A recent survey by McKinsey & Company found that companies with a well-defined USP saw a 15% higher customer retention rate. So stop sucking at nailing your USP and find out what your customers really really want.
Find Your USP and Conquer the World
I’m going to give you all the steps on how to do this, but seeing as you’re a grown-up (right?), you should decide which ones to gloss over and which to pay more attention to.
Step 1: Do Brand/Product Analysis
Review and analyze your business and product so that you can compare with industry standards, competitors, and customer expectations.
Start by answering these 4 basic questions:
- What does your business offer?
- What problem do you solve?
- Whose problem do you solve?
- Who else solves this problem? (include a list of your competitors)
Then create a benefits list of compelling reasons why a customer would choose your company’s product/service to solve their needs. By comparing this list with the competition, you can pinpoint where exactly you have a competitive advantage and what key differentiators make for the strongest selling point.
A benefits list can include any aspect of a business that might differentiate the brand (see our guide on what to focus on), such as:
- Price/cost
- Production efficiency/delivery speed
- Location/Geography
- Performance and quality
- Expertise and knowledge
- Appearance/qualities
- Ingredients/specifications
- Market dominance
- Testimonials (endorsements from thought leaders, past/current customers)
- Certifications or awards
- Niche market (appeals to a specific target audience)
- Features/technology
- Company culture/brand personality
- Brand story
- Social influence (strong social media presence)
Step 2: Do Competitive Analysis
To identify USPs, you need to make a deep dive into market alternatives by evaluating your competitors through the same list of benefits. Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the competition is equally important as knowing your own.
When evaluating competing products/services, focus on how these businesses attempt to differentiate themselves from others.
What are their marketing messages and how are they reaching their audience?
Keep an eye out for industry trends and analyze your competitors in these ways:
- SWOT Analysis: Describe the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats of competitors’ USPs.
- Market Gap Analysis: Identify gaps in the market that your USP can fill. Have a look at how Costco does this.
Step 3: Create a Position Map
A position map is a great way to visualize the market and identify your location in relation to other brands, helping you to discover potential USPs.
By mapping market positioning you can plan your marketing strategy around the areas your brand excels in and optimize the funneling of strategies to grab the biggest market share.
Check out our example of how real companies do this.
This is an especially powerful tool if you want to move to another segment and want to learn how to stand out and find demand in this new environment.
Step 4: Develop a Buyer Persona
In a race, it’s the driver who wins, not the car. You always need to think about users first.
This might sound obvious, but believe me, not many businesses really DO this! Entrepreneurs often fall in love with their ideas before figuring out if anyone else gives a damn.
In the first step, you answered “whose problem are we solving?” If you have not recently updated your buyer persona(s), now is the time (see our full guide here).
Basically, a buyer persona will represent your ideal customer. Without knowing your customer, how can you offer them what they want?
Marketing that tells the right customer the right message at the right time will always be successful.
A well-written buyer persona should look at more than merely demographics. Psychographics (values, interests, lifestyle) really help in fully understanding your target customer. Alongside this, creating a customer journey map lets you track how USPs influence customers along the way.
Successful brands showcase their products and communicate their unique selling proposition (USP) in different ways, though their effectiveness depends fundamentally on what you’re offering.
A needs-based approach focuses on the needs of the target audience: “If you need this, we have this product for you.”
A person-based approach focuses on specific customer personas: “If you are this type of business, click here to see what we can do for you.” This allows visitors to self-identify and feel that they belong to a particular group, which is often the better approach.
However, users might be weirded out by a website assuming who they are, preferring to browse products and decide for themselves instead. Customer intent should be the backbone of your marketing strategy.
Step 5: Outline Pain Points and Motivations
With your buyer persona, you can isolate customer pain points and motivations. By combining the brand’s benefits and USPs with the customer’s behavior and buying decisions, you can communicate the perfect solution in a way that will make them stand up and take notice.
Make a list of customer expectations (reliability, convenience, style, price, etc.) and review if you accurately meet those demands. Their motivations can be different: fear, peer pressure, necessity, time constraints. Examine each possible scenario and touch point to ensure that you are truly solving the customer’s problem.
