In this solo episode, Josh Dougherty explores the concept of white space: the uncontested market position that lets a brand sell from strength instead of competing on price. Drawing on recent competitive analysis work, Josh explains why fitting in with your category is riskier than it looks, walks through a five-step process for running a competitive audit that reveals real gaps, and shares how to claim the white space you find without losing sight of who you are as an organization.
Josh Dougherty:
Thanks for joining me today on A Brave New Podcast. Today we're going to do something that's a little bit different from our normal episode in which we interview a branding or a marketing expert who's working at a healthcare or health tech brand. Today, you're going to spend time with me and we're going to dive deep into a topic I think is really relevant to anyone who's trying to be successful in branding or marketing today in the healthcare space, in any space really. And that conversation is about the search for white space. And at the end of the day, it's about how do we identify white space that separates you from your competition?
So what is white space? If you're not familiar with that term, we can dig into it a little bit, but white space, if we're going to use a simple definition, it's really a market or brand position that's uncontested or a gap that lets a brand sell without any competition. So for branding and as I'm working with clients on building their brand, finding white space is nothing short of the ultimate goal. It's priceless, right? Because if you can find a space where none of your competitors currently position themselves and you can set yourself up as the only one doing work in that space or approaching work in that specific way, you're able to stand out and you're able to really make some huge inroads on building an unassailable brand position that's going to allow you to sell from a position of strength and avoid price competition, all these sort of things.
So white space, as we think about branding and identifying gaps where your competition currently doesn't live, is essential to brand. So if you think about this, you might say, "Well, Josh, you talk all the time about uncovering the essence of a brand. Isn't that the north star of what we're looking for?" And sure, when we're doing branding, we are trying to understand what are the unique essences, the unique way that people go about doing their work, the unique memory that they're trying to share with their customers or their audiences. And that unique thing is what makes you stand out. But ultimately, truly great brands frame this unique value or this essence in a way that puts them in a space that is separate from their competitors as well. Because if you identify that you have a unique essence or what you consider a unique essence, but it's similar to all your other competitors, it doesn't really work from a branding perspective.
So in this episode, I really want to spend time unpacking that, and we are going to look at three things related to the search for white space. The first thing is why white space is essential or why looking like you fit into a category isn't actually safe. The second thing that we're going to spend time talking about is how to conduct a brand audit or a competitive audit that uncovers white space. And then finally, we're going to talk about how to pursue the white space that you find without sacrificing the core of who you are as an organization. If you can do all three of these things and understand these and really put them into practice in your organization, I think they'll have a big impact
So let's talk about the why first, why it's essential. Before we talk about why standing out is essential, I think it's important for us to talk about the instinct to fit in.
Most organizations, as they're getting going, look at their category and they see there's some accepted practices. Maybe there are common ways that people talk about their product or their service. Maybe there are common colors or common imagery that are used in marketing and advertising. Maybe there are accepted symbols like in healthcare—we could think about the cross that shows up in a lot of healthcare. Maybe there's the commonality of putting health at the end of every healthcare organization's name.
So there's common conventions that exist. And I think many organizations look at those conventions and they decide to copy the language, copy the visuals, maybe copy the positioning because it feels safe. It feels like you're going to fit in and be an accepted member of the club. And if everyone's saying these things, like if everyone's talking to patients in a specific way or to health tech buyers in a specific way, probably that's what buyers want to hear. So we want to make sure we sound like we have a familial resemblance to the other people in our market that we're competing against.
I think this instinct is natural. It's something that many people struggle with and work through. But the thing that I want to convey today is that fitting in actually is a real negative thing. It may feel safe or it may feel like we're accepted members of this category, but ultimately it actually looks like a thing that is really negative. It makes you look like everyone else. There's a sea of sameness effect that happens where if you're just trying to match everyone else in your category, you may match them really well, you may do great marketing, but you're just doing category advertising and you don't look any different from anyone else.
