus. Great design is so entrenched in Mercedes Benz that it doesn’t stop at the design of the car. The entire purchasing and maintenance experience is different here. Being a Mercedes customer is a completely unique experience. Yes, this is design. Buy a Mercedes, and you can expect your car to be washed when it’s in for servicing. You can expect to be remembered by name. You can expect to be invited to exclusive events, like rare car shows. And you can expect that, when you drive the car off the lot, it not only doesn’t instantly depreciate but it will be more likely to hold its value and then some. Everything that can be well-designed is here. NOTE: This aligns with a customer focus differentiator, but that’s not the key differentiator for Mercedes. They’re all about design, at all levels. Customer focus is a natural outcome of great design – flawless aesthetic and experience design lead to happier customers – thus it could be a secondary differentiator for Mercedes. COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 37 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

SERVICES If you want an amazing vacation experience, a handful of destinations may come to mind. If you want an amazingly crazy vacation experience – something so enjoyable you’ll probably be ashamed of yourself at one point – there’s really only one place to go:

Las Vegas provides an experience that’s unlike any you can get elsewhere. It’s so focused on a particular type of customer experience, it is the ultimate destination for stags, stagettes and any trips where you leave the kids at home. Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority has done an outstanding job of differentiating Las Vegas as a destination with a unique customer experience. ~ HAVE YOU CONSIDERED differentiating the way your service is designed and delivered? Consultants can stand apart from their competitors by productizing their services, or simply allowing services to be purchased as products on their websites so your prospects can avoid the hassle of the more traditional consulting design: request a quote, get on a calendar, give a deposit, etc. We have productized our most in-demand services at Copy Hackers and, although experience design is not our key differentiator, it is unique to us and a great message for landing pages.

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 38 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

4. Different Features or Components BLOATED, CLUNKY PRODUCTS ARE usually the outcome of Features Wars, in which at least two competitors duke it out release after release to claim I have more of this and I have better of that. I’ve experienced Feature Wars firsthand for several software products. They suck at least as much as Price Wars do. It is a very exhausting experience to try to outdo the other guys with the addition or deletion of a feature or two. Especially given that features are rarely what customers are interested in. But there are rare times when differentiating your startup’s product or service based on a great feature, component or element is the right way to go for your customers. For example, you might want to differentiate by feature when your feature is in highdemand or ultra-cool, such as airbags when they were first introduced or, more recently, Siri in iPhone. Your customers are looking for them. So, if you’ve got ‘em, flaunt ‘em!

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 39 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

For being such an obvious way to go, differentiating by feature isn’t always that easy to grasp. Especially outside the world of software. So I’ve found it helpful to think of one product, understand its features, and see how we can rebuild that product to turn out different versions of it. This can help us see how we might differentiate our product by feature. What product shall we use? A very basic one: caramel popcorn. Basic caramel popcorn is made of popped popcorn and a mixture of butter, brown sugar, salt, corn syrup and baking soda. If you were to start selling caramel popcorn today, you could differentiate on feature in any of these ways: • • • • • •

Add more of a good component: Extra caramel sauce Add less of a bad component: Half the butter Replace a bad component with a better one: Maple syrup instead of corn syrup Add an entirely new component: Roasted peanuts! Add a better version of a good component: Double-churned butter Tack on a complementary component: A prize in the box

The challenge with features is that, unless they’re expressly patented, it becomes very easy for your competition to copy you. You may do the hard work of developing the feature and marketing its benefits, but your competitor could sweep in and add the same feature – even a better version of it – thus turning your product marketing efforts into their product marketing efforts. Not fun. Most of us do end up differentiating based on feature. Most websites have a Tour, How It Works or Features page that’s loaded with descriptions of the elements and components that make up the larger solution. That said, when we’re talking features, we’re not always talking about a new feature. We’re often talking about a better version of an existing feature, and that better version helps us make claims like: • • • •

Faster _____ Smarter _____ Better_____ Easier _____

• • • •

Safer _____ Larger _____ Smaller _____ Sexier _____

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 40 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

If you are already leading with an adverb or adjective like the above, then you are almost certainly differentiating by feature. And that may be perfectly awesome. But if you didn’t consciously decide to differentiate this way, is it time to rethink this strategy?

SAAS Support Q&A platform Fixya has a great dashboard, whereas competitor AnswerHub doesn’t mention anything about a dashboard for their software. Because Fixya is ideal for larger businesses, a dashboard goes a long way. The Fixya dashboard helps support managers, product managers and marketers understand at a glance where their product problems are by turning support emails into a simple view. Managers can quickly see which products have the most reported problems and what people are reporting the problems. So they can do something about it.

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 41 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

DOWNLOADS & INSTALLS Indoor wayfinding software startup Meridian has something none of their competitors do: Zones. Zones use WiFi sensing to allow businesses to push messages to people’s phones when they enter a zone. It even works in parkades, where GPS solutions don’t. And m-commerce provider ZooZ has a unique feature of its own: it’s a mobile checkout that learns about users and simplifies payment for them each time they buy. This feature is great for customers as they can move closer to an Amazon-style one-click (or tap) payment. And it’s great for businesses because less friction in checkout often means more conversions. If there was ever a time for a business to differentiate by feature, this would be it.

