How you differentiate from competitors only matters if it matters to customers.

Pick any differentiation you want – pricing, features, target market, market gap, performance, etc. – unless customers really, really, really care about the difference, you’re shit out of luck. Hell, pick two or three of them and it still doesn’t matter. You can’t pile them on and assume that’ll make the difference.

When doing competitive research, don’t just look at what the competition is doing, figure out how customers feel about them. Understand why customers are picking one competitor over another. What’s motivating and driving them?

Being different from competitors isn’t enough. That’s easy. Making sure that your key differentiators actually matter in a huge way to customers is a whole other story.