So a couple examples of this are related to work we've done recently with clients. We just completed a rig rebrand with a hospice organization out in Northern California. And during that time, we reviewed a number of different hospices and hope health providers in their market, and nearly every one of them led with compassionate care as a term, and the compassionate care that addresses physical, emotional, and spiritual needs.
Now it could be said like, "Oh, everyone's talking about this, so we need to lead with this too." But I hope you can understand also that if this becomes the main leading message throughout, it's going to be hard to stand out to seem any different from anyone else. And so this is an example where probably compassionate care is very ... Well, not probably. We know compassionate care is very important in the hospice space, but it shouldn't be the only core message that we're communicating. Otherwise, it's going to be hard to stand out.
Now, another example is from some work that we've done recently with a technology company. We do focus mostly in healthcare, but we do have a good amount of technology companies that we work with. And in an audit for one company that we're working with, we looked at firms ranging from national resellers to big-four consultancies as we were trying to understand their competitive landscape, the people that they're competing against for the dollars of their customers. And almost every brand claims some version of we simplify complexity. And this seems like a great thing for a consultancy to say for someone who's helping make technology work, but when everyone says the same thing, nobody's saying anything. If everyone's saying that they simplified complexity, how is a customer or your target audience going to remember you any differently when they are looking to make a purchase? They could just choose from anyone because you sound exactly the same as others.
So that's a bit of the cost of blending in because if you sound like everyone else and you really just look like another good option amongst other similar options in your category or your industry, you become a commodity and commodities have to compete on things that ultimately we don't want any of the brands that we work with to compete on. I don't think you do either. They have to compete on price, proximity, who called last. There's no really sticky idea that is going to have someone choose you over your competition.
And we identified a number in audits in the past, we've identified numbers of hundreds of million dollar organizations, large organizations whose brands come across as trustworthy but generic, which leaves them exposed to someone to disrupt the crowded field. And my hope as we get through this podcast is that you won't choose to be trustworthy but generic in your space, but you'll look for some white space.
And the nuance here is I'm not saying that you don't need to fit in at all in your category. It is important to look like you know what you're talking about and that you resemble in some way and have the chops or the key expertise to be able to succeed in your category. So my main advice here is that you have to do more than just fit. So in the hospice example, if you don't signal any compassion, you're going to lose, but compassion on its own as the only idea in the brand is not enough to stand out and be different.
For example, in the technology space too, you need to be able to show that you can provide stability and reduced risk. But if everyone's saying, "We simplify things, we provide stability and reduce risk," you need to not only convey that, but also convey a unique idea on top. So the rule of thumb here is that there are some table stakes, for lack of a better word, that you need to follow to fit in, but you need to stand apart on your position as well.
So now that we've kind of tackled why white space is essential—why it's essential to not just do great category advertising and look like everyone else in your space but to also stand out—I want to talk about how to conduct a competitive audit that uncovers that white space. There are five different steps that I would recommend going through here. So we'll go through each of them sequentially, but I'll give them to you now to begin with. So step one is defining the competitive set from the buyer's perspective, not yours. Step two is auditing each competitor the same way. Step three is mapping the overlaps. Step four is looking for gaps. And then step five is pressure testing what you find out.
So let's go through each of those real quick. Step one, defining the competitive set from the buyer's perspective, not yours. This is super important. We talk to a lot of customers and clients and they often say, "Well, we're a little bit unique. We don't have anyone that competes with us directly and there's no one that really looks like us." And when we have that conversation, I look at them and say, "I hear you." And likely there isn't anyone exactly like you. There might be people who are similar, but definitely hear you there. But I don't want to look at the people that you think you're similar with, but I want to understand who your customer is considering when they're making a decision between whether they want to work with you or with someone else.
That competitor may not have the same services, they may not have the same business model, they may not have the same structure, but they are a competitor if they are one of the top people that comes up into your customers' minds when they're making a purchase.