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 42 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

HARD GOODS Let’s see. Almost every item on a shelf is differentiating by feature. For more examples, venture into a grocery store and have a walk around!  Chesterfield Cigarettes stand apart from other cigarettes because they’re “a silly millimeter longer”  Ivory Soap was better than alternatives based on the purity of its ingredients (i.e, “99.44% pure”)  Tide Free & Gentle is made without dyes or perfumes  Bionaturae is not only gluten-free but organic gluten-free pasta The Kindle is a great example of a hard good that’s differentiated from multiple competitors: traditional books, other ereaders and tablets. Time and again, they differentiate based not on the power of the Amazon name or on the fact that they were the first dedicated ereader for the masses but on the components and features that make a Kindle a Kindle – with the most notable feature being its no-glare display.

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 43 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

Christian Louboutin is another no-brainer example of differentiating by feature – in this case, the famous red sole. Women who spend $1000 on a pair of shoes have their choice of luxury brands eager to take their money; these people are likely to want others to know that they’re not wearing Aldo. Louboutin’s red sole differentiates the product, the brand and – here’s the real trick to differentiating like a pro – the customer. Unfortunately, any shoe manufacturer can paint their soles red and give their customers a budget-friendly way to look like they’re wearing Louboutin shoes. Louboutin has tried to combat this with a Stop Fake campaign. …And this is why differentiating by feature can be bad in the long run: unless well-patented, features are very easy to copy.

SERVICES Canada’s Unhaggle does something interesting with features: it removes the annoying ones. Unhaggle has removed the most painful elements of the car buying experience, with a major focus on getting rid of haggling.

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 44 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

Admittedly, I was a little hard on the entire notion of differentiating by feature at the start of this section of the book. But that’s because this sort of differentiating is by far the most common, it’s the easiest for competitors to copy – which means it may not be your differentiator for long – and it most often leaves us with a big question: If I’m differentiating by feature and I have a dozen or so features, which one should I lead with? The answer is rarely clear, so we end up messaging a garbled mess of features and never really communicating the unique value our products offer. So, sure, differentiate by feature. Go ahead. But please make it a good one. One that your prospects will actually care about and your business will be remembered for. And consider being loud and proud about it so that, when your competitors try to copy it, they will look like they’re late to the game.

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 45 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

5. Different Innovation INVENTIONS AND BIG-TIME INNOVATIONS. With this differentiator, we’re not just talking about doing something different or better and, thus, being innovative. We’re talking about deeper, unmistakable innovations, real game-changers, massive disrupters and envy-inspiring, you’ve-never-seen-this-before inventions. Are you doing something or offering something that will change people’s lives forever? Have you created something that other businesses will look at and say, “How do we build something that works with that?” We’re talking Google Glass. Electricity, the World Wide Web, the radio, the ballpoint pen, the printing press – inventions. The digital camera, the smartphone, Dropbox, Square, Photoshop, hybrid cars, the Dyson vacuum, online learning – innovations. If you’re inventing, innovating, disrupting a market or changing the game, congratulations: it will be easy to differentiate. The hard part may be educating people about the existence of your amazing solution and trying your damnedest to get an COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 46 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

investor to help you market your business (because no one will be searching for you, and it’s going to take time to raise your awareness). Let’s look at how some gamechangers in a range of industries are standing out.

SAAS When both President Obama and Mitt Romney use the same testing tool for their campaigns, you know you’ve got a game-changer on your hands. Optimizely is a platform that uses an uber-simple interface and a line of code to dramatically simplify online split-testing. Compare Optimizely to Google Content Experiments, and you’ll quickly see which is better for the most likely optimizer in an org: the marketer.

DOWNLOADS & INSTALLS I first saw VerbalizeIt on Shark Tank in 2013 and, like every other viewer out there, could immediately see what was different about them: VerbalizeIt hires anyone who can speak two languages as an on-demand translator. Previously, if you were eating in Japan and accidentally got liver yakitori instead of chicken yakitori, you’d need Patrick McKenzie on speed dial to get through it. Now you’d just need VerbalizeIt. COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 47 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

More in the innovation and less in the game-changing space, perhaps, is the very cool Jetpac. The user’s pain is that they don’t know where to go on vacation or what to do when they’re there; admittedly, that’s a high-class problem to have, but it’s a problem nonetheless. Jetpac takes all the travel photos from your friends’ social profiles and helps you get a sense for where you may – or may not – want to go next.

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 48 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

You’re waiting for your four-shot latte in your fave artisan coffee shop. You’re flipping through your phone to kill time and look important. In walks someone who makes you do a double-take, but you couldn’t possibly go talk to them. Enter Tinder, the app that lets you flirt with people around you. So you can tell that hottie that, well, you think they’re hot. And then go back to not making eye contact.

HARD GOODS 3D printing boggles my poor li’l English Major mind, but it’s the core of innovation at the aptly named Bespoke Innovations Inc, which prints customized coverings for artificial limbs. How many prosthetics providers can say the same?

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 49 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

AOptix creates insanely innovative eye recognition software. Like in the movies. But made for real life. Their technology captures the eye’s iris from a meter away. They are not only disrupting all identity and identification systems but specifically the uberannoying world of airport security. They could even render passports obsolete.