In this stage, make sure to do the following:
- Connect to USPs: Clearly link specific customer pain points to how your USPs address them, reinforcing the value proposition. Loss aversion is a strong motivator, so focus on what losses customers can avoid.
- Prioritize Pain Points: Not all pain points are created equal. Identify the most critical ones for messaging to hone in on.
Step 6: Map the Entire Customer Experience
By mapping the entire customer experience, a business can realize everything from how they use your solution to when/why they stop using it.
Most companies stop their analysis at the point a customer becomes aware of your solution. A great company sees past this and is aware of their entire overall experience. Don’t be an average Joe. Be an average hero.
Step 7: Create a Value Proposition Statement
A value proposition statement answers the burning question “why choose us?”
Using the benefits of your brand to solve customer pain points is how a business provides true value. Take the information gathered so far to summarize the value your brand brings to the table and what will ultimately drive your audience to pick you over a competitor.
If you need help in writing a solid value proposition, check out this article for instructions, examples, and templates.
Step 8: Present Your USP
When creating your USP, you need to understand if what you are selling is consultative or a commodity and tailor your USP accordingly.
Commodities are standardized and identical across vendors, like iPhones, cars, TVs, or groceries, while consultative offerings are unique and highly dependent on the vendor’s performance, such as consultations, custom designs, or photo sessions.
The difference between these types influences how you should present your USP:
| Consultative | Commodities |
|---|---|
No one else sells the same thing | Everybody sells the same thing |
| Leans towards the emotional payoff for the customer Subjective value | Less focus on emotions. Not about value to the customer, but about features of the product. |
| How well can you tap into your customer’s fears and needs? | Practical details are the most important, especially price! |
| EMOTIONAL | RATIONAL |
You can see the difference in these examples:
- Apple: They make the product the center of attention on their website and tap into people’s emotional desires to buy a cool-looking product.
- An online store selling MacBooks: Doesn’t need to convince users of its excellence because Apple has already done that. Instead, information is given for users to make a rational buying decision.
The most successful products aren’t always the most useful. People are generally more driven by emotions than reason, so don’t be afraid to focus on appearance over functionality in your advertising campaigns.
Step 9: Produce a Marketing Message That Doesn’t Suck
Now that you have a USP geared toward benefiting your ideal target customer and identified their motivations, pain points, and touch points — start acting. Create a marketing message that spins a web of benefits to solve customer problems. You want to trap as many customers as possible.
To craft compelling messages, use a framework like AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action).
It’s important to listen to what your existing customers value in your product because their words can be used to convey your USP to new audiences.
Sometimes saying “NO” is the most important thing you can do. When you’re tempted to add text to your website, think about why your readers will need it. If it doesn’t emphasize your USP, scrap it! You don’t want to dilute the brand, so strategic sacrifices must be made.
This also goes for business decisions such as whether to enter a new market. Producing a cheaper product might alienate your current customers. There are no perfect solutions, with every decision having drawbacks.
Step 10: Build a Feedback Loop That Never Sleeps!
This is an iterative process. USPs don’t last forever. They need to be constantly tested, refined, and updated based on customer feedback and market changes. Stop assuming you know what customers want. Get out there and ask them! Conduct customer interviews, run surveys, create landing pages to gauge interest. Listen. Learn. Adapt.
Research tells us that businesses which regularly update their USPs based on customer feedback experience a 20% increase in sales. Do you really want to miss out on making it rain?
Takeaways
Wow, that was a lot of information! In summary:
- Analyze your brand and its unique benefits
- Compare with competitors to identify key differentiators
- Visualize your position in the market in relation to other businesses
- Build an image of your ideal customer
- Describe the pain points and motivating factors of those customers
- Consider the whole customer experience from awareness to advocacy
- Write a solid value proposition
- Decide how to present your USP depending on the kind of product/service you offer
- Develop a killer marketing message that conveys your USP
- Repeat (but make it better)
