Open five competitor websites in any category and the copy converges. Innovative, trusted, end-to-end, customer-first. Everyone reached the same words by the same route: they described the category and left themselves out of it.

Here is a method for finding the sentence that belongs to one company alone.

Step one: the swap test

Take every claim on your homepage. Replace your name with your nearest competitor's. Read it again.

Any sentence that survives the swap is describing the category, and category description belongs to everyone. Cut it, or make it specific enough to break.

On most homepages, the bulk of the copy goes on the first pass. What remains is your true starting point, and it is always shorter than expected.

Step two: map what your category always says

Collect the headlines, subheadings and proof claims of your top ten competitors in one document. Patterns appear within minutes: the same three adjectives, the same promise, the same proof points in the same order.

That document is a map of crowded ground. The open space around it is where a distinct claim can live.

Step three: name your trade-off

Every position has a cost. A company that is faster is usually less customised. A specialist covers fewer use cases. A cheaper option does less.

Categories converge because everyone claims every benefit at once, which makes each claim weightless. Naming the trade-off makes the rest believable, and it turns away the buyers who would have churned.

A useful check: would a competitor happily claim the opposite? If every competitor would sign it too, it is table stakes.

Step four: swap adjectives for evidence

Adjectives are opinions about yourself. Evidence can be checked.

  • Fast becomes the number of days, measured across your last twenty projects.
  • Experienced becomes how many times you have solved this problem, and in which industries.
  • Trusted becomes your retention figure, or the length of your longest client relationship.
  • Innovative becomes the specific thing you built that others have yet to.

A checked number beats an adjective on recall, on credibility and on the chance that someone repeats it in a meeting you are absent from.

What sounding the same costs

One paid campaign test shows it clearly. Four campaigns, one quarter, one budget, audiences of similar seniority. Click prices were close: $79 for a cybersecurity audience, $74 for IT service management.

After the click, they split. Cybersecurity converted 5.4% of clickers. IT service management converted 1.1%, one lead from 92 clicks, at $6,775 per lead 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 shows up as a line on a media invoice.

When products are similar

Sometimes the products are alike. Four platforms do the same job to a similar standard. You can still stand apart in four places outside the feature list.

A point of view

Two identical products can hold opposite beliefs about how the work should be done. Beliefs attract people who share them, and they are hard to copy, because a competitor who adopts yours looks like a follower.

The buying experience

Published pricing, a working trial, clear answers about limits. The product stays the same while choosing it becomes easier than choosing the alternatives.

A specific audience

A general tool for everyone competes with every general tool. The same tool aimed at one segment, in that segment's language, with that segment's proof, competes with far fewer.

A recognisable voice

A voice people recognise before they see the logo does commercial work, because recognition is what puts a name on a shortlist 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 from memory, and someone in your market would argue with it.

If everyone agrees with it, the sentence is empty.