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 50 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

SERVICES Perhaps you have a different approach to solving a problem. You do something other people do, but you do it so differently that you’re changing the game. Your innovation is in how you do what you do. For as long as the world can remember, we’ve had hotels; the Christmas story tells of Mary and Joseph being turned away from an inn. Hotels are accepted and understood. But then along came Airbnb – and the hotel industry, how people travel and how people make side income were completely changed:

TransferWise is disrupting the traditional world of money transfers by crowdsourcing transfers; that is, they let you use the crowd to move your money. Like everyone else, they transfer money – but their process does it better insofar as it cuts back on hidden fees.

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 51 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

Kayak lets users compare hundreds of travel sites at once, from a single interface. Unlike TripAdvisor, that sends you out to other travel sites, or the various travel sites that operate in silos, Kayak never forces you to leave their site. You can “search one and done.”

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 52 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

YOUR TURN Continue working through the Differentiation Interview, this time focusing on questions 3, 3.1, 4, 5 and 5.1. The past few chapters will help you.

IS THIS SOMETHING UNIQUE OR DIFFERENT FOR US? 3

WHAT do we serve our audience with (i.e., product, service)?

Which others market the same or a very similar product or service to our audience?

3.1

How is our product or service focused on DESIGN, whether interface, interaction or experience?

How do we know our audience cares about design?

4

What is our one (1) unique product or service FEATURE?

What key problem does this feature solve for our audience?

5

What is most INNOVATIVE about our offering?

Which of our competitors can say the same or better? Why or how?

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 53 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

MIGHT THIS BE A DIFFERENTIATOR WORTH PURSUING?

5.1

HOW do we serve our audience? What adjective can we use to describe how we do what we do?

How is the way we serve them different from the way others serve them?

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 54 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

6. Different People EARNING TRUST IS KEY for converting your visitors – and very difficult for new businesses or startups to do. But if you have a well-known personality behind your startup or a distinct group creating your solution, you can help new visitors lower their guards and consider giving you their business. In addition to helping you earn trust, leading with messages about the people at your company can give you an edge in social spaces. People rarely connect with businesses or corporations; people connect with other people. As of May 2013, 37signals’s Jason Fried has just over 112,000 Twitter followers – while his company 37signals has nearly 20,000 fewer at 94,771. ThinkTraffic’s Corbett Barr has nearly 13,000 Twitter followers; ThinkTraffic has just over 7,000 followers. People prefer to do business with people. People trust people. People like people. People follow people. If social media is a key part of your marketing or growth hacking strategy, you may want to consider making the people at your company a key part of your differentiation strategy. COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 55 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

Differentiating by people can look like:  Prominently showcasing a celebrity – even an internet celebrity – involved in your startup in your marketing and/or packaging  Connecting the dots to show why the founders of your startup are the exactly right people to have created your solution  Highlighting the people behind your company, such as front-line employees  Leveraging the power of a famous product or service you also made (e.g., “from the makers of”) You don’t have to be the winner of Top Chef to launch and run a thriving restaurant. But if you had won Top Chef, you’d probably be wise to let your prospects know who you are. Same goes for any business where you may be having a hard time setting yourself apart and you have an ace in your pocket ‘cos you’re a rockin’ personality.

SAAS If you wanted to market your business online, would you choose software by Mr. Anonymous or software by people from Google, masters of getting found online? MarketStarter is the product of former Google employees, which they message as their key point of differentiation: “Get online marketing guidance for your business from former Googlers.” Sure, Google has thousands of employees. These guys could’ve worked in the mailroom. But that’s not the point. (At least not initially. Eventually, you’d have to say what you did at Google.) The point here is to stand out from other marketing solutions by talking about the people who created your marketing solution.

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 56 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

DOWNLOADS & INSTALLS So often, when you’re marketing an app for kids, you’re not marketing to the kids but to their parents, who are likely to find the apps, approve the apps and pay for the apps. And in the crowded space of educating kids with new media, helping parents to know why they should trust their kids’ minds in your hands is pretty critical. Kidaptive helps kids learn via smart storytelling on iPads. They prove that they’re the right people to handle this job by frequently messaging that their app was developed in collaboration with top university researchers. They expand on this message on their Team page:

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 57 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

If you love one app by a company, chances are pretty good you’ll at least like their other apps. Realmac Software helps people know why they should choose their app Analog Camera by referring to their past successes in the critical first line of their App Store description: The fastest and easiest way to take, process and share photos from the folks behind the revolutionary to-do list app Clear

HARD GOODS If you’re in the market for a healthier juice, would you want something from the makers of Pepsi… or something that’s proudly from the makers of a popular cleanse? Blue Print Juice is like an extension of the popular Blue Print Cleanse and, with a solid background story, a great fit for differentiating by the trustworthy hands that made the product.

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 58 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

SERVICES Anybody with an MBA or an acquisition under their belt could coach small businesses on running their businesses. But Human Business Works stands apart from so many other coaching solutions by ensuring all of their messages come from their uber-respected CEO Chris Brogan. Even their home page is signed by Brogan:

Although there are loads of business coaches online, there are only so many regional airlines one can choose from. Many regional airlines make the mistake of believing no competition now means no competition ever and, thus, failing to differentiate. In turn, they fail to entrench their brands in the hearts of their customers. People choose these airlines because they have no choice. But when a new airline enters the mix, giving customers the choice they once lacked, they have no reason to stay with the old guys. Not good.

