Introduction
A unique selling proposition is more important today than ever because of the intense market competition across sectors. Your unique selling proposition is a specific attribute which sets you apart from competitors and provides customer with a rationale to buy off your product or hire your services. So, when more and more businesses are entering the market space with the similar products and services, then only you need a clear strategy for offering them a special reason to patronize your business.
What Is a USP?
A USP is a short and long-term competitive advantage of your business to offer customer’s specific benefits. It should tell why you and your solution are different and superior to the other choices. Your USP informs the target customers why they should buy from you instead of going to any of the many other businesses around. It captures your value proposition as an organization, perhaps the primary way you’re different from other competitors.
Some key elements of an effective USP include:
- Specificity: It can’t be vague and about your company in general, it needs to point out the advantages of your business and products over those of your competitors. It is also critical to dive deeper into your uniqueness proposition or what is commonly known as the special sauce.
- Clarity: Communicate concisely and specifically preferring to write in plain language that a lay customer can easily comprehend. Avoid being too cute with your copy, the more complex you make your message the more confusing it becomes to most people.
- Relevance: Bear in mind that it has to communicate a benefit your target market or requires at some level. Care about what they are concerned about.
- Credibility: Ladies and gentlemen, do not utter something you will not be able to substantiate. It must be one that is real and backed up by evidence.
Why A Powerful USP Is So Important
In the past, a business might have been able to create a weak and vacuous, full of bombastic statements, value proposition and get away with it. But modern buyers do not lack it and are surrounded by a vast number of choices and receive hundreds of advertising messages a day. They switch off that information source which they deem constitutes common hype and overly-melodramatic. A clear USP alone is like a lighthouse amidst a storm.
The right USP serves multiple critical functions:
- Draws attention: It grabs the attention of the browse and be useful in changing them into customers in an environment filled with stiff competition.
- Overcomes skepticism: It ensures that it is proving the proposition that you offer value more efficiently to consumers than competing goods.
- Informs purchase decisions: It allows the customer to learn precisely why your product serves their need to a better degree than all the competing ones.
With no clear, focused and visible USP you end up being a part of the wall and end up losing sale to those who take the time and have a very clear USP.
Crafting Your USP
To manage to come up with a good USP then there will be need to engage in some strategic thinking on your part with regard to your business alongside the target customers. Here is a process to identify what sets you apart:
Research the competition: Subjectively determine positioning strategies of other market participants. What do they say it creates for the business that is unique? What areas of message and content do people tend to pay attention to?
Understand customer psychographics: Look beyond customer segments, to what these ideal customers value and the factors that drive the consumption of their products.
Analyze your strengths: Self-check your products, services, processes and other assets. self, conduct self- survey and reflect on attribute 3: assess product type by viewing technical characteristics to determine how product or service offering outcompete others.
Identify the chief customer need: The key objective here is to ascertain the major, or sometimes a single, need of your target audience and whether this need is over or under met by rivals at present.
Bring it all together: Based on your market, customer, competitor research, write a coherent and succinct USP statement promising a solution to a particular need you know you are best suited to address.
Refine through testing: Develop hypotheses about so-called unique selling propositions and experiment with customers with them. Move through the feedback loop to get to No, the USP that is most conducted among consumers.
Ways of Presenting Your Unique Selling Proposition
Well done you have come up with an excellent claims sub heading which is your Unique Selling Proposition. But the job isn’t done yet. For it to do its magic, you must consistently communicate it across platforms:
- Website: Since your homepage is the first page that a visitor will view; your unique selling proposition should appear on this page, included in the headline and possibly, the navigation bar. When it is contextually placed around the various site pages, it simply strengthens the message.
- Sales collateral: All white papers, product one sheets, case studies and all other sales material have to explain why you are capable of creating value.
- Pitches: Regardless of whether you have to introduce your business idea to investors or the product to the potential buyer, the unique selling proposition should be on the presenting table right from the start.
- Ads: Any paid ads search, social, banners, and others are applying strict restrictions to the space to consider the key focused differentiation prospects you offer.
- Content: Your special sauce must be mentioned in blog posts, videos, testimonials, and any other content asset that will be created.
- Packaging: In such as cases, point what makes you unique as selling physical products right from the product’s package!
- Employees: Ensure that each of your employees fully grasps and can relay your proposed USP across to the customer.
Ultimately what that means is, when you are consistent across different channels, you are not only building yourself into the minds of the customers but also the employees that you hire. Such alignment can be kept simple while ensuring every point of contact strengthens why you are unique from the others.
Manage Your USP as Living Capital
Smart companies understand that Key Buyer Salience requires evolution over time throughout the company’s life cycle. It is therefore recommended that, as you grow into new markets or experiencing shifting customer requirements, you should reconsider your core competencies after every 6- 12 months.
It may be that new entrants entered and nibbled at the points of parity you once held. On the other hand, lower levels of emergence technologies or service capabilities may have created opportunities for differentiation.
Your USP is a living and breathing part of your business, so look at it in that way. Maintain and evolve it as market context becomes more relevant in defining business environments. You should also track indicators as conversion rates to understand when it is high time to reapproach the differentiation story.
Thus, irrespective of the specific industry you are in, you need to be outstanding in terms of your unique selling proposition.
For some companies, they have closed their mind arguing that the carving of differentiation is inconceivable within their sector. However, with some hard work and imagination, you will find where you excel at fulfilling buyer needs more than other options.
So even in almost oversold market segments, such as restaurants or retailing, remarkably performing merchants stand out by offering thought through and focused added value to consumers. Your USP can maliciously centre around a proprietary method of menu preparation, atmosphere or a loyalty service.
On this basis, it is clear that with understanding of what sets you apart and consistency in the way you communicate that fact to your customers and the world at large, your business will be capable of operating efficiently and making a profit even if you are competing in a very saturated market. In distil that you are the best and involve your unique selling point in a proud manner in any conversation with your customers.