Unique Selling Proposition - How to be more valuable to your customers
19 steps you can use to find and refine your USP (Unique Selling Proposition) and make your business more profitable
How can your business stand out from your competitors?
…and how can your business be the business of choice for your ideal customers?
Standing out and being able to show your clear value is a challenge for many businesses and greatly limits their capacity to grow efficiently.
Without a clear voice in the market, your capacity to grow will be greatly restricted.
This clear voice is often referred to as your Unique Selling Proposition (USP), and it forms a key foundational piece in creating an efficient marketing strategy.
The power of defining your Unique Selling Proposition
Without a clear USP
With an effective USP
How is a USP different to your value proposition?
You may have heard references to value proposition (VP) and unique selling proposition (USP) and wondered what the difference is.
While there’s some overlap between these, your value proposition is the longer term benefit realised by your clients, whereas your USP is a more immediate benefit that helps you stand out from your competitors and give people a clear reason to buy.
For example, imagine you were providing tracking software to freight companies. Your value proposition could be that your system is the easiest to use for the freight company and their customers. But, understanding that a key pain point for freight companies is the speed of implementing a new system, you’ve developed specific time savings around this and tested this against rival platforms, so your USP is “at least 47% faster to implement than leading freight management systems”.
In this example, the USP is specific and focused on a key concern around implementing a new platform. The value proposition however is much broader and provides many of the elements that are the reason that freight companies keep using the platform long term.
What makes a good unique selling proposition?
How can you develop your value proposition for your business?
It’s one thing to know that having your USP deliver a clear and compelling message is important, and quite another to get it right. So the next step is knowing how to create one that is effective for your business.
One thing to recognise with your USP, is that this is a process, so will often develop with your business and need more than just a one-off brainstorming session.
Taking the time to define and refine your value to your customers can pay exponential returns, and is one of the most critical investments you can make in the efficiency of all your future marketing and sales activities.
Here’s some steps that can help you and your team better understand the value that you provide your customers and leverage this to create your Unique Selling Proposition.
If you’ve got a wide range of customer or product and service types, start by focusing on your core offer and build out from there.
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1. Understand Your Target Audience:
There's nothing quite like the feeling of being understood...But, it’s very hard to make your customer feel understood if you don’t actually understand them.
Knowing who you are trying to reach and what they value is the foundation of being able to create an effective USP. Take the time to clearly define and identify your ideal customers via surveys, market research and interviews with existing customers.
Every step you take to better understand your customer and then helping them feel understood, is a step towards more effective marketing.
If you have multiple groups within your target audience/s (and you likely will), don't feel the need to create a generalised avatar to fit them all, but rather, create several avatars of your target audience/s which you can later use to fine tune your USP to each one's specific needs.
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2. Identify Your Strengths:
What is it about your business that you do particularly well and better than your competitors?
Evaluate and make a note of your business's strengths, expertise, and unique capabilities.
While it may seem counterintuitive to only focus on a small subset of customers in your market, if they’re a good fit for your business and what you do is particularly relevant, why wouldn’t you focus at least some of your sales and marketing efforts directly on them?
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3. Assess Competitors:
Who or what is competing for your customers?If your customers didn’t choose your solution, what would their other options be?
Review and analyse what your competitors are offering to your target audience (for both the obvious competitors and the less obvious ones). The key here is to do this through the eyes of your customer… not just from the perspective of your market category.
Are there any gaps, or areas that your business can provide something different or better?
A good business will do things better, but a great business will be different AND better.
It all starts with assessing the competitive landscape through a different lens… and then deploying the strengths of your solution to what you find… or adapting so you’re a more obvious choice to fill the gap.
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4. Identify Pain Points:
What is it that bothers your target audience?
If you can clearly identify the frustrations and challenges they’re facing, you’ll be well positioned to tailor your USP to bridge the gap and offer a compelling solution.
The most relevant solution in the eyes of your prospective customer wins…
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5. Focus on Benefits and Results:
As a business owner or sales manager, it’s all too easy to focus on the product or service itself, but your customers are driven by outcomes.
What is the actual impact that having your product or service is going to have on your customer’s life? Does it save them time, allow them to achieve a financial goal faster, build a relationship faster, have more energy to enjoy time with family, or something else?
If you can clearly demonstrate how you can help your customer achieve their goals, they’ll be far more receptive to your proposal of how you can deliver that outcome.