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 59 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

WestJet started as a regional airline serving western Canada and has grown in the last decade to be Canada’s most preferred airline. Early on, WestJet differentiated based on the people working at the airline. This differentiation strategy has paid off well and continues to set them apart. Employees of WestJet are shareholders in WestJet; WestJet has thus built a highly differentiated brand based on the phrase “Owner’s Care”. They tell us who’s behind the product; they tell us what those people are about; they connect the dots so we understand; and, as a result, we believe… and they grow.

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 60 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

7. Different Production or Creation IF YOU WERE A CORN FARMER, you might choose not to use pesticides on your crops. If you were a chicken farmer, you might choose to grain-feed your chickens and let them run free. If you were a legume farmer, you might rotate your crops annually to promote sustainable agriculture and produce more nutrient-rich legumes. If you were a fifthgeneration orange farmer, you might have, over decades, cultivated proprietary methods and processes for growing and harvesting oranges. I strongly doubt anyone reading this book is a farmer. But the example of how farmers today differentiate – that is, by the processes used in growing and harvesting their crops – is an easy way to start thinking about how you, as a non-farmer, might differentiate.

“IT’S TOASTED”

In the famous first episode of Mad Men, Don Draper created a tagline that differentiated Lucky Strike cigarettes based on their method of production.

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 61 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

How do you create and distribute your stuff? What do you do differently in the initial stages, during production, at the point of creation or during distribution? If you don’t yet do anything different here, but your curiosity is piqued, let me ask you this: what different method or process of production would your prospects respond well to? Further, is your competition failing in the way they create their products – as Apple has been publicly scorned for their overseas factories – and could you swoop in to not only differentiate but look like a real hero by simply producing your stuff with more integrity?

SAAS Fog Creek Software is the perfect example of producing things differently. Founder Joel Spolsky commits to this differentiator because he truly believes in it, as he’s made clear on his blog repeatedly but especially in this now-famous article that introduced the Joel Test. As a result, people who choose solutions by Fog Creek – like Trello – know they’re getting great software built by an inspired team. By removing the barriers programmers face, Fog Creek becomes the place to look if you want software that’s produced better.

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 62 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

DOWNLOADS & INSTALLS While many apps exist to help runners measure their pace or feed runners upbeat music, Cruise Control is the one stand-out app that is based on the science of biomechanics. Its algorithm, created by PhDs, makes pace control subconscious.

The Valve Games approach is this: When you give smart talented people the freedom to create without fear of failure, amazing things happen. With this approach to creating their products comes better production processes and freer creativity, which has helped the company create not only games but also a game engine and a social entertainment platform.

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 63 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

HARD GOODS While countless apparel manufacturers and retailers are producing their clothing overseas, American Apparel manages every aspect of their apparel production from a single building in downtown Los Angeles. In that one large space, they design, cut, sew, dye, finish and market their clothes. By controlling all aspects of clothing production, sales and distribution, American Apparel can guarantee what their competitors famously can’t: sweatshop-free production.

SERVICES Postable helps customers produce thank-you cards easily. Select a beautiful card design, type out what you want to, and they’ll do the rest. Here the difference in production is very customer-centric (rather than company process-oriented).

Victors & Spoils is a creative agency that has a different way of developing creative for clients: they crowdsource it. A world of designers and writers signs up with Victors & COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 64 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

Spoils to get notified of new opportunities and then, when a brief is posted, submits ideas for consideration. Creatives get the chance to win amazing clients, and clients get the benefit of diverse and hungry creatives – not a tired creative department – producing their advertisements.

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 65 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

YOUR TURN Complete the next set of questions in your Differentiation Interview. By this point, you may be starting to see areas where you can think about differentiating your business in the hearts and minds of your prospects.

IS THIS SOMETHING UNIQUE OR DIFFERENT FOR US? 6

WHO internally/externally makes our product or delivers our service?

Which of our competitors can say the same or better? Why or how?

6.1

What is unique or interesting about the PEOPLE that created this product (e.g., about our team or founders)?

Why does this difference matter to our audience?

7

How do we MAKE the product or DELIVER the service?

Which of my competitors use the same method of production or service delivery?

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 66 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

MIGHT THIS BE A DIFFERENTIATOR WORTH PURSUING?

8. Different Price DIFFERENTIATING BY PRICE doesn’t always mean being the low cost leader. It can also mean standing apart as a more expensive option than the incumbent or most popular solution in your category. In fact, the concept of “high price equals good” is a persuasion tactic taught by the bright folks at Human Factors International and, well, your friends here at Copy Hackers. If this were a chapter on differentiating yourself by being uber-cheap or free, I would have had a very hard time including it in this startup guide to differentiation. So you can be sure the following pages won’t be filled with examples of the Wal-Marts of the world. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a low cost leader. I’d just rather help startup founders like you find ways to make money without having to scramble and scratch for every dime. Cheap stuff often sells itself. Let’s work on the harder sells, shall we? COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 67 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

These examples showcase how and when to differentiate by being free, being the least expensive or being notably expensive.

SAAS Although Mint leads with ease as its primary message and is known for its gorgeous designs, it’s hard to imagine that Mint would have grown as popular as it did, pre-Intuit acquisition, if consumers had had to pay for it. Mint may not lead with free as its key differentiator, but it comes through loudly twice in the top half of the home page.