So you want to focus on the direct competitors here and identify the organizations your buyers actually put side by side with you when they make a decision. You can do a little research here to pull these out. So you likely, if you're even working in your space, you know who you bump up against in competitive pitches, et cetera. But your buyer's list, you can do research here to understand who they find when they search for a solution like yours, who they're referred to, who they're comparing on price.
So I think it's important to use maybe AI, to use some Google searching, to have conversations with your customers to understand, do you have the right customers in mind as you're moving to do a competitive audit or analysis and then move into building out some identifying a white space position for your organization?
And my advice to you is you might come up with three or four competitors, maybe your clients help you identify three or four more, but I would say as you're doing competitive analysis, I would look at no more than probably seven. And there's a reason for this. You can be exhaustive, you could look at 12 competitors, you could look at 14, but beyond kind of that 7 number, patterns start to blur and the audit turns into a research project instead of a strategic tool. So I would say choose your seven closest competitors, those people that are showing up in purchasing decisions, and then look at those competitors and do a deep audit to understand where they're positioning, what they are communicating to customers, how they convey their value, what channels they're using, all those sorts of things.
So once we have our competitors set, now it's time to audit. And I encourage you throughout this process, we need to audit each competitor the same way because at the end of the day, we want to be able to compare trends across all the competitors, identify where they are all the same, where they're different, who has a competitive space that's different than yours.
And so the first thing we want to look at are the basics. What's their size? How many employees do they have? What's their revenue? Where are they located? Where are the clients that they work with located? Who are their lighthouse clients? Getting these basics down helps us to understand just from a general perspective who you're competing with.
But then we want to dive deeper. We want to look at what they actually say about themselves. So we want to look at their mission, their vision, their values, spend some time looking at their origin story, their about page to know who they say they are, what is their story, why do they position themselves as they will? And this will start to give you some color about the perspective that they have on the world and how they like to approach their work that they're doing.
And then I would move beyond the specific things they're saying and try to identify or pinpoint for yourself. And this may require a little intuition and guesswork, like the position that they're actually or the essence that they're trying to project, what is their inferred brand essence? What are they trying to say they're the best at, the unique way that they do their work? What's the vibe of the brand? What are the key messages? We want to understand how they're talking about themselves, how they're trying to position themselves and how they want an experience with them to feel because all those things are essential as we're looking for white space. We want to understand how we can stand out on all those things: our essence, the vibe, the key messages.
And then we also want to look at what they sell. What is their services mix? Are they the same as yours? Are they different? How do they differ? How do they position their services differently from other folks? Are they pretty rigid in the services? Are they open? So I think we want to understand exactly what that mix is so that we can report back and compare that with the competition and with you.
And then I really encourage you as you do this, I think the temptation there is to only spend time on their website. But our goal through this competitive audit is to see and understand the brand as the buyer encounters it. So likely the buyer is going to spend way more time looking at them on multiple different channels rather than just looking at the about page of their website. So you need to take a broad view here. So, website is certainly something to look at, but I look at news coverage, press releases, social channels, podcasts that key people that work at their organization have been on, YouTube, webinars, events, case studies, reviews. Look anywhere they create content or anywhere that they're mentioned and try to catalog things together because we want to get a kind of a holistic view of who they are, how they represent themselves, what channels they're using, et cetera.
So once you have this information down for all seven of the competitors that you've identified, it's time to start doing more of the synthesis work than the collection or research work. I should mention, before I get done here, I think a huge aid in the last year for us has been using AI to get a lot deeper research done than we can maybe typically do just as individual people. We are huge fans of this. We recommend using AI to dig in deep and understand and research. But at the same time, I want to encourage you to make sure that you're double checking that work, Make sure you're getting AI to the LLM, whoever you're using. We use Claude as an organization to cite where they're pulling their data and challenge what data they're pulling because I want to make sure that we're not taking the AI's perspective for granted because sometimes it isn't right. And so, make sure that you're validating the research that you're doing there with good old common sense and a number of other things.
