When writing any copy for your business or service one important element will be your USP – your Unique Selling Point. Without it, there’s not going to be anything to set you apart from the competition.
A USP is a statement used in marketing your products and services to tell your target audience what makes your offering different from your competitors and why it’s a better choice.
Having a clear USP makes your branding and marketing message stronger and allows you to clarify the tone and direction of your marketing strategy. Being able to define one specific thing your organisation offers that your competitors don’t, or one that you do better, or a way you solve your client’s problem more effectively, is a valuable tool to help you stand out in the marketplace.
Identifying your unique selling point might feel a bit daunting but by asking yourself these questions it will help you drill down it to what distinguishes you from the competition.
1. Who is your target audience?
Many organisations solely focus on what they are selling without thinking about who they are selling to. By identifying who your customer is, what their problem is and how you can solve it, and when and how they make their purchases can then lead to a much more targeted delivery of your marketing strategy.
Establish the buyer persona of your targeted customer by thinking about the following:
- What age bracket do they fall into?
- What is their level of education?
- What social media networks do they use?
- What industry are they in?
- What’s their job role?
- What goals or objectives do they have?
- What are their biggest challenges – what are their problems?
- How and where do they get their information?
2. How do your existing customers find your business?
Understanding how your existing customers find your products and services helps in defining your USP and increasing your market share. For example, if the customers who are buying from you are coming from a particular website or publication you could choose to spend more of your budget in that area and less on avenues that aren’t bringing in business.
Tools like Google Analytics can track traffic to your website to help you identify where they are coming to you from.
3. What do you do that’s better or different to your competitors?
Identifying the strengths of your product, service, or organisation is time well spent as you can then shout about them to your targeted audience.
So, what are you better at? If your product is better, why is it better? Is your customer service second to none? What’s unique about your location? Is your pricing better? You want to come away with a statement that says We are the company that is the best at XXX and be known as such.
4. What do my competitors do better?
Knowing your weakness is actually a strength. It helps you assess whether you can invest time in improving, put a spin on it, or move focus away from it.
If your main competitor has a better online booking system than you, your organisation can look into upgrading yours.
If the local market leader excels at customer service, consider investing in staff training.
If you’re more expensive, identify what you are offering that represents value for that additional cost rather than slashing your prices
If, for example, you’re offering accommodation in an old building and your competition is a newly built hotel, rather than try to compete with them, look at what your older property has that theirs doesn’t. Are there points of historical interest? Does it have a story that would draw people in?
If you do have a weakness that isn’t easily fixed, then don’t draw attention to it – keep the focus on your strengths.
5. What makes you unique?
You probably already know the answer to this but haven’t really thought of them as selling points. Think about involving the whole team to identify your unique offering and encourage them to be aware of your differences and share them with your target customers.
- Do you pride yourself on going one step further for your customers? How do you do this?
- Have you an exclusive deal with a local producer to use their products?
- Are your environmental credentials better?
- Does your product solve a problem quicker, easier, cheaper than anyone else’s?
- What do you do that’s different?
- Do you have a powerful offer or give a specific guarantee?
- Do you have award-winning staff?
- Have your products, services, or organisation been given any accolades?
Don’t forget to ask your existing customers why they chose to buy from you; if there’s a recurrent theme, you already have your USP.
6. Structuring your USP
Now that you’ve identified your target audience, your strengths and weaknesses, and what makes you unique, you need to pull that together into a memorable, achievable message and ensure all of your marketing literature contains your USP.
Some examples of organisation’s unique selling points.
- Domino’s Pizza You get fresh, hot pizza delivered to your door in 30 minutes or less or it’s free.
- Premier Inn A good night’s sleep or your money back
- Avis We’re number two. We try harder.
- DeBeers A diamond is forever
One point to note is if you are making claim that it is true and if you are stating you are better, bigger, cheaper, quicker than your competitor, then make sure you can deliver on the message.
Do you need help creating content for your business or reaching out to the press and media?
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