How To Strengthen Your Company’s Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

Your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) is what defines the uniqueness of your business in a competitive marketplace. In other words, it’s what distinguishes your business from competitors X, Y and Z, and is the reason for a prospect to choose your service over theirs.

From your USP flow all the core messages and value propositions you use to make sales. A lot rests on your USP, and it is essential to make it as strong, compelling and clear as possible, regardless of how crowded or niche your sector happens to be.

With a strong USP, you assist potential customers in making a positive choice of service provider – i.e. you – so here is how you can strengthen your company’s USP.

Get Into Your Customer’s Shoes

Even in a specialist market, customers normally have a choice of multiple service providers offering roughly the same thing, so businesses go wrong when they focus on the uniqueness of their products and services. Your service isn’t unique, and nor are the needs of your customers that they are designed to meet. What could be unique, however, is the way in which your business deploys these services to address the needs of your customers – i.e. your experience and qualifications, way of working, quality assurance, customer service philosophy, and level of personalisation.

This is why you must take time to understand what exactly the customer wants from a service like yours. What are they looking for in terms of value (increased productivity/revenue), savings (in time and money) and convenience? How does your product or service tick these boxes, and how does it do this better than your competitors? Answering these questions gives you the foundation of a service-focused USP.

Bear in mind also that some ‘USPs’ are relative to the target market. For example, being local to Bradford might be a big plus for prospects in the local area, but it may be a handicap if you’re touting for business nationally. And being ‘cheap’ may be essential for a small businesses and sole trader but less important for larger companies. Define your USP carefully with an eye on the customers you are targeting.

Understand The Factors That Influence Your Customer’s Purchase Decisions

Businesses don’t make purchase decisions in a vacuum. There are many personal, corporate and external factors that come into play. Understanding these challenges and motivations is the key to making your USP relevant and compelling. It is a common mistake for businesses to focus on basic customer demographics to analyse sales trends, including the gender and age of decision makers, company location, and turnover.

To develop a strong USP, however, you will need to look beyond these demographics. Understand what motivates customers to buy your services or products, and – equally important – what puts them off. Is it a desire to save time, make their personal job role easier, reduce overheads, increase productivity, make more sales, or strengthen the business against external threats? A business development partner can help you customise your online marketing campaigns to effectively reach your target audience.

Make Full Use Of Customer Feedback

As your company grows, it will become possible to collect information from the customers themselves on the quality of your products and services. It may surprise you how honest customers can be, especially when what you want is to improve a product or service they use regularly. Utilise courtesy calls, online surveys, incentive giveaways, and regular meetings to ask them a question or two on the value they gain from your service, and how it can be improved. This is the best way to strengthen your unique selling proposition.

USP Workshop

JDR offer a USP workshop - available as a training session or as a full day's consultancy. Find out more here.

Find Out More

Creating a strong USP is essential for making sales online and lies at the heart of any successful sales and marketing campaign.

To find out more about how our digital marketing specialists can help your business grow and get customers coming to you, please call 01332343281 today.

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