DOWNLOADS & INSTALLS With 100s of password apps – more than half of them being free – why would anyone pay $8.99 for 1Password? Further, why would one of the most expensive password management apps available make it to the top 20 apps in late May 2013? People can get similar apps for free. But they pay more for solutions that only foolish people would get for free, like password management and security. COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 68 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

But if it’s true that people are more willing to pay for important stuff – like secure ways to keep track of their passwords – why are the free anti-virus solutions always more popular than the paid ones? Brand recognition goes a long way. AVG AntiVirus is a wellreputed company in the online protection space, and so their free product is instantly more appealing than that of an unknown contender.

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 69 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

One might hypothesize that if your visitors trust your brand, they will be more likely to seek out your free product; if your visitors don’t know you or your brand, they will be more likely to seek out your paid product as being a paying customer gives customers the perception of recourse in the event something goes amiss.

HARD GOODS If it’s important to show your partner you can’t put a price on your love, buying him or her something from Tiffany sends the message loud and clear. Like Chanel and Rolls Royce, Tiffany is a brand steeped in the classic belief the poor and the wealthy share: things that are expensive are, more often than not, better. Virtually every commodity has a low cost leader and a luxury offering. Brands that differentiate as the more expensive option – and are beloved for it – include: • • • • •

Apple computers Cristal champagne Gucci anything Mont Blanc pens Rolex watches

SERVICES It is the rare web-based or mobile consumer service that can get consumers to pay for their service. But there are cases in which charging consumers for your online service may actually work better than giving it away free, such as:  When your visitor is highly motivated to get the outcome of your service  When you’re selling a network or means of connecting, and your visitor believes that charging will keep out the penny-pinchers they wouldn’t want to connect with or the window-shoppers who aren’t as serious about connecting as they are  When the free leader is known for doing a poor job of providing great service  When your visitor has more money than they do time and thus is willing to pay for services that eliminate time-wasting hassles COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 70 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

Examples, you ask? Absolutely! TheLadders attracts highly motivated job seekers of a certain income level. These are people who meet three of the four criteria above: they want the outcome fast; they know that free sites are filled with McDonalds jobs; and they have more money than time.

Until very recently, eHarmony was the one dating site targeted at the masses that charged its users to connect. As of May 2013, eHarmony is still a paid matching service – largely because their users are highly motivated to find a match and are trying to avoid penny-pinchers and window-shoppers – but, as more free competitors enter the space and do a good job while growing their brand awareness, eHarmony has had to adjust slightly. eHarmony continues to charge but has started to offer free communication.

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 71 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

Finally, Angie’s List does the unthinkable in price differentiation. It lets contractors/businesses list themselves for free… and it charges visitors/consumers to find those contractors and leave reviews from them. All the other guys, like Yelp, let both businesses and consumers use their site free of charge. The Angie’s List promise is “reviews you can trust”. The way they follow through on that promise is tied directly to their payment model, which prevents anonymous reviews and ‘gaming the system’ by ensuring only the most motivated reviewers – those willing to pay – leave a review. You use Angie’s List because you can trust the reviews, and you can trust the reviews because people had to pay to leave them.

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 72 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

9. Different Worldview WHERE DO YOU SIT in the global community? Your point of view as a business owner or the way your business looks at the world could be an interesting vantage from which to begin differentiating yourself. Your different worldview could be: • • • • • • • • •

You want to make the world a happier place You support developing countries You help inner-city kids You support education and/or education reform You help underrepresented and/or misrepresented groups You oppose animal testing You live and work ‘green’ You believe in the power of people, community, love You empower individuals to be their best selves COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 73 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

Think The Body Shop, which has claimed and backed an “against animal testing” slogan for years. Think Lu Lu Lemon Apparel, which, although recently less committed to fair production practices, has believably advocated a yogic lifestyle. Now, unlike building a new Feature into your product, differentiating based on your Worldview or on social consciousness isn’t something you can say you’re going to do, do once and then never think about again. It takes at least the same level of dedication as Customer Focus. It’s behind everything you do. It has to be. Because when you claim to be socially conscious, people get decidedly critical of actions that run counter to that claim. The businesses that have successfully differentiated based on their worldview generally have this in common: this differentiator rises organically from their core product or service. It doesn’t seem forced. It doesn’t seem engineered. It is distinctly opposed to cause marketing, where your not-for-profit efforts in fact help you profit; it is not a marketing initiative but something that makes your business’s heartbeat. Rallies are not just sponsored by you; you create the rally. You don’t just donate a percentage of your profits; you have a product/SKU for which you send all profits to a non-profit. It is not one act of charity; doing right by others is in your business DNA. Do you have something to defend? Might your product support that defense? Does it make sense for your startup to take part in the defense? If your reason for existing reflects your worldview, perhaps this is how you can be different – and feel satisfied (compared to differentiating by, say, price).

SAAS Kickstarter is a fantastic way to finance cool new businesses and projects, but their focus is rarely on humanitarian lending or funding. Kiva has offered microlending and crowdfunding for developing countries, but those transactions are largely facilitated by intermediaries that charge interest. COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 74 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

Enter Zidisha, which differentiates itself as a microlending service focused on entrepreneurs in developing countries. For people who want to invest in up-and-coming business ideas without further taxing the strained finances of those they back, Zidisha exists.

