Standing out from the crowd is vital. But in the mature markets most of us operate in, it can be really, really difficult.

The challenge is that in our mature service markets, there are always others promising the same results as us.

I'm certainly not the only person promising to help you get more clients. And I'm sure you're not the only person in your market promising to improve their leadership, cut their costs, get them more website visitors or whatever it is you do.

Promising a core benefit is the price of entry in a mature market. You need to do more to stand out. 

One method is to focus on a sub-segment of your market.

That could be a particular niche you specialise in. Career coaching for returning-to-work moms. Sales training for enterprise software tools. 

Your specialisation gives potential clients confidence that what you offer will be tailored to their specific needs and so help them get better results. 

Or you could focus on a sub-segment that values a secondary benefit of your product or service. That's the classic Dominos Pizza “fast delivery” USP. Or for you, it could be sales training delivered multilingually, leadership coaching delivered discreetly without involving the rest of the organisation.

The second method is to highlight a unique method or system or “new ingredient” you use to deliver your service that others don't have. This is especially powerful in a sceptical market where clients may have used other suppliers and failed to get the results they were looking for. Your different approach gives them hope that they'll be able to get results with you.

Consultants have been offering cost reduction and productivity improving services since time immemorial. But when Michael Hammer & James Champy branded their approach to transformation as “Re-Engineering” and showed how it was different to previous improvement methodologies, it gave clients across the globe a reason to believe that this time, it just might work.

The final method might surprise you. It's personality.

But if you think about it (and if you're anything like me) you regularly buy from people who aren't really offering anything much different to their competitors. It's just that we like them. We click with them. We appreciate their style. We perhaps aspire to be a bit like them.

Face to face, “know, like and trust” has always been important. And it's usually built up over time and many personal interactions.

Online, there's less opportunity for those personal interactions and instead we often “fall in love” with those we follow who have big personalities.

I'm a subscriber to James Altucher's paid newsletter for example. I can't say I've ever done much with it, but I love the way he writes, his honesty and his creativity.

Ideally, you want to combine all 3. Have a unique approach for a specialised niche, delivered with your unique, attractive personality.

But even one is better than none!