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Look around. Most ecommerce businesses (and not only they) are all selling the same kind of stuff at the same price.

You can’t compete on price, location, or same-day delivery, and still, many e-commerce retailers have built businesses based on those USPs.

Competing on price

You will never be able to win this race. There will always be someone else that will be cheaper than you. 

If you want to win on price, you should cut many corners. You might have to pay less money to your employees or overload them with work. You might need to sacrifice the quality to keep healthy margins, etc. And some corners are easier to cut than others. There’s always been someone who will cut one more corner than you. 

Every once in a while, someone systematically can win on price. Walmart did this. That’s really rare, though.

What you want to build is a lasting legacy, impact, a great team, do something remarkable. Nobody wants to do mediocre business. But often, this is the case.

Competing on same-day delivery

The same goes true for same-day delivery – you can’t compete with Amazon and other retail giants. 

If you can be five percent cheaper and can deliver today because you’re a little bit closer to your customers than your competitors, it’s a matter of time all of those things go away. The world’s changed. In the next few years, we’ll have a proliferation of driverless cars, 3-D printers, and drone deliveries. So that’s not a sustainable strategy.

What you really need is a brand story and a reason why people should shop with you and not with your competitors.

People seek certainty and meaning in their lives. And often, that certainty can come from a true sense of purpose – a reason for existence.

It’s also why businesses with a genuine sense of purpose tend to be more successful. Once lived and breathed by every employee, core purpose increases motivation and happiness at work and becomes a motivation for your customers to buy from you.

In his book Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action, Simon Sinek explains why some companies are particularly able to inspire others and differentiate themselves successfully. Why companies like Apple achieved such extraordinary success while others, with the same resources, failed.

He found that less successful companies often started with ‘What,’ then moved to ‘How,’ and many neglected even to mention ‘Why.’ Some hadn’t the faintest clue why they did what they did. 

In Sinek’s opinion, Apple was so successful because they started with ‘Why’. They challenged the status quo by thinking differently. This message was at the core of Apple’s marketing and the driving force behind its business operations. As a result, Simon says, Apple was able to attract customers who shared their fundamental beliefs. While if they had started with What, they wouldn’t be any different than any other computer company on the market.

If you start with Why, you will differentiate your business and attract the kind of customers who believe in what you believe. They will be willing to pay for your products not based on price, location or same-day delivery but because of you sharing the same causes, the same beliefs.

If you start with Why, you will differentiate your business and attract the kind of customers who believe in what you believe. They will be willing to pay for your products not based on price, location or same-day delivery but because of you sharing the same causes, the same beliefs.