Your unique value proposition (UVP) is the foundation to build all your marketing strategies and messages on. It’s what sets you apart from the competition and tells customers how you’re different.
Your unique value proposition (UVP) is the foundation to build all your marketing strategies and messages on. It’s what sets you apart from the competition and tells customers how you’re different.If you own a business or are thinking of starting one, you’ve probably already thought a little bit about what sets you apart from other businesses in your space. Crafting a unique value proposition is what will allow you to clearly express the value of your product or service to your target market.
This article will define what a unique value proposition (UVP) or unique selling proposition (USP) is, and walk you through the steps to identify and express your own.
What is a unique value proposition (UVP)?
Your UVP, also called a unique selling proposition, or USP is a clear, concise way to describe what sets your business apart from your customers.
The UVP you craft should explain in simple language, without jargon, how what you offer solves your customers’ problems. It should define how the customer will benefit, and why they should choose you over competing businesses.
To put it simply, your UVP or USP should explain how your product or service works, what makes it valuable to the customer, and why it’s better than the other choices.
Having your UVP prominently featured on your website is a great way to grab visitors’ attention, as long as it’s easy to comprehend. If you have just a few seconds to explain your business to someone who has never heard of you before, your UVP should help them understand immediately.
How do you create a unique value proposition?
Every business, whether they’re competing in your field or not, is definitely competing with you for your customers’ attention. Customers are bombarded with marketing and advertising messages all day, every day. To break through this information overload, you need a simple powerful message that your customers can understand, and remember.
When your customers hear your name, you want them to immediately recall your unique value proposition.
Identifying and figuring out how best to express your value proposition takes time and effort. A true UVP goes beyond a smart tagline – it is meaningful to your customer and to your business. To get it right, you have to get a strong understanding of your customer, your business, and where your offering fits in the market.
While you have probably thought about your UVP for a while, it’s best not to base your proposition on what you believe your customer is looking for. Market research and testing with your target audience is the best way to confirm you’re on the right track.
Follow the guide to creating your UVP in this article, or download the worksheet which has easy-to-use templates to help you identify and express your value proposition.
Identify and Express your Unique Value Proposition.
Use the Mystique Unique Value Proposition Worksheet.
The step-by-step guide to help you create your unique value proposition
Follow these steps to create your unique value proposition. When crafting your UVP, try to approach it from the mindset of a customer.
Identify your customers and target market.
Get started on your unique value proposition by defining the persona of your ideal customer. If you are targeting more than one type of customer persona, you may need to craft a different UVP for each type of customer.
While creating this buyer persona, get as detailed as you can. Do your market research to understand existing and potential customers. Uncover their pain points that you might be able to solve. Besides the general demographic profiling, you might want to consider things like hobbies, interests, family makeup, and anything that might help you understand what drives their decision-making.
Consider what need your product or service fulfils. What problem does it solve?
Make a list of all the ways your business offerings make life easier for your customers. What problem or pain point does your business solve?
Is there something about your offering that other businesses don’t offer? Does your business help customers save time? Save money? Offer comfort?
What about your product or service makes it something customers just can’t live without?
Once you have that list, go over it and eliminate those points that your competitors can lay claim to, too.
Ask why your customers should choose you over the competition.
To differentiate yourself from the competition, you need to understand them well and know what they stand for. Studying your competitors will also help you identify areas of the market they aren’t reaching well, and weaknesses you can possibly target.
Research your competitors thoroughly, study their mission statements, understand their employees, test their products and services if you can. Find out what they do well, where they falter and areas you can improve on.
Once you’ve studied your competitors, put together a competitive matrix to visualize how you compare against their offerings. Here’s where the competitive matrix from the Mystique Value Proposition Worksheet might be helpful.
When you’ve done this, you’re closer to finding areas where your business is different from your competition, you’ll understand how your offerings meet the needs of your customer in a way that competitors can’t, and you’ll be that much closer to a truly unique value proposition.
Define the mission of your business. What does your business stand for?
This one’s a big question, and don’t shy away from taking your time to answer it. When you have your answer, compare it with the list of characteristics that differentiates you from the competition.
If it does, you’re starting to get closer to your unique value proposition.
Now, it’s time to write down variations of possible value propositions that define your business. Again, this will take time, writing, testing, refining and rewriting till you’re happy with one or two.
When you’re happy with what you have, read your unique value proposition out loud, and consider if it could be talking about any business other than your own. If that’s the case, it’s not unique enough yet!
Keep reworking this until you have one clear, short sentence that defines how you’re different, and says exactly what you want your customers to think when they hear your brand name.
Need help identifying, expressing and evaluating your Unique Value Proposition?
Our brand experts at Mystique will be happy to talk you through it, and what it could do for your business, with a quick, no-obligation 30-minute discovery call.
Click here to book time with us.
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