Did you know that the average American is subjected to over 5,000 advertising messages…each and every single day?
5,000.
Yet of those 5,000, how many do you respond to?
Not many, right? Why is that?
It’s because most of the messages didn’t provide any meaningful point of differentiation—no solid reason for you to choose one company over the other.
Do you want to cut through the noise and make an impact with your marketing messages?
Develop your business’ Unique Selling Proposition (USP).
Your USP is the unique benefit or appeal that you offer that none of your competitors do. It’s the reason you give your prospects to choose you instead of the other guys.
If you’re a hotel, you’d be hard-pressed to stand out. But if you had live entertainment, free drinks and hot hors d`oeurves in the lobby from 5 -7 pm, that would get attention and your hotel would stand out. One of my manufacturers received positive comments from a customer regarding their ability to re-engineer a product to significantly reduce processing times and improve the end product. It has become his USP and it really resonates with his target market!
So how should you set yourself apart from the crowd? Here are 6 USP angles you could use…
1. Cheaper price. WARNING: this is the weakest angle! It might seem like the easiest, but the reason most entrepreneurs use low price as a USP is because they don’t know how to compete any other way. In fact, most people make buying decisions based on value, NOT PRICE. So find ways to increase your value without keeping your price low.
2. Offer more. Offer your customers more bang for their buck in the form of bundled packages, additional product, maintenance service, warranties, and so on.
3. Better service. Become obsessed with giving your clients an exceptionally warm and personal experience, and they will choose you over and over again — and refer you to their friends.
4. Convenience. Stay open later or on weekends. Deliver. Offer drive-through service. Make it easy to order products online. Provide automatic order filling. Innovate ways to be easier to work with and more convenient than the competition and you’ve got a fortune in the making.
5. Specialize. Sometimes less is more. Narrow your field of focus by specifically serving a single market segment—say, women or children or soccer moms.
6. Money-back guarantee. Try an on-time guarantee, or a quality of service guarantee that comes with some sort of money-back offer. Not only can this capture your prospects’ attention fast, it’s a HUGE credibility booster!
If there’s nothing unique about you, people will only buy from you because of convenience or price, nothing more. You’ll never be able to raise your prices–if there’s anyone doing it cheaper, people will buy from them. If you don’t know what makes you different or special, how can you possibly convince a potential customer you are?
Don’t underestimate the power of uniqueness—simply by doing something different you can get lots of attention.
These are just a few possibilities—you’re limited only by your understanding of your prospects’ needs and your imagination. But whatever you do, create a compelling USP: fortunes have been made with one, and lost without one.
Want to craft a stand-out USP for your business? Download our FREE USP and Guarantee Worksheet and we’ll take you step-by-step through the process!
