Complete Your Actions
Useful Links
In this video, we’ll be going through figuring out how to find your unique selling proposition, which honestly, is a topic that a lot of people struggle with but we’re going to change that today. So let’s get to it.
So what’s a unique selling proposition, or a USP for short?
A unique selling proposition is what makes your business stand out. It’s the idea that makes your business unique.
So remember how we talked about finding a niche, choosing one ideal customer and one type of product to focus on when you’re just starting your shop? Having a USP makes you more specific, and even more niche. Which is a good thing.
So many businesses are being started and there are so many people making jewelry, soaps, toys and when you think about Etsy, the competition is fierce. It’s so rare to be the person that invents something new that no one else has ever done before. So while it’s great if you CAN invent something from scratch, that’s really hard to do these days. That shouldn’t be your goal here. But if you’re just making a product that everyone else makes, how do you stand out? Well, you just need to be different from everyone else. A USP is the answer here and it’s what will help you eliminate your competition all together and make them irrelevant, even in the most competitive spaces.
Having a USP attracts people to you who are your ideal customers and pushes away people who are not. It polarizes people, which, if you recall in module 1c, you want to be polarizing because this helps people remember you better and makes it easier for them to talk about you with their friends.
The big question you probably have now is how can you be different? And this is what we’ll help you figure out in this training!
So for starters, here are some guidelines to help you along the way. Your USP can be a simple idea. Don’t try to overcomplicate things because, I’ve said this before, simple ideas are what make great ideas that stick. So aim for something simple.
It could just be something you’ve noticed that’s lacking in your market. Let’s say you’re in the bath and body market and your niche and ideal customers are kids. So you make soaps specifically for children. That in itself is pretty good, because it’s really specific. But we can take it one step further and say, you make the funnest soaps for kids to use during bath time. Or say you make soaps with trinkets in them so kids get rewarded eventually for bath time or something because they have a goal to get the trinket that’s inside. I’m totally just making stuff up here, but now your USP is you make the coolest soap for kids that have fun goodies in them.
See how you didn’t invent soaps, but you introduced a twist in a product that has a lot of competition? That’s what I want you to do.
I know that if I were to ask you, “how are you different from other shops?” You’d be like a deer caught in headlights. Instead, what I feel like is a more helpful question to get you to start thinking about this is, “What do you want to be known for?” Having a USP and a clearly defined niche will ultimately, over time, become what you and your brand are known for. I’m the brand that makes scented food jewelry. That’s what I’m known for. So what do YOU want to be known for? If you’re still not sure right now, no worries, just like everything else we’ve been working on in this month’s training, this stuff is really a lot like soul searching work and will definitely take you time to figure out. But stay tuned, in the next slide, I’ll show you some great ways you can stand out.
Also recall the One Two Punch Method I talked about in module 1c. If you’re solving a specific need or problem in your niche, that in itself is your USP. So if you have a product that solves a problem, finding your USP should come easy to you.
And here’s the thing, your USP doesn’t have to be that you have a better product than everyone else, it just has to be different. And unlike my example, your USP doesn’t have to be product related. It doesn’t have to be intrinsic to the product, although it can be. So let’s expand on that.
To get you thinking about your USP, here are some of the various ways you can be different from everyone else in your market.
The first way is with your brand and/or your personality. Not everyone can pull this off, but if you’ve been told before that you should have your own TV show or if you’ve got a really engaging and charismatic personality, or whatever attribute you have in your personality that would lend itself to your brand in a positive way, this could be something you use as your USP. What makes this really powerful is no one can take this away from you or copy you. You will always be unique! But I know sometimes this idea of being the face of your brand can be scary, especially for a lot of us who are introverts.
So here are a few more ideas.
You could choose an intersection of niches. So you can go back to the Market Guide PDF and pick two niches that make sense to go together. For example, stationery for stay at home moms. Or succulent and dinosaurs, or tattoos and tea or nail polish and books or gourmet food for yoga lovers, or dogs and hipsters. Honestly, I feel like those are some really great ideas that could work really well!