DOWNLOADS & INSTALLS If you want to make the world a happier place, you’re likely to create apps that help you reach that goal. Tiny Hearts is an award-winning software studio that creates beautiful, playful and useful apps for the young and young at heart. Their flagship app is Pocket Zoo, a “portable zoo” for kids; it held the #1 Education app spot in 2010.

HARD GOODS If any startup has done a fantastic job turning a worldview differentiator into the force of growth behind their business, it’s TOMS Shoes & Eyewear. For every pair of shoes or eyeglasses you or I buy from TOMS, they give a pair to a person in need.

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 75 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

Canada’s Matt&Nat promises that they are more than a bag company. They make vegan-friendly products that make even non-vegans feel good. Their faux leather is made of recycled plastic; and they offer employees eight hours of paid volunteer time each month. On the luxury end of the apparel continuum, Atelier360 brings only artisan, sustainable fashion to the world. Their products preserve local economies and a manufactured with environmental, economic and social responsibility front of mind.

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 76 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

KEETSA mattresses are an eco-friendly solution in an industry filled with chemicals, high carbon footprints and waste. They live their worldview by using only green products and greener production processes for their mattresses – and they take it further, like most companies with a unique worldview – to donate money to important causes, like Operation Smile.

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 77 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

SERVICES Finally, Apartment Therapy is on a mission to save the world, one room at a time. Unlike other home décor and style sites, Apartment Therapy offers its readers lifestyle-focused green living in an effort to help them build their own “good life”.

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 78 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

YOUR TURN Complete the FINAL set of questions in your Differentiation Interview.

IS THIS SOMETHING UNIQUE OR DIFFERENT FOR US? 8

What do we CHARGE?

Why is this price attractive to our audience?

9

What is our point of view, perspective or WORLDVIEW?

Why does our audience care?

9.1

How are we socially conscious?

Which of our competitors can say the same or better? Why or how?

9.2

How are we environmentally conscious?

Which of our competitors can say the same or better? Why or how?

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 79 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

MIGHT THIS BE A DIFFERENTIATOR WORTH PURSUING?

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 80 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

Messaging Your Differentiators WE’VE EXPLORED a range of companies large and small differentiating in specific ways. But, along our journey through these differentiators, this has surely stood out: not all companies differentiate on one thing alone. It may be easier for prospects, customers and investors to understand companies that commit to one differentiator – as TOMS does so well – but there are many companies that provide two or more points of value in unique ways. And these companies are likely to want to message all of them. Take, for example, Zoobean, a startup dedicated to finding better books for kids by letting parents curate the collections. This startup differentiates based on three things: 1. NICHE / MARKET – They’re selling kids’ books. 2. PEOPLE – Their collections are curated by people who should know best: parents. 3. WORLDVIEW – They’re committed to a greater diversity of books for kids, so we might raise fewer Pecola Breedloves and more balanced kids who can love their differences. But which of these differentiators makes it into Zoobean’s primary messaging?

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 81 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

Zoobean leads with their market in the first half of their home page headline. Follows that up with their people in the second half. And much later on the site explores their worldview, but not in specific ways. Are they ordering their differentiators in a way that’s likely to bring them more customers and get those customers to stick around, buy again and recommend them? When TechCrunch wrote about them in 2013, TechCrunch identified Zoobean’s most intriguing differentiator as their worldview; after all, refining your search on Amazon can help you find books for kids – so it seems to be a slight miss to lead with the broad market they’re targeting. Perhaps Zoobean opens with the phrase “Remarkable Books” in an effort to hint at the quality of their books and, in turn, speak to their worldview – but is hinting at your differentiator a good messaging strategy? Questions abound. How do you message your differentiator(s) on the page? Should you message more than one differentiator? Does your key differentiator need to be messaged prominently? Do all your differentiators need to be messaged? Do any of them? Let’s work through those questions here.

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 82 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

How Do You Message Your Differentiators? Show and Tell! One of the best pieces of copywriting advice I will ever give you – and one that only the wisest people follow – is to put important messages clearly on the page. There’s this sense that it’s inelegant or too aggressive to write copy that uses real words and straightforward language to express the things you want people to know, things visitors to your site need to know. People in business have come to learn about the creative writer’s “show don’t tell” rule and have, in turn, applied that to their web copy, email copy and display ads. Unfortunately, when you only show people what’s different about you, your brand or your solution, you leave a lot to interpretation. And guess what! Your visitors are too damn busy to interpret your copy. It’s not your visitors’ job to figure out what you’re trying to say; it’s your job to help them move easily through your site without their brains interrupting and sending them off-course. Is it any wonder we lead with explainer videos on so many home pages? Explainer videos give you the right – and the words – to explain what you do, to show your prospects what you do and tell them what you do. Your web copy should be allowed the same rights your explainer videos have. You need to show and tell in your copy. Your differentiator(s) will help people know why they should choose you. That’s reason number one to focus on differentiating, after all. (Additional reasons, as you’ve surely noted throughout this book, include making it easier for you to know what products to create, what features to add and where to market your solution.) If you don’t tell people what’s different about you, how are they supposed to know? So put your differences on the page. Show people what’s different about you… and tell them, too. That means: 1. SHOW: Describe the benefits of using your solution, with images to support these benefits-focused messages 2. TELL: Describe the ways people will arrive at said benefits, with references to specific things that differentiate you

