How to Develop Your Unique Selling Proposition

A USP could be:

• Lowest price
• Highest quality
• Fastest delivery
• A unique location
• A specialty in a particular industry
• Longer warranty
• The most innovative products or services
• The most long-term after sale services
• Any other factor that influences customers' buying behavior
• Any combination of the above

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To create a USP, start with these four qualities that strong selling propositions should have.

 

1. Determine what your customers are really buying from you?

Customer experience is at the heart of a good unique selling proposition. Today’s customers face a multitude of choices and tend to make decisions very quickly. To win their trust, you must understand their needs and offer them better solutions. Be sure to think about their underlying emotional needs and what your company provides to meet them. As yourself the following questions:

• What are customers really looking for when they come to my store? What are their pain points?
• How do my customers shop?
• What are the steps in their decision-making process?
• How do they use my product or service?
• What problem does it solve?
• What do they like about my products and services?
• What do they dislike?
• How does my brand impact my customers’ life?
• How would they describe their interactions with my business?
• How do I want them to feel after an interaction with my business?
• How am I different than my competitors?

TIP: If you’re not sure of the answers to these questions, you need to find out. I recommend doing on-site, email or text surveys to help determine what clients have to say about doing business with you. I like Survey Monkey, but there are plenty of other free or nearly free survey tools available.

 

2. Evaluate your strengths and weaknesses

Use your customer research to help identify your strengths and weaknesses. Be honest in determining what you do well and not so well. You’ll have to be honest about your weak points to identify your brand’s strengths.

Try to use precise language. “Unique” and “high value” are blanket terms that don’t speak to your customer needs. When considering the strengths of your products and services, keep your customers’ needs in mind. Feel free to use the 5 P’s of marketing: product, place, price, promotion and people. Ask yourself how your best attributes solve a unique challenge for your customers.

TIP: I find that a team meeting using a whiteboard is often a great tool for this step. Using the customer research you have done, write down words that customers use to describe your business in one column, and then, in a second column, list adjectives that you would like them to use in describing you. Do they match up? Where? Are there discrepancies?

 

3. Look at your competitors

Once you know your strengths and how they provide solutions that customers need or want, examine your competition. Identify your competitor’s strengths and weaknesses, and directly contrast them to what you’re selling. This will help you pinpoint how you stand out to fill a niche demand. Your differentiators may be nuanced.

1. Are you giving customers a better online experience than your competitors?
2. Are you making it easier for customers to access and pay for your products or services?
3. Do you have stronger values, processes or knowledge than your competitors?
4. Do you offer 24-hour service or free delivery?
5. How are they communicating their USP?

None of these bullet points are a USP, in themselves. In combination, however, they could help you to consider a unique customer experience that is different from your competitors. In some cases, that contrast forms the core of your USP.

 

4. Write down your business values

A strong USP should reflect your values as a person and as a business owner. Why did you create your company in the first place? What are your business values and how do you stand behind them? What inspires you? When do you feel best in your business? What causes you to get that feeling? Maybe you’re driven to fill a gap in the market or provide a common solution in an innovative way. Regardless, your values need to align with your USP to create a strong brand.

 

5. Create Your Unique Selling Point

Now that you’ve done your homework, you’re ready to start brainstorming USP ideas. Back to the white board, make a column for each of the following and write your favorite points under each.

• Customer needs
• Solutions for solving needs
• How you solve them differently from your competitors
• Business values

To distill your insights into a concise statement, follow a unique value proposition template like one of the following. You can use words from the columns above to get you started. The idea is to use them to articulate your value prop and spark creativity. Start with longest template shown below, then try and edit it down to something a bit simpler like template 3. Think Nike's, Just Do It. Don’t worry if you don’t get there right away, this is a creative exercise and may take several sessions or iterations to get it right.

Template 1: My business offers these products/services that are unique to us. We are targeting these customers because we provide them with this specific value.

Template 2: “For (customers) who (need here), our (product/service name) is (solution) that provides (benefit).”

Template 3: “We help (X) do (Y) by doing (Z).”

 

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What makes a compelling value proposition?

Once you have some candidates, make sure to evaluate them based on the following criteria:

• Is concise and easy to understand
• Is memorable
• Tells a customer what they’ll get from buying your product or service
• Explains how your offer is different from the alternatives