Honing a compelling Unique Selling Proposition (USP) is one of the key planks of your overall marketing strategy. Get it right, and every other aspect of your marketing efforts will benefit. Fail to develop a USP, or saddle yourself with a weak one, and you’ll be swimming against the tide from the get go.
Let’s look at five basic techniques you can use to put together a USP that will deliver value for both you and your clients for many years to come.
- Don’t Be Afraid To Target The Perfect Customer
Not every customer that walks through the door is going to be a stellar one, but that’s no reason not to do your damndest to make it so! Don’t short-change yourself when it comes to crafting your USP – aim for the best possible segment of the market you’re trying to attract.
Consumers are aspirational by nature so you’re not necessarily limiting your target audience here at all. Aim high from the outset while not alienating your core audience.
- Bring Some Personality Into Play
The most obviously unique aspect of your business is you. If you’re comfortable with leveraging aspects of your personality or story, by all means bring that into the mix. People naturally react better to other people than they do to faceless corporations – simply adding elements of your own personality to your USP could be enough to turn it from good to great. If you go down this route, you’re also investing in a bit of personal brand building that can pay off for years to come.
- Boil It Down To The Basics
Your USP can be deployed in all sorts of ways: spun out at length on an About page and appropriate marketing materials, or condensed down to a pithy strapline on your site’s header.
Remember one thing – you will always need an elevator pitch version of your USP.
Once you’ve honed in on the essence of your USP, keep revising and revisiting well past the point you naturally want to. You’re looking for the shortest possible way of getting your basic point across.
- Own The Problem
It should go without saying that you’re expected to be an expert on the problems your customers face. Go the extra mile and own those problems.
This means that rather than pussyfooting around the issues your target audience may have, you run full forward into them by trying to get inside their heads and spending the extra time required to work out how your product or service really addresses their deeper needs, desires and fears.
Define and interrogate the core problems your potential customers are facing, while considering every aspect of how your company uniquely solves them, and ideas for viable USPs will naturally appear.
- Reach Out To Your Current Clients
Unless you’re at the absolute beginning of your entrepreneurial journey, you almost certainly have clients and customers you’ve already knocked it out of the park for. Reach out to these people and ask what it was that made your work with them unique. You may be amazed at the insight it provides!
Perfecting your USP is as much an art as a science, but the difference a well-crafted one can make to your business is potentially immense. Use the five tips we’ve discussed above to guide you in your initial brainstorming and it won’t be long before that perfect proposition starts coming into focus.