But once you have the data together, it's time to map the overlap. So I then like to put all seven organizations next to each other, look at their messaging, look at their visuals, look at their positioning and identify what are the messages, phrases, positioning, et cetera, that everyone is talking about that isn't white space. And I want you to be honest here as well about your own claims because you're probably coming in with preconceived notions of what you think is going to provide you white space. But if you're seeing ... like in the tech audit I was speaking about before, two of the things that we thought were going to be super differentiated for the client we're working with were this idea of independence and vendor neutrality. It felt like a differentiator until we saw that there were numerous people using the same language.
And so we need to make sure that we're not just validating our own thinking with our research, but if something comes up in the competitive analysis that really makes one of our ideas not make sense or means that we need to leave behind one of the preconceived notions that we had about the work we were doing, we need to be honest and do that because otherwise it's not really helpful.
So doing this, mapping the overlaps, will identify areas that everyone's talking the same and maybe we're talking the same. And so these aren't areas for us to pursue if we're looking for white space. The next thing is doing a gap analysis to look for gaps. That's step four because white space usually hides in those gaps. So the first thing is to look for positioning gaps.
These are territories no one has claimed. In the technology audit I mentioned, few competitors actually owned that space of advising executives to make true decisions about their technology. And for the most part, most people sat downstream in delivery procurement and operations. They didn't say we want to be a thought partner to help you wrestle through what decisions to actually make. So there was an example of a positioning gap that could be taken advantage of.
You want to look at say/do gaps as well. There are many times when a competitor will claim something, but its execution doesn't support it. So if you can look and identify maybe an organization that is saying something but they aren't following through on it, that might be a gap that you can do or a position that you can take by actually following through on the same thing.
Then I think about the unleveraged assets that could be highlighted more. So sometimes competitors don't talk about something related to a brand like unique facility, a proprietary program or a meaningful partnership. You might be able to own that theme, the theme of partnership or the theme of a proprietary program. If they aren't talking about it, might be a place that you can major.
And then look for channel gaps. Where are people not spending their time? This might be a good chance for you to own a channel. So maybe there's no one in your space that's running a podcast or people have abandoned a podcast, you could come back and claim that space of authority. Sometimes white spaces—showing up in channels where others aren't— iswhere you can be heard. This may be a YouTube channel. It could be some other place. So we're going to look for, as I mentioned, positioning gaps, say/do gaps, unleveraged assets, and then channel gaps. And all four of these items can help lead to white space.
And then step five is we want to pressure test what you find. So you may have identified through this audit four or five places or opportunities to have white space to be able to stand out and position yourself different from your competition. But then you need to ask the hard question of about that white space. Is that white space something that you can own while being true to yourself as an organization? Does it actually match you as an org?
And then the next thing to ask is not only does it match you as an org, but could a competitor come in and claim that space tomorrow? Are they actually really well-qualified to own that space as well or is it true that they aren't, that it's really a place that you can stand out?
And then the third thing to think about, and I think maybe one of the most important things, is does the buyer actually care? Does your target audience actually care about that positioning? So some white space is empty because nobody wants to be there or nobody is there, but some white space is empty because nobody actually cares about that space, nobody who's going to make a purchase or buy. And so in that case, you don't want to be in white space that isn't attractive.
So now that we talked about doing an audit, you may … hopefully, after doing the audit, you've come away with three or four opportunities for white space. I want to talk about how to pursue that white space without sacrificing who you are because there's this kind of trap that we need to think about.
You need to make sure you're not chasing the gap instead of expressing the essence. And what do I mean by this? A gap on a competitive analysis that's identified in a competitive analysis is really tempting, but if it isn't rooted in who you are, you won't be able to deliver on it and buyers are really going to notice.