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 83 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

State Your Differentiator – Don’t Just Imply It Let’s say that you’re differentiating by people. You’ve got a dating site, and that dating site is run by matchmakers and analysts, who work together to use profile data to inform the matches they make. With that in mind, let’s write a section of copy that shows and tells what’s different about you and why your visitors should care: Because Finding True Love Is Both an Art and a Science It’s Not the Result of Mindlessly Scrolling Through 100s of Profiles Traditional dating sites don’t work because they leave the entire job of finding love in your hands. Here’s a better approach. We analyse your profile, compare it to our database of possible matches, and apply the art of matchmaking to create your ultimate shortlist. No guesswork. Just a perfect meeting of science and art. The subhead begins to show what’s desirably different about you. And the body copy tells by getting into details about what makes you so different. Notice how the subhead focuses on a visitor pain and begins to connect that to the solution – without yet getting into the core of the difference. The body copy then gets very specific about the difference between this site and other sites, explicitly referencing what’s wrong with their competition and explicitly drawing the visitor to learn about “a better approach”. Nothing is implied. The copy holds the visitor’s hand through an explanation of the current state of the industry and the weaknesses of existing solutions. Perhaps below this section we would offer a block of copy that proves that traditional dating sites don’t work alongside a block of copy that expands on the roles of analysts and matchmakers. But your differentiators need not live only in body copy or deeper in your site. You may want to test leading with your differentiator as a headline. In the example of the dating site, we might test a headline that speaks to what’s different about you:

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 84 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

Let Acclaimed Matchmakers & Pro Data Geeks Match You Based on Art and Science Note that we’re not giving everything away in this headline. We are rather grabbing the attention of our visitors by speaking to what we do 1) uniquely that 2) they want. If we get their attention with that headline, we can lure them deeper into the page to answer the two big points we often talk about at Copy Hackers: 1. “So what?” – Tell people why they should care 2. “Prove it” – Prove that you’re not full of BS using supporting explanations, videos and screenshots

Does Your Key Differentiator Need to Be Messaged Prominently? The goal of this book is to help you arrive at one solid differentiator for your startup. Doing so feeds naturally into a major messaging opportunity for small businesses: the value proposition. A value proposition, or a unique selling proposition (USP), is a succinctly stated and memorable message that describes what’s specifically and desirably different about your solution. Essentially, your value prop amplifies your key differentiator. At Copy Hackers, we often recommend that startups test their value prop as their home page headline because, outside of their blog, their home page is often their primary landing page for new visitors – and new visitors in particular need to know what’s desirably different about a company they’ve barely heard of. We recently tested our theory about value props as headlines. Well, to be clear, we’ve tested this theory repeatedly for multiple clients, but we recently decided to do a metatest in which we tested value props as headlines across 11 startup sites. The outcomes of this meta-test were: • A win rate of 9 out of 11 tests • An average lift of 33% across all 11 tests, including the ‘losers’ • An average lift of 40% across the 9 winning tests COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 85 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

• Validation that a value prop can work wonders as a home page headline for a range of startups If you’re interested in testing your differentiator in your home page headline, check out Copy Hackers: The Great Value Proposition Test to see our step-by-step process for arriving at headlines worth testing and the scorecard we used to grade value prop options. Get it here

Do You Need to Message Every Differentiator You’ve Got? Should you message more than one differentiator? Do all your differentiators need to be messaged? Do any of them? Which ones go where? The challenge of figuring out which differentiator to lead with often makes messaging your differences a pain. We saw this earlier with Zoobean, where they led with two differentiators in their home page and dramatically subordinated the one that TechCrunch identified as their single unique differentiator. Might they do better to lead with their worldview? The answer, it shouldn’t surprise you to read, is to test it. Only testing your various differentiators – what’s different about you, how you word those differences and the prominence of those messages – will help you arrive at a strong understanding of what your prospects most strongly desire.

Final Tips about Messaging Your Differentiators • TONE: Make sure how you message your differences matches what your differences are. For example, if you’re differentiating by niche – you’re targeting hockey players – use language and phrasing that matches the way they speak. If you’re differentiating by worldview – you’re trying to make the world a happy place – avoid negativity. COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 86 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

• MESSAGING PRICE: It’s unlikely that you’ll want to use words like “cheap” or “expensive” to help your visitors understand that you’re a lower-cost or highercost solution. When it comes to messaging cheap, you could use words like affordable, budget-happy, wallet-friendly, inexpensive or cost-effective. If you’ve got a fun tone that your visitors respond well to, you could go so far as to write el cheapo to describe your affordable solution or even the people who seek your affordable solution out. • TAGLINE: If you want a tagline or slogan, consider including your key differentiator in your tagline. At Copy Hackers, our key differentiator is that we’re focused entirely on startups (i.e., niche), and that is the core of our tagline: Where startups learn to write copy. • BE “YOU” FOCUSED: Yes, you’re communicating what’s unique about you – but that doesn’t mean you should write “We’re different because”. As in all good copywriting, ensure that whenever you message your differentiators, you’re doing so from the perspective of your prospect. Avoid “we”. Use “you”. • TRY NEGATIVE: Some of the stickiest messages are negative twists rather than positive statements. For example, 7-Up differentiated in the highly competitive soda world as The Uncola; another example is Buckley’s cough syrup, which made a name for itself by claiming it “Tastes awful. And it works”. Messaging you’re not something can be more believable and memorable than messaging that you are something; if you’re trying to sell gamified accounting software, you might message “choose unboring accounting” instead of “choose fun accounting”.

