Don’t Run Ads Until You’ve Done This
You spent four thousand dollars on ads last quarter and you can't point to one job that came from them.
A lead calls, and within a minute they’re asking the question you can never quite answer cleanly. What makes you different from the last two businesses they’ve already spoken to?
You say quality work. You say you genuinely care about the job. You can hear the trust not landing, because it’s the same answer they’ve heard twice already today. You might well be doing better work than either competitor, and from the buyer’s perspective, you all look the same.
Why The Answer Never Convinces
When buyers can’t tell businesses apart, they fall back on the one thing that’s easy to compare, which is price. So you end up competing on a number instead of on the work, undercutting the value you know you deliver. It feels like a sales problem. It’s actually a foundation problem, because nothing underneath the brand has been built to make you the obvious choice instead of one of three.
Most owners hope the fix is quick. A brighter colour, a sharper tagline, a new logo that finally makes them look different. It rarely works, because the sameness was never on the surface.
Distinction Gets Built In Order
Standing out is built in a specific sequence, and each step depends on the one before it. First a brand discovery, the work of finding what genuinely makes you different, the thing you do or stand for that your competitors don’t and that a buyer would actually care about. Most owners are too close to their own business to see it without help. Then strategy, the deliberate decision about who you’re for and what space you want to hold in the buyer’s mind, which is the step most businesses skip and the reason so many end up sounding interchangeable. Only then does the visual system come in, the colours and type and feel, built to make your positioning obvious at a glance when a buyer is comparing you side by side with three others who do the same thing.
Done in that order, the visuals carry a real idea, and the right clients recognise themselves the moment they encounter you.
Standing out is something you build with intention.
If you’re tired of being mistaken for everyone else, our free guide, The Cost of People Not Recognising Your Business, breaks down what that sameness is costing you and what it takes to be the one buyers remember.
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Our Work
About DSP
Design Studio Perth is an integrated branding and graphic design agency based in Perth, Western Australia.
Our team is made up of dedicated professionals who work closely with each client to develop unique and compelling brands that resonate with their target audience.
Our team is made up of dedicated professionals who work closely with each client to develop unique and compelling brands that resonate with their target audience.
