The past few weeks I’ve gone over a few different areas of differentiation — things that can create separation between your small business and others with the same alignment.

From highlighting your unique story, to offering services and products that meet (or exceed) relative expectations in your area/industry, we’ve covered a few of the first layers you can take a look at when developing your differentiation strategy.

The next layer is likely the place where a lot of folks think of when they think of “differentiation” — how your small business looks and sounds; collectively forming a surface layer identity for folks to anchor to.

How You Look

When your customers interact with your small business (online or otherwise), you’re likely going to leave behind a visual representation of your small business.

That visual could be a logo together with your color palette and typography, a photo or image, a graphic or design — whatever it may be, it’s a visual anchor that folks will be associating with your small business, your story and your products/services over time.

If your set of visuals is not overly distinct or inconsistent across different surfaces it’ll be more difficult to build that association – and ultimately blend in with others.

Worse yet, if you look too similar to others you could be creating a skewed association that inadvertently affects how you’re remembered.

How You Sound

Your words and how you communicate is also tied to your identity.

If you’ve ever had a poor support phone call or ugly email from a brand or business, you likely remember that well — and have associated that memory to that particular business.

You’ve also likely experienced some websites that don’t respond or get back to you consistently.

Ultimately, all of the words, interactions (or lack thereof), phone calls, texts — collectively form how you sound to your customers/clients.

Being consistent (and selective) with the choice of words, forms of communication, communication frequency and who is ultimately interacting directly with your customers/clients can ultimately shape this voice – and create a distinct sound in your market.

Identity Alignment

Going back to your story and services/products, it’s often clever to line these up with your choice of identity elements.

If your story is tied to a more boutique, personal style of service, then you can use your identity elements to reinforce that style to attract folks looking for that level of service.

If your story and service is about offering reliability and transparency, reinforce that sense of reliability through your identity elements.

The examples here are endless, but the essence here is that aligning your story with your service/products and ultimately your identity (visual or otherwise), you’re going to be standing on much firmer ground – and, perhaps, more confident – in many situations.

Next week I’ll step into one last layer you can take a look at when differentiating, but the question you can ask yourself this week is:

Does my small business identity match the story I’m telling and the services/products I’m offering?