When you talk to marketers, entrepreneurs often get caught up in defining their USP by focusing entirely on what the customer wants.
This happens for good reason – more often than not, marketing has been written to focus on the features of the product rather than why those features matter to the target person.
However, what’s come up with a few of my clients has been that entrepreneurs are forgetting a rather important factor when defining their unique selling proposition…
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Are you your own USP?
Today I’m going to be exploring the idea of how you should play to your strengths when it comes to your USP, and how you make sure that, when you’re in startup stage, you’re doing the right thing in terms of your marketing.
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So, the reason I want to talk about the USP today is this has come up with a few clients when they start talking about their USP (and for one in particular that I’m going to talk about). If you haven’t watched my video on What is a USP, I would recommend watching that first because I’m just going a little bit deeper in here.
When identifying your USP becomes a bit tricky
Especially when you’re at startup stage and you’re still kind of trying to figure out what exactly is it that makes you unique, it can start getting a little tricky,
When you’re looking at your competitors and all them are kind of the same as you in most ways and you can’t really think of anything that you do dramatically better, it starts to feel hard to find a good USP.
Or maybe the thing that you think that you do better is not something the customer actually cares about, even though it does actually matter (they just don’t care about it that much).
That’s where your USP starts to become a little tricky because it’s when your USP just isn’t very unique (or doesn’t sell that well).
You are probably your USP
What I had to remind one of my clients was that, actually, they were the USP. This is so often the case with entrepreneurs in their own business. There’s a reason that they picked up their business and the reason is usually one of:
- They are an expert at it
- It is something that they’re passionate about
- Their history means that they are so close to this subject that they are the best person to serve people within it.
A real world example of how the entrepreneur is the USP
The example that I’m thinking of, the most recent one, is that this person is importing designer homeware from artists in Mexico and trying to really uplift those artists and bring their art to a global stage.
They were starting to think that their USP is this visible supply chain. But the reality is that the target person – the person that they’re really after – is actually more like an interior designer. And the interior designer is going to see this art and recommend it to their clients.
The interior designers might care about the supply chain and that probably is important… it is a selling point. It probably even is a unique one. However, it’s not really the strongest unique selling point.
The strongest unique selling point is that she comes from a design background and she has gone to Mexico herself to find these artists and talked to them and communicates with them. She has taste, she has experience in design. So the interior designer has the safety that this entrepreneur knows what they’re doing and is able to find great homeware for them. She becomes the front and center selling point.
Obviously, all of the stuff about the supply chain is incredibly important because that is a big reason why she’s doing it – it’s the big passion behind it. But her own strengths are a more important part to the target person.
Also play to your strengths in marketing channel choices
On top of that, the other aspect of playing to your strengths, is then where she was like, “Okay so how do I get it out there now? I’m not very good with Instagram but I know that it’s a visual medium.”
And yes, the visual medium makes sense for her but she’s not actually really skilled with Instagram. She does, however, have experience in PR – she has contacts in PR. So that is the place to start.
So, just because a marketing channel is good for your market does not mean that that’s the place that you should definitely start. It’s probably a place that should be on your road map but you should start with the places that you’re good at, the strengths that you have.
While for her it was PR as that’s where she has contacts, for the vast majority of the people that I am talking to, it’s usually some sort of referral system. Some sort of word of mouth. Making sure that their network is fully aware of what they’re doing because that’s how you start your business.
You’re in start-up stage – get it going and then add on all the extra marketing things. Don’t feel like you have to attack everything all at once. Go for the channels that make sense for you and your skills and your resources at the start.
I hope that was helpful for anyone who’s struggling a little bit to look at their marketing and figure out what they what they need to start with. Feel free to comment below if you have any questions or comments about how to better define your USP and choose your marketing channels by playing to your strengths.