A Deeper Look into Differentiation: A Case Study

Last week as I was leaving work, I received a text from my wife asking me to stop and grab her a fountain drink. It was midweek and she was hitting her mid afternoon slump and needed the usual pick-me-up.

As I set out to grab a gas station fountain drink, I found myself going out of my way and passing 2 or 3 gas stations to make my way to my "favorite".

That's right folks, I have a favorite gas station to buy my wife's drinks from.

Upon pulling into the busy parking lot, I came to the conclusion that my favorite gas station is also the favorite gas station of quite a few people.

After buying the fountain drink, I decided to take a little deeper of a dive into what exactly sets my favorite gas station apart from the rest.

In this week's video I did a what I'll call a rogue case study of Maverik, Utah's fastest growing gas station chain, to see what they're doing differently to succeed, and where their plan could be falling short.

While Maverik has done a terrific job of differentiating themselves in the gas station market here in Utah, I did catch a few areas where their branding fell short.

1. Differentiate your job ad.

   Maverik's job ads sound like a lawyer wrote them, in other words they're pretty boring. If you want unique applicants, you need to provide a unique and engaging job ad that sounds appealing to that target audience.

2. Make sure your apply process is conducive to your target audience.

   In this case, Maverik would want to make sure their apply process is easily accessible for someone on the go, someone chasing the adventure. That means they should probably be able to apply on their mobile phone.

So for today's takeaways I want you to remember a few things. First of all that differentiation is awesome and necessary in building a great company. And secondly, once you've found what makes you different, make sure it is flowing and consistent to every part of your company.

To learn more about how to write a job ad that will differentiate your company from the rest, check out our hiring tool: Guide to Writing a Killer Job Ad.