So the best white space sits at the intersection of your unique essence and a need or gap in the market. So what I would do is start with the essence and then find the frame of where you're going to showcase it. So the order matters. I would work on your essence first and then find the white space next. Your essence is what you believe, how you work, and why you exist. It's a unique way you do your work. It shouldn't change based on what competitors are doing, but white space, you could think of it as a lens that tells you how to frame that essence so that it lands somewhere that no one else is standing.
Think of it as a reframe, not a pivot. In most cases, the white space a brand ends up owning was already there in its DNA. It just wasn't being said clearly or was buried under category language. So the audit shouldn't invent your position. It should show you which parts of who you already are that the market isn't hearing from anyone else.
So if you're looking to find specific places of white space that you can own, there are some questions you can ask. You could say, "What do we believe that our customers aren't saying?" Simple question to be able to find a white space. "What do our best clients say about us that no competitor could claim with a straight face?" That's a great question and it's going to help you identify white space that's true to your essence of who you are as an organization. And then finally, which gaps of the gaps we found would feel most natural for us to step into and which would require us to become something we're not?
So the ones that are natural, you should move forward with and pursue, but the ones that aren't natural probably should be left to someone else to fill. And, ultimately, the test is if you're pursuing a gap, that if you decide to pursue a gap that means abandoning your essence, it's the wrong gap to pursue. Real white space should feel less like a stretch and more like finally saying out loud what was already true about you.
So another thought here is don't try to out-compete a competitor on their own turf. If someone is already owning something, you're probably not going to go in and win over the market. They have a head start on you, so don't try to own something or out-own something that's already been owned.
And next tip is to acknowledge the trade-offs openly. Every position has weakness, like a boutique advisory position wins on intimacy and judgment. If you're a boutique technology firm that's doing technology advisory, you win on intimacy and judgment, but it can look small next to firms that can deploy hundreds of people to work on a problem. Openly acknowledge that. Owning the white space means you can't appeal to everyone, and that's kind of the point here.
And then the last tip I would say is to prove it. Don't just claim it. So a position you announce, but don't demonstrate. Just creates a new say/do gap, the same one you spotted your in your competitors. You need to show content, case studies and have a channel presence that backs up your positioning within a white space, otherwise you're going to have trouble owning it or making progress.
So that's how I would recommend pursuing white space without sacrificing who you are. And that brings us to the end of our conversation today. I want to recap on the three ideas that we talked about. The first is a white space is essential because there's a natural desire to fit in because it feels safe, but ultimately developing a brand that just speaks like the rest of your category leads to commoditization and competing on price or whether someone likes you more than another competitor or whether they talked to you more recently. This isn't something that's ownable. So white space is essential because it's the only thing that allows us to begin to sell not just on price or not just on convenience, but because you're the more desirable option.
And then the second idea is that a disciplined competitive analysis or audit, looking at direct competitors chosen through your buyers' eyes, comparing messages side by side, looking at say/do and channel gaps is how you can find and identify real white space.
And then finally, the third idea, which goes hand in hand with this, is the best white space is where your authentic essence meets an unclaimed need. So it's great, you may identify 10 different gaps in your audit, but only 5 match who you are and the specific way that you approach your work. So maybe you focus on those 5, and I'd encourage you to even get down to 1 or 2 things that you can really own that are living in the white space.
So I encourage you as you dive in, hopefully this has been helpful to help you think about how do you stand out, how do you find that white space that's going to be a good place for you to attract customers where no one else currently is. But I encourage you to remember that white space isn't found by looking only at competitors or only at yourself. It's in the space between these two things where we can find something that's going to truly allow our organizations to stand out and win in the marketplace.
So if you want to chat about this or if you want to ever chat about how to run a competitive audit more in depth, I'd encourage you to reach out. I'd love to have a conversation with you. You can get in touch with me on LinkedIn or shoot me an email at josh@abravenew.com. I'd love to have a conversation.
And with that, I'll wrap up and we'll be back soon with more content. Have a great week.