What makes you or your business unique and different?

Creating a business is the easy part, but sustaining, making it unique and stand out is the challenge. Once you discover what your secret sauce exactly is, it will make it a thousand times easier to create an offer that converts for your audience. Because when you truly nail where you are, your business will be uniquely positioned in the market and everything will flow from there.

In today’s mini-episode, we’re going to go through what a USP, a Unique Selling Proposition is, and how you can discover yours. At GrowGetters, we are huge believers in systematically using methods and models to help you work smarter, not harder.

What Is A USP?

Unique Selling Proposition or USP is what makes you different from the competition. Not only your direct competitors but competitors in similar industries.

Knowing the right way to position yourself and your products can mean a difference between standing out and blending in. Pinpointing your USP requires some hard soul searching and creativity. The great thing is forming an opinionated and deliberate USP helps you focus your marketing strategy and will directly influence your messaging, branding, copywriting, and other marketing decisions.

At its core, a USP shows what you stand for in marketing. It’s called a USP peg. It helps the business or brand owner know which peg they need to hang their marketing strategy on. A business can peg its USP on its product characteristics, price structure, and placement strategy, which has its location and distribution plan or promotional strategy. These are what marketers called the four Ps. Tweaking each one gives your business a market position that sets it apart from its competitors. 

A USP is a perfect mix of what your customers want, and what your business does. 

Ways To Find Your USP

Number one, make a list of all the potential differentiators for your business and what you sell. This can be a shopping list of differentiators, and what you do differently. If you sell multiple products and have multiple services, you will need to do this for each offer you have, but start this activity on your overarching brand. Stand-out products and compelling marketing messages rely on precision, they solve the exact right problem and communicate that benefit to customers in their own words.

Number two, research the competition. Who are your competitors? What are the USPs? Do a bit of research googling similar terms that closely relate to your business. A good tip is to collect your research in a Google sheet or a Word doc. And do this regularly as your competitors will evolve over time. Sometimes, they change rapidly depending on the speed of your market. So when you document your findings, you can always refer back to them.

Number three, compare your most unique angles against your customer needs. Can you match your differentiators against where your competition is positioned? With what your audience wants? Are there any customer needs that haven’t been fulfilled? Do you see any pain points that you can appeal to that your competitors haven’t?

Number four, compile your data and get writing. Start drafting potential USPs, clear phrases that define what makes you or your business unique, sift through the information you’ve gathered, and the things you’ve learned start to single out your strongest USP. We have a simple formula you can follow to craft a USP statement. First, insert your business, offers, products, or service for your target market. Second, add your value proposition, what value are you delivering. And third, unlike the alternative, you list your key differentiators or the single most key differentiator. 

Number five put your USP to the test. Think about viable ways you could test it with your customers or audience or both. Check to see if your new USP hits the mark. You could start seeding it on your socials, on your stories as opposed to your Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram bios, on your H1 or H2 on your website, and in sales conversations. Wherever it’s appropriate, find the right place to pressure test your USP. You will see if it’s successful if you get good feedback, or hopefully new sales.

That’s all from us today. See you next time and let’s get growing! 

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