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 87 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

In thinking strategically about your differentiators, you’ve already got a leg up on most if not all of your competition. You’re more likely to consider what makes you different when you’re creating marketing campaigns, writing copy, creating new solutions, naming those solutions, writing press releases and pitching your startup to investors. So go finish your worksheets and start differentiating! 

The Buffer Pitch When Leo Widrich and Joel Gasciogne were pitching Buffer to investors, communicating how they were different from their competition was among their two most important tasks (more here). Like your prospects, VCs will want to know what makes you desirably different.

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 88 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

YOUR FINAL ACTION ITEM Have your completed Differentiation Interview handy and, with it, refer now to the worksheet titled What Makes Us Different & Better. Your completed interview should have revealed at least one way – if not a handful of ways – that you may be able to stand out in your customers’ minds and hearts. Looking at the two rightmost columns of the interview, note the ones where you indicated positively, with a yes or an X or whatever you used, in both columns; this or these will vie for the position of key differentiator for you. Of course, there are more ways to differentiate than just the nine discussed in this book, so perhaps you’ve landed on a solid differentiator all on your own. That’s cool too. OUR KEY DIFFERENTIATOR What we will differentiate based on Is this differentiator already in place or built-in? Why is this right for us? Why is this right for our audience? Tactics we’ll take to prove this difference Our value proposition or unique selling proposition

SUPPORTING WAYS OF DIFFERENTIATING Secondary point of differentiation Other points of differentiation Will our audience be persuaded by these differentiators? Why or how? Tactics we’ll take to prove these differentiators

OPPORTUNITIES OR NEW WAYS TO DIFFERENTIATE IN TIME Biggest opportunity Why is this a big opportunity? What will we do to make it happen? COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 89 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 90 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

All brand features referenced within are protected by applicable trademark, copyright and other intellectual property laws. 37signals. http://37signals.com/ Airbnb. https://www.airbnb.ca/ Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Ereader-ebook-reader/ American Apparel. http://www.americanapparel.com/ Angie’s List. http://www.angieslist.com/ AOptix. http://www.aoptix.com/ Apartment Therapy. http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/ App Store. http://www.apple.com/ Atelier360. http://atelier360.com/ AVG AntiVirus. http://free.avg.com/ca-en/homepage Aviary. http://aviary.com Bespoke Innovations Inc. http://www.bespokeinnovations.com/ Blue Print Juice. http://blueprintjuice.com/ Christian Louboutin. http://us.christianlouboutin.com/us_en/ Cruise Control. http://www.cruisecontrolrun.com/ eHarmony. http://www.eharmony.com/home/ft/direct/ Fixya. http://www.fixya.com/ Fog Creek Software. http://www.fogcreek.com/ GameChanger. http://www.gamechanger.io/ Geek’s Dream Girl. http://geeksdreamgirl.com/ Human Business Works. http://www.humanbusinessworks.com/ Jetpac. https://www.jetpac.com/ Kayak. http://www.ca.kayak.com/ KEETSA. http://keetsa.com/ COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 91 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

Kidaptive. http://www.kidaptive.com/about-us/team.html Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority. http://www.lvcva.com/ LL Bean. http://www.llbean.com/ MarketStarter. http://www.marketstarter.co/ Matt&Nat. http://www.mattandnat.ca/ Mercedes Benz image. http://www.motortrend.com/roadtests/sedans/1302_2014_mercedes_benz_e63_amg_first_drive/photo_27.ht ml Meridian. http://www.meridianapps.com/ Meridian image. http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/15/indoor-mapping-startup-meridian-adds-notification-zonesto-their-strategy/ Mint. https://www.mint.com/ Optimizely. https://www.optimizely.com/ Postable. https://www.postable.com/ Postach.io. http://postach.io/ Realmac Software. http://www.realmacsoftware.com/ Salesforce. http://www.salesforce.com/ Stained Glass Labs. http://stainedglasslabs.com/ TheLadders. http://www.theladders.com/ Tinder. http://www.gotinder.com/ Tiny Hearts. http://tinyhearts.com/ TOMS Shoes & Eyewear. http://www.toms.ca/ TransferWise. http://transferwise.com/ Unhaggle. http://www.unhaggle.com/ Valve Games. http://www.valvesoftware.com/index.html VerbalizeIt. https://www.verbalizeit.com/ COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 92 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com

Victors & Spoils. http://www.victorsandspoils.com/ Volkswagen Beetle advertisement. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_Small WestJet. http://www.westjet.com/guest/en/about/ Zendesk. http://www.zendesk.com/ Zidisha. http://www.zidisha.com/ Zoobean. https://www.zoobean.com/ ZooZ. http://www.zooz.com/

COPY HACKERS – The Startup Guide to Differentiation – 93 © 2013 Joanna Wiebe www.CopyHackers.com