Differentiating your business from your competitors, so that customers will choose to buy your products and services instead of your competitors, is the job of your Unique Selling Proposition.

The trouble is, it's easy for you to get stuck on the idea that "there's nothing I can do that's different to my competitors".  So in this blog post, you'll discover how a true commodity business – the dairy industry – has lots of differentiation.

The idea here isn't to turn you into a cheesemaker (even though "blessed are the cheesemakers!"),  but to inspire you to stand out from the crowd in your line of business.

I can think of no more challenging business to be in than milk production.  The supermarkets have you by the throat and buy from you at pretty much cost price.  You only make something because of the huge volumes you sell.  What to do?

Well, some diaries came up with the idea of flavoured milks and shakes many years ago.  But far more interesting is the brilliant mainstream milk company Cravendale.  They've innovated to make a better milk, rather than going after a tiny niche.

So now you can drink normal milk, or Cravendale's pure filtered milk that lasts longer.

I don't know about you, but if I can get "pure", that suggests that what I was drinking before wasn't pure.  Seeps into my brain after enough repetition and gradually starts to become the normal milk you buy.

The real crunch though, is that your price is no longer directly compared to ordinary milk, the commodity stuff.  You've carved out a whole new niche within the vast milk market of pure milk.

In the Cravendale ad they make the point about their differentiation – on the fridge door they tell you it's filtered so it lasts longer.  And they're all fighting for the last glass.  How many times do we throw away the last glass of milk because it's going off?

Clever, witty, engaging.  Perhaps a little irritating.  But they're selling a lot of filtered milk now, to an audience that had never seen it just a couple or so years ago.

Now take a look across the rest of the dairy industry and you'll find lots of similar examples.  Anchor Butter have differentiated themselves by claiming the free-range credentials.

Who ever heard of free range cows?  I haven't – never thought of cows being anything but free range, wandering in the fields eating grass.  But Anchor have brilliantly captured the eco-mood and transferred the free-range idea from chickens…

Interestingly, a search on Google for other butter advertising shows that Country Life gave a money-back guarantee that their butter tastes best a few years ago.

Can't find a video on it, but apparently they printed 5 million packs with the offer on it.  The idea being that you'll try the butter out because if you don't like it, you can get your money back. What's the chance of you not liking a quality pat of butter?  Pretty low risk strategy, it seems to me.

Going back to the blessed cheesemakers, how do you make an ordinary cheese into something special?  Packaging does it very nicely for Mini Babybel, who put a twist in their adverts by showing tiny cheesemakers putting it together…

As you start to get into the differentiation groove, you'll find lots of interesting options – Cheestrings are the modern replacement for Dairylee cheese triangles, it seems to me, becoming one of the defacto kids' choices for their lunchbox.

You may be wondering just how you can use these cheesy examples in your own business…

Bottom line is you've got to come up with some great ways to differentiate your business, products or services from your competitors.  So many people in small business tell me they can't.  You can, once you decide to give it the attention it deserves.

There are a host of ways you can be different in business – including changing your…

• Product (filtering the milk)
• Packaging (little wax jackets on your cheese)
• Positioning ("The Free-Range Butter Company")
• Guarantees (Best tasting butter or your money back)
• Service (the good ol' milkman)

If you'd like more inspiration on ways to differentiate your products and services, I can highly recommend both Purple Cow by Seth Godin and Raving Fans by Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles.  Both are available from Amazon for around £5 each and are inspirational.

Differentiation is one of 5 parts of my Core Marketing approach to developing an effective marketing plan for your small business.   Over the next few articles  I'll be posting about the remaining 4 main concepts behind Core Marketing to help you put them into place in your business.  Next up will be choosing a nice niche…