USP

What makes your small business unique?

It’s worth giving this important question some thought. The answer could inform how you market your service-driven business. Remember, a big part of marketing is your positioning: What “position” do you occupy in the competitive landscape? What space do you “own” in the minds of prospective clients?

Do you offer the most experience in your field? The most value? Or do you provide the utmost in high-touch, white-glove service?

Ideally, you have proof points for your positioning – a few things that make you different, in a way that’s meaningful to your customers. In a perfect world, only you offer this particular combination of differentiating factors. This magic combination of meaningful differences makes up your unique selling proposition, or USP.

Unpacking the USP

Since the 1940s, marketers have preached the benefits of a unique selling proposition, sometimes called a unique selling point. A USP can help any product, company, or small business stand apart from its competitors. A USP is what makes a brand better or different.

Does that have your juices flowing? Great! Maybe you’re already giving thought to a unique selling proposition for your small business. That’s even better.

Any company, of any size, can benefit from a unique selling proposition. As you start to mull what your USP might be, bear this in mind:

USPs Take the Competition into Consideration

To know what makes your small business unique, you have to understand how your product or service stacks up against your competition. This evaluation has to be honest – it’s not what you wish was true, but what is.

USPs Must be Meaningful and Motivating

Keep the focus on the customer. A unique selling proposition needs to be something that suggests a benefit to your target audience. Let’s say that I’m a mom planning a birthday party. You might be the only children’s entertainer in town who has a master’s degree. Who cares?! That’s not nearly as meaningful to me as learning that you have three years’ experience as a kindergarten teacher – so you know how to handle a roomful of sugared-up five-year-olds.

You Can’t be Everything to Everyone

You know the old business adage about good, fast, and cheap? If not, it’s the idea that customers want all three, but you can only give them two: You can provide fast and cheap (like fast food), but it won’t be very good. Or you can give customers good and fast (like overnight delivery), but it won’t be cheap. So it stands to reason that the “magic combination” that acts as your USP can’t be good, fast, and cheap! Maybe your niche as a proofreader is that you’ll offer quick turnaround and work nights and weekends for ad agencies or law firms in a jam – that’s a valid USP. (And note that “inexpensive” doesn’t get thrown in for kicks – if you’re willing to offer good and fast, you shouldn’t be the cheapest option too.)

Seek Out Superlatives

As you think about a USP for your small business, let your mind run to words that set you apart from the crowd, preferably at the top or far end of a spectrum. (Often such superlatives end in -est.) Think along these lines:

  • highest (quality, maybe)
  • fastest (turnaround, for instance)
  • first tween girl mani-pedi birthday party that comes to you
  • most (value, because your packages include more)
  • only (bookkeeper in town who travels to clients, say)

What’s important above is the best-most-highest vocabulary. When contemplating a USP for your small business, you want to think about words that stake out your “claim to fame” compared to others. Shoot for a superlative or two among your unique combination of three: Diane Forsyth is the state’s only private coach for club soccer who once played for the U.S. Women’s National Team. She will come to your home field in Boise for after-school or weekend lessons. (Made up, but that would be a strong USP.)

Customer Experience is Key

Yes, this exercise – finding a meaningful, motivating USP for your small business – requires some self-reflection. But real success requires that you view things from your customer’s point of view.

First, put yourself in your customer’s shoes. Think about the entire experience, from when clients first get in touch with you, to the final handwritten card that you send at the end of the relationship, thanking them for the chance to help. (What’s that? You don’t do that? Maybe it’s time to start – it could help to define a highly personalized customer experience that makes your offering unique.)

Next, ask yourself: What is special about your customer experience? 

Maybe you’re the only life coach in the area who has her own mobile app, serving up daily affirmations to clients between coaching sessions. Or maybe you’re the only contractor in town who offers epoxy garage floors with a finish that looks like granite. Or maybe you’re the only balloon artist in the region who specializes in metallic-colored balloons from Italy that lend an event a sophisticated air.

If no one thing sets you apart (and it may not), consider everything that makes you a little different. Now think about the combinations of those things. Are you the only service-driven business that offers a particular sum of benefits?

Maybe you’re the only wedding chauffeur who has access to vintage cars and includes a bottle of champagne for the bride and groom. Or perhaps your pottery parties stand out because you offer a higher teacher-to-student ratio at your centrally located studio, and, after the fact, you carefully ship all of the created pieces, so the party attendees don’t have to make two trips.

You get the idea. Your unique selling proposition may well be a combination of things. And your USP should benefit your customer in some meaningful way.

17hats Helps You Stand Out too

Many of you reading this are 17hats members. Smart call. 17hats is the premier small business platform that lets you manage business better.

When you run your business with 17hats, your clients get a faster, smoother, more personalized customer experience. That alone puts you a step ahead when it comes to defining a USP.

Our 17hats Lead Capture Forms and Questionnaires let you respond to leads immediately and demonstrate expertise from the get-go. You can be the “easiest baby photographer to work with,” as evidenced by your click-click-done 17hats Online Scheduling and 17hats Payments. Or, special gestures that make you unique – such as gifting or a handwritten congrats-on-your-wedding note – can be made an integrated step within your 17hats Workflows. 

It’s simple: 17hats gives you a better customer experience. And a better customer experience helps to make your business unique.

Find Your USP – and Stick With it

Once you identify your unique selling proposition, it’s important to emphasize it. Make that USP part of your “elevator pitch” to prospective clients, and integrate that message into your website copy. 

One final suggestion? Stick with it!

Yes, you will get tired of saying the same thing over and over. That means it’s working. Often, customers need to hear the same message a few times for it to sink in, and it will take even longer to build a reputation around your unique selling proposition.

If you find a meaningful USP (preferably born from your customer experience) and then communicate that consistently, you will be well on your way to a strong position in the marketplace.

It pays to stand out from the crowd!