You could also narrow your target audience, so say you’re targeting stay at home moms, then rather than just stopping there, you could target stay at home moms that are also business owners!
You could also be different in the way you provide your customer service or your turnaround time. So maybe you’re in a market where everyone makes custom work for your customers. But your competition offers a 4 week turnaround time and maybe you can offer to do it 2 weeks and maybe your customer onboarding process is very high touch customer service.
Your USP could be in your process and the way you make your products. Maybe you have a special technique that helps your type of product last longer, or have some special effect that’s different from other shops.
You could also just go for a different style than what’s out there in your market. So say all the soap and bath and body brands out there are branding their soaps and using scents that are feminine and chic and flowery, you could make your soaps fun and sarcastic with preppy colors and funky smells.
I have just one point here on what you should NOT aim to be different at, and that’s with the quality of your product. It’s hard to compete on just quality alone, that should be a given or the price of admission to playing the small business game that we’re all in. Everyone else is trying to be the best quality anyway, so think of another way to be different.
Be the best at something that no one else in your market is trying to be the best at.
Here are some examples of brands out there in the world that have great unique selling propositions.
Mast Brothers Chocolate make their chocolate bars from scratch. Their tagline is bean to bar chocolate makers. They make their chocolates in house right from the bean. How cool is that? That’s an example of a brand that’s using their unique process of making chocolate as their USP.
Then we’ve got Toms Shoes a company that donates one pair of shoes to children in need for every pair that been purchased. What other shoe company does this?
There’s Nerd Fitness, which is a great example of intersecting two different niches, nerds and fitness! And the idea is simple and clear, you can already guess what nerd fitness is all about, right? It’s a fitness website for nerds and average Joes.
And our last example here is M&M’s. The milk chocolate that melts in your mouth, not in your hand.
Every successful business out there has a USP that makes them stand out. Having a USP for your business will make marketing so much easier for you.
And just in case all those examples and my initial explanation didn’t make a whole lot of sense yet, here’s a simple exercise you can try out.
I want you to fill in the blank here. My shop is THE blank.
The keyword here is “the” because it singles you out and makes your business distinctive.
So for example, Tiny Hands is the cutest and most realistic scented food jewelry in the world.
I know it’s a simple question, but it can take a while for you to answer and that’s normal!
Once you’ve come up with your USP, the first thing I want you to do is share it with us in the forums to get feedback.
One point of confusion for a lot of people is is your USP and tagline the same thing? They can be, but for the purpose of this course, I recommend that they be viewed as different things. We'll dive deeper into what your tagline is in Module 4 when we talk about Branding.
The purpose for your USP is to get clear on how your business is different from your competitors. Your USP is used internally and is just information for you to know and anyone else who might be on your team, like a social media manager or virtual assistant. Because it’s not information you’re publicly sharing or communicating with customers, you don’t really have to worry about the exact language and words you’re using for your USP. You just need to know with clarity how you stand out from the other businesses out there. That’s how you create a product that’s different.
A tagline, on the other hand, is public facing information that you put everywhere on all of your marketing materials. And it doesn’t necessarily address how you’re different from your competitors. It can if you want it to, but then you have to be very careful about how you word your tagline because it needs to be short and simple.
So again, language is not important with your USP but it’s critical when it comes to your tagline.
As my final advice on your USP, you just need to stick with it.
It’s like coming up with your brand name. If you keep changing it around, no one’s going to remember your shop! And if you do change it, only do it after very careful deliberation. It’s not something to be wishy washy about.
Just realize that a USP takes time to stick. So if you changed it around all the time or it was a different USP every time you talked about your brand, you’re making it harder for your brand to get any traction.
So avoid changing in the next 12 months unless absolutely necessary. I know that this is a lot of pressure on you to figure out a really great USP from the beginning so just know that it is okay to change your USP later down the line. All I’m saying is to just give your new USP a chance to work for you. Give it time.
So go ahead and start brainstorming your USP. Make a list to start with and feel free to share what you’ve come up with in the forums!
I’ll talk to you in the next training.