I get a lot of traffic to my site for the keyword "differentiation vs competition" and it's obviously a topic that needs discussion.

The question is - how do we marketers and sales people actually achieve differentiation?

When a "class of products" matures sufficiently, the market forms and the product-class makes it across the chasm into the early majority, pragmatic or value-added buyers engage and differentiation becomes important. Later in the technology adoption life-cycle laggards or value-offered buyers emerge.

A product class means exactly that; in the early market you may be alone in the market, striving to get found on the Internet and to convert visitors to look at your product. But as the market matures, competitors will emerge; - either fast-followers or innovators working on the same idea at the same time; competitors that look and feel and from their descriptions on the Internet, appear to offer the same functionality as yours.

Your product might be cheaper, faster or have more gizmo's, but the base functionality provided in the product class appears to be the same to the buyer.

In the Internet World, where competitive advantage is ephemeral, differentiation is a major issue for many companies and few companies understand how to achieve it.

In the B2B and B2C space, differentiation is achieved through the quality and relevance of the conversations and interactions your sales and support team is having with buyers.

Sales and support conversations and Buyer-Relevant Messaging on the Internet are driven by a Messaging Architecture that clearly identifies the interests of your target buyers and speaks to them initially via their specific interests or goals, the issues preventing them from achieving them, and the cost of not achieving them.