In many cases, you and your competitors will offer similar products, similar pricing, and potentially, even a similar experience. This can make it extremely difficult to differentiate your business from the rest, particularly when you operate in a crowded vertical.
However, central to any business’s success remains its ability to showcase its unique value proposition (UVP). Your UVP represents far more than just the quality of your service or the mission of your business. While your UVP might embody these things, your company’s UVP remains the most basic, boiled-down version of why a client should choose you over the rest.
Showcasing your company’s UVP remains central to any effective marketing campaign. However, arriving at the point where you can succinctly express what makes your business stand out from the rest remains a journey. The following guide will walk your company through practical steps on first identifying your UVP and then showcasing it in a meaningful way.
Identifying Your Unique Value Proposition
Before you can begin to demonstrate and express your company’s unique value proposition, you first must be sure you understand it. A UVP does not birth out of a static boardroom, but rather should be the reflection of a company’s heart and soul.
For this reason, digging down to the one thing that makes your business different takes dedicated time and space. Additionally, it requires the help of more than just the company owner and marketing manager. It remains a collaborative effort reflecting the views of the business as a whole.
Step 1: Set Aside Dedicated Time
Nothing can derail a quality marketing campaign quite as quickly as a poorly defined UVP. In many cases, companies slap together a catchy phrase in a rushed manner, neglecting to see how critical this statement is to the conversion rate of clients.
We have all sat on the other side of this experience. We have witnessed marketing that falls flat — a company that offers a murky UVP statement at best.
Take the time needed to carefully cultivate what will become the backbone of all marketing campaigns. Choose a dedicated time to brainstorm and debate.
Step 2: Involve Stakeholders Across Key Roles
All the time in the world has little to no meaning if you do not involve the right stakeholders in the conversation. Before choosing a date and time for establishing your business’ UVP, be sure to identify the people who need to be involved in the conversation. Remember, this process should involve staff from across roles. Many of your line-level employees will probably have a greater intuitive understanding of what makes your business unique than those who remain far removed from the customer.
As you gather together folks from across your company, make sure you create a space where everyone can be heard. The worst thing a business owner can do involves trying to drive the conversation in a specific direction. What you might assume represents your unique value proposition might not be the thing that makes your customers choose you over the rest.
Step 3: Don’t Forget Your Customers
Speaking of customers, don’t forget their voice as you establish your UVP. In today’s world of highly targeted marketing campaigns, nothing remains more important than understanding your customers’ value statement. A value statement reflects the “what’s in it for me?” for your client.
If your unique value proposition does not speak to your customer base’s value statement, you will miss the mark. Take time to talk to customers. Do market research. Find out what pain points your customers feel and be sure your UVP addresses a deeply personal place for your clients.
Pay attention to both your positive and negative reviews. Many times the best pain points and the deeply personal place you want to address with clients are within those comments.
Build Simple, Effective Value Statements
Once you have determined what sets your company apart from the rest, build-out value statements. The simpler and to the point your statement remains, the easier to use it in marketing campaigns.
For example, rather than your value statement being “We help our clients find the car of their dreams with flexible financing options,” your marketable UVP statement might be “Car buying made hassle-free.”
Gather all the information from your brainstorm session and from your team, and try to boil down key values into short, meaningful statements. Some of the most successful businesses in the world operate with poignant UVPs.
For example, with their latest iPhone release, Apple has a central focus on the phone’s speed. From the very first moment you arrive on the iPhone 12 landing page, they greet you with simple, effective statements that showcase this UVP.
“Blast past fast.”
“5G Speed. OMGGGGG.”
Simple and effective, Apple uses precise statements to make it crystal clear what sets their phone apart from the rest.
The beauty of this simplicity involves little risk of misunderstanding or a customer missing the point. When UVPs become too complex, odds favor you losing people’s interest and understanding.
Reinforce During Every Sale
It is not enough to simply market your UVP through catchy statements. Let us imagine from the above example that you have walked into an Apple store to check out the new iPhone 12. You can easily envision that Apple’s sales staff would be trained to point out the phone’s speed as well. This reinforcement of the phone’s unique value would help solidify it in your mind. Perhaps you don’t even remember seeing an ad for the iPhone 12, but subconsciously, those statements about it being fast, paired with a sales member pointing out its superior speed, will act together to create an extremely clear value this phone provides.
Once you have established a UVP, and you have built out simple, effective statements, be sure your staff reinforces your UVP throughout every sale. This starts by circulating your UVP among your employees regularly. Communication of your UVP should be constant, ensuring that every single member of your business has a clear understanding of what makes your products or service different from the rest.
Ask yourself this: if you polled your staff today and asked details about your company’s UVP or a specific product or service’s value, would you receive the same answer from every team member?
If the answer is no, then you need to start marketing your UVP in-house before taking it to external customers. Everyone on your team should understand without a shadow of a doubt what sets your business and products/services apart.
Establishing your UVP with your employees begins with you. Make sure that when you speak about your business and specific products/services, you consistently deliver the same message about the value you offer to customers. Reinforce this during any company communications, and coach sales staff on implementing this language throughout the entire sales process.
Target Your Marketing in a Personalized Way
In today’s data-rich world, people get accustomed to seeing marketing campaigns highly personalized. For this reason, it becomes important to use your UVP to create targeted marketing campaigns.
Digital marketing hits a home run in this way. Digital marketing campaigns allow you to sift through mountains of data, honing your campaign in on the specific audience you wish to reach. Not only that, but digital marketing allows you to surface specialized value statements and unique ad copy to each audience. Pulling in data points from previous search history, people’s online shopping preferences, and more, you can serve up a UVP that answers the main point of your customer in a precise way.
For example, Apple’s latest iPhone release has a focus on speed; however, that is not the only value statement that Apple has delivered around this phone. Apple also points out that the phone offers night mode on every camera. Imagine that a customer has previously searched online for smartphones with a camera featuring a night mode. You can easily see how if Apple showcased this value statement in a social media paid ad later, it would be more meaningful than highlighting the phone’s speed.
In this way, it becomes critical to build marketing campaigns that utilize data to intelligently surface the right value statement to the right audience.
Showcase Your UVP in a Meaningful Way
While establishing your UVP and creating clear messaging around it remains important, it will fall flat if not paired with the right marketing campaign. Gone are the days where you simply tell a customer what you offer. In today’s world, consumers expect their voice to be heard, and they expect marketing to be tailored to their preferences.
With the right data powering your marketing efforts, you can cut down on dollars wasted and improve your conversion rates. At J&L Marketing, we assist our clients with building smart marketing campaigns driven by detailed data. We can work with you to establish a clear UVP and build effective messaging around that UVP.
Once we have clear value statements built, we can help you target the right audience with the right messaging. Our digital marketing strategy involves careful reporting and meaningful insights backed by superior customer service. If you are interested in learning more, we are here to help. Talk to our team today about how you can powerfully showcase your Unique Value Proposition.