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6. Collaborate with Employees:
Are the answers to your best marketing messaging hiding with your team?
In refining your USP, are you utilising what your team is gaining from their customer interactions? Your sales team, account managers, support team and technicians are all listening to your prospects and customers on a daily basis. When these conversations are reviewed, you can uncover valuable insights into your customer’s values, priorities, frustrations, goals, pain points and more.
The only question is, have you taken the time to collaborate with your team to identify these?
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7. Ask for External Feedback:
Sometimes the challenge with identifying what the key strengths of your business are, is that for you, they’re normal… it’s just what you do, right?
But what’s easy and normal for you, could be significant for others, and the very reason they choose your solution.
So when identifying or refining your Unique Selling Proposition, external feedback can be pivotal in identifying where you make the business.
A good starting point here is knowing why your customers chose your business and continue to choose your business. The real value they’re getting from you, may not be what you think.
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8. Analyse Customer Reviews and Testimonials:
Pay attention to online reviews and testimonials from your customers. Look for recurring themes and positive aspects that customers appreciate about your service. This can help identify unique features that contribute to your USP.
More than just looking at reviews collectively, it can be good to sort these into reviews by product lines or from each of your customer segments or avatars. This can help define not only your strengths and weaknesses, but also contextualise which customer group you are best serving.
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9. Leverage Data and Analytics:
When you’re trying to establish or refine your Unique Selling Proposition, some of what your customers tell you isn’t by what they say directly, but by how they respond.
This is where having effective data and analytics is crucial. If you’re not tracking interactions with your emails, blog posts, social media, advertising and other marketing materials, how do you know what topics are resonating with your customers and prospects?
The responses you’re getting (or not getting) could be telling you a lot. The only question is, are you able to hear what they’re telling you?
Is reporting an area that your business needs help with?
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10. Conduct Surveys and Focus Groups:
Are you frequently getting emails asking to complete surveys and feedback?Many large online retailers and booking sites send surveys out relentlessly because they work.
Engage with your existing customers, target audience, and potential clients through surveys or focus groups. Ask them about their perception of your business and what sets you apart from competitors. Their feedback can provide valuable insights into your USP.
A key point here is to tailor the survey method to your customers. For example, email surveys work for many scenarios, but if you sell highly bespoke solutions, your survey method could be to take a key client out for lunch and request their feedback that way. Take the time to make the request well and the value of what you get in return could be infinitely more insightful.
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11. Explore Brand Values:
Consider your business's core values and mission. If your values align with your target audience, it can become a part of your USP.
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12. Offer Specialisation or Niche Expertise:
If your business specialises in a particular niche or industry, highlight this expertise. Niche specialisation can attract clients seeking highly focused and tailored services.
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13. Price Positioning:
While competing solely on price is often not sustainable, offering competitive pricing or unique pricing models can be a part of your USP.
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14. Look for Emotional Connections:
Consider how your service can create emotional connections with your customers. Addressing their emotions and values can make your USP more compelling.
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15. Differentiate Based on Customer Journey:
Consider how your service provides a unique experience throughout the customer journey. From the initial contact to after-sales support, a seamless and differentiated experience can be part of your USP.
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16. Highlight Success Stories:
If your business specialises in a particular niche or industry, highlight this expertise. Niche specialisation can attract clients seeking highly focused and tailored services.
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17. Be Clear and Concise:
Your USP should be clear, concise, and easy to understand. Avoid jargon or complicated language. It should communicate your unique value in a straightforward manner.
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18. Communicate Consistently:
Once you've identified your USP, ensure that it is communicated consistently across all marketing materials, website, social media, and client interactions.
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19. Test and Refine:
Craft different versions of your USP and test them with your target audience. Gather feedback and make improvements based on their responses.
The more of these steps that are done, the more valuable and unique your selling proposition will be. If you’ve got a newer business or smaller team, start with the first 5 steps and you’ll be on your way to greatly clarifying how you can reach new customers more effectively.
Need help defining your USP?
For tasks like creating your Unique Selling Proposition, many businesses find it most effective to have an experienced facilitator guide you through the process.
If you’d like to explore how Vizzably can help you define and use your USP to grow your business more efficiently, you can reach out to us via the form below so one of our team can get in touch and explore how we can work with you to get the best results.
