How to sound different when every competitor says the same thing
A four-step method, plus what to do in the harder case where the products genuinely are similar.
Open five competitor sites in a category and the copy converges. Innovative, trusted, end-to-end, customer-first. Everyone arrived at the same words by the same route: they described the category, and left themselves out of it.
What follows is a method for finding the sentence that belongs to one company alone, including the harder case where the products really are similar.
Step one: the swap test
Take every claim on the homepage. Replace the company name with the nearest competitor. Read it again.
Any sentence that survives the swap intact is describing the category, and category description is free for everyone to use. Delete it or make it specific enough to break.
On the homepages I have run this on, most of the copy goes on the first pass. What remains is the honest starting point, and it is always shorter than anyone expects.
Step two: audit what the category always says
Collect the top ten competitors' headlines, sub-headlines and proof claims into one document. Patterns appear within minutes: the same three adjectives, the same promise structure, the same three proof points in the same order.
That document is a map of occupied territory. Everything on it is a position already crowded, and the empty space around it is where a distinct claim can live.
Step three: find the trade-off you are willing to name
Positioning requires a cost. A company that is faster is usually less customised. A company that is deeply specialised covers fewer use cases. A company that is cheaper does less.
Categories converge because everyone claims every benefit at once, which makes all the claims weightless. Naming the trade-off makes the remaining claim credible, and it does something more useful: it repels the buyers who would have churned.
The test of a position is whether a competitor would happily claim the opposite. If nobody would, it is a hygiene factor.
Step four: replace adjectives with evidence
Adjectives are opinions about yourself. Evidence is checkable.
- Drop fast. Give the number of days, measured across the last twenty projects.
- Drop experienced. Give the number of times this problem has been solved, and in which industries.
- Drop trusted. Give the retention figure, or the length of the longest client relationship.
- Drop innovative. Give the specific thing built that nobody else built.
An audited number outperforms an adjective on every dimension: recall, credibility, and the likelihood that somebody repeats it in a meeting where the brand is absent.
The clearest evidence I have for this came from my own paid media. Four campaigns, one quarter, one budget, audiences of comparable seniority. The click prices were close: $79 for the cybersecurity audience, $74 for IT service management. What separated them happened after the click.
Cybersecurity converted 5.4% of its clickers. IT service management converted 1.1%, one lead out of ninety-two clicks, at $6,775 each against $1,445. The weaker campaign said what every vendor in that category says. The stronger one named a specific problem those buyers recognised.
Sounding like the category is rarely a branding complaint. It shows up as a line in a media invoice.
When the product really is the same
Sometimes the category convergence is honest. Four platforms genuinely do the same job to a similar standard. Differentiation still exists, in four places that sit outside the feature list.
The point of view
Two identical products can hold opposite beliefs about how the work should be done. Beliefs attract the people who share them and are impossible to copy credibly, because a competitor adopting your belief looks like a follower.
The buying experience
dentsu's 2025 Superpowers Index found that brands with excellent buyer experiences close deals up to 31% faster, as much as four months quicker than poor performers. Published pricing, a working trial, straight answers about limitations. The product stays identical while the experience of choosing it becomes the differentiator.
The specific audience
A general tool serving everyone competes with every general tool. The same tool aimed precisely at one segment, in that segment's language, with that segment's proof, competes with far fewer.
The way it sounds
Distinctiveness is an asset even where differentiation is thin. A voice somebody can recognise before they see the logo does commercial work, because recognition is what puts a name on a shortlist that forms months before any conversation.
The finished test
A position is working when three things hold at once: a competitor would struggle to claim it, a customer could repeat it accurately from memory, and somebody in the market would argue with it.
Agreement from everyone means the sentence was empty.
Where this becomes work
Finding that sentence, then writing everything else from it, is positioning and messaging.
Keep reading: How brand positioning decides the shortlist and The Make Them Curious manifesto.
Questions people ask
What is the swap test in positioning?
Replace your company name with a competitor's in every claim on your site and read it again. Any sentence that survives the swap intact is describing the category, so it belongs to everyone and differentiates nobody.
How do you differentiate when products are genuinely similar?
Through four things outside the feature list: a point of view about how the work should be done, a buying experience that is easier than the alternatives, a precisely defined audience, and a voice that is recognisable before the logo appears.
Why does B2B marketing copy all sound the same?
Because most companies describe the category, leaving themselves out of it, and because claiming every benefit at once feels safer than naming a trade-off. Claiming everything makes each individual claim weightless.
How do you know a position is strong?
Three things hold at once: a competitor would struggle to claim it, a customer could repeat it accurately from memory, and somebody in the market would argue with it.
Curiosity works both ways.
Analytics shows me which pages hold a reader and which lose one. It counts pages and stops there. What it stores.