Creating a unique selling proposition is the key to build a sustainable business online and, especially, a blog.
With every passing year, the online competition gets increasingly intense.
According to OptinMonster, there are approximately 600 million blogs in the world today, with 60 million getting added every month. With the sheer number of blog articles in existence, it’s possible that most bloggers have already covered the majority of topics within each industry.
Sure, you may get some traffic, some comments, or some people may even subscribe to your email list. But it’s taken you years to get to this level. A few questions might linger your thoughts like:
- How can I elevate my business above the fold?
- What do I need to build a sustainable online business?
Three words: Unique selling proposition.
But how exactly do you create a USP? Stay tuned because in this tutorial, we’ll teach you how to make a unique sellin proposition.
Standing out from the Crowd is a Huge Challenge
With all the blogs out there and the huge amount of posts that are written about every topic, it may seem nearly impossible to stand out from the crowd.
Yet there are a lot of bloggers, just like you, who become successful and stand out in over-crowded niches.
For example, Derek Halpern was able to get over 150,000 subscribers for his blog Social Triggers in a short amount of time by talking about boring marketing topics. I’m going to talk about him a lot in this post because he’s a genius when it comes to this sort of thing. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!
Danny Iny was able to do the same thing. He’s on track to make $1.5 million from his blog Firepole Marketing this year.
And many other people have done the same with many different topics like health and fitness, personal development, etc.
It seems impossible, but they did it, and you can do it, too.
Your customer is an important factor, but you and your business are the essential part of the equation.
The way you describe your business is extremely important.
It’s Not [Only] About Great Content and Design
A lot of marketers say that content is king, and others say that design is king.
There’s even an ongoing feud between the two camps as each side tries to prove they’re right and the other is wrong.
But let’s face it: great content is everywhere. A lot of bloggers create exceptional content, but you don’t comment on it or even bother sharing it.
The same is true of design. Ask yourself, when was the last time that you subscribed to a blog because of its UI?
Don’t twist my words. Having great content and a great design are essential things nowadays. It’s an expectation. But even content and design fall short when you forge ahead without creating a unique selling proposition first.
You need a UVP to differentiate you, and here’s why:
4 Reasons Why You Need to Have a Unique Selling Proposition
In today’s saturated business landscape standing out from the rest is becoming increasingly more difficult. A unique selling proposition is a powerful tool to help you articulate what makes your brand and offering distinct and compelling.
In other words, your USP answers every customer’s mental question: “Why should I buy from you and not from them?”
Because if you sell the same sets of products and services as everyone else, then customers will simply gravitate toward who sells cheapest. Think about it.
With a solid USP, you give your brand what a perfectly fair competitive advantage, giving potential customers a reason to choose you over competitors.
Allow me to expound the importance of creating a unique selling proposition with the 4 reasons below:
1. To increased brand visibility among customers
The first crucial part to attract customers is to get them to actually find out about your business.
With all the competition out there, how will potential visitors find your site?
A well-defined USP helps cut through the noise and grab the attention of your target audience. By clearly communicating your unique value proposition, you create a sense of differentiation between you and competitors. This makes it easier for customers to understand how you can solve their specific problem or satisfy their need.
Creating a unique selling proposition translates to a targeted reach and better brand awareness.
2. To enhanced brand recognition and recall
So, your customers have visited your site, now what? Will they remember it?
If your site is just like everyone else’s, you’ll be forgotten like yesterday’s news.
On the other hand, with a killer unique selling proposition, you can stand out form the crowd.
Look. Good content, flashy UI and a pretty logo helps with brand recognition. That means your brand is easily recognizable among your competitors. It’s good, but not enough to make customers patronize you.
Brand recognition is like learning to distinguish McDonald’s from its fastfood competitors— you recognize the brand, but it doesn’t make you crave for a Big Mac.
A strong USP acts as a memorable hook that sticks with potential customers long after they encounter your brand.
When your USP is clear, concise, and resonates with your target audience’s pain or pleasure points, it creates a lasting impression that makes your brand memorable. In other words, when customers suffer from a specific pain point, you are the subconscious solution that enters their minds. That is called brand recall.
Creating a unique selling proposition not only improvs brand recognition, but also brand recall. It helps customers remember you when they’re ready to make a purchase. This increases your chances of being selected over competitors who blur together in their memory.
3. To compel leads to do business with you
It’s no secret that most blogs have already covered the essential topics across various industries. Why should someone spend time on your website versus others they know, like, and trust?
Being different will make it easier for your visitors to understand why your website is worth paying attention to. Not only that, but differentiation makes it more likely that visitors will choose your business over another.
4. Referrals
It’s difficult for your customers to describe your business to their friends and colleagues when it’s similar to hundreds of others.
Being different gives people at least one reason to spread the word about your business without you having to do any additional work, and their friends will start to spread the word, and so on.
Sales will start rolling in without any additional effort on your part. Just make sure that you can accommodate all those new customers!
Differentiation Really is ESSENTIAL
Without differentiating yourself and creating a unique selling proposition, customers will find it harder to discover, remember, and stick with your business.
Without differentiation, they won’t tell their friends and colleagues about you are doing because it’s not remarkable enough, and even if they did, those referrals wouldn’t remember you anyway.
On the other hand, if you find a way to appeal to a certain niche of people with a unique twist, you increase your chances of being noticed and potentially acquire more leads.
The 5 Tactics How to Create a Unique Selling Proposition
If you’re still having a hard time figuring out what can you be different, then I’ve got a solution for you.
The following steps will help you creating a unique selling proposition.
1. Identify your ideal reader
Identifying your ideal reader is the key to differentiating your business.
Everything else will depend on this, from what to write about to how to market your content.
Creating a unique selling proposition is the same. You need to clearly define your ideal reader first.
When you try to appeal to everyone, you appeal to no one.
You need to be clear about who your intended audience is.
2. Remove the pain your competitors add
This is a brain-dead simple yet effective way to differentiate yourself from your competitors.
There are simple things that you might think every blog and business in your market does, yet, they don’t do them, and customers take notice.
Knowing what those things are and creating a unique selling proposition based on correcting them is a simple way to stand out.
If you understand what inconveniences your competitors cause to your ideal customer, you can easily differentiate yourself by creating a business model which avoids those pitfalls.
It works because it resonates with what your audience wants from you.
3. Specialize
Imagine that you want to hire a freelance writer to get content for your health and fitness blog.
Would you hire a general freelance writer who could write about anything, or would you be more interested in a freelance writer who writes only about health and fitness?
See the difference here?
Of course, you’ll want the latter. Because he’s an expert on your topic, you’ll happily pay more.
Specializing immediately positions you as an expert in a narrow niche.
Don’t try to please everyone. Catering to a small group of people is enough to make you unique even to those who aren’t in that group.
4. Find an intersection between 2 different topics
This could be the most powerful way to stand out from the crowd.
Sonia Simone loves to call it the crossroads.
It’s all about finding 2 unrelated topics and trying to find the intersection between those 2 topics.
5. Your personality
If you’re running a small business (like I do), your unique selling proposition can simply be… you. Your personality could be enough to have a powerful unique selling proposition.
By applying your personal style to many aspects of your business, no one can really compete with you, since there is only one you.
Combine 2 Of The Above USP and be Unstoppable
You could also only apply one of the five methods above to get a unique selling proposition.
Or you could combine more than one to get an even more powerful unique value proposition.
Having a unique value proposition is the most essential part of your marketing. Getting it right and communicating it well means that you’ll be able to reach a wider audience than you ever thought you could, and you’ll do it with less effort.
The more powerful you make your Unique Value Proposition, the easier it’ll be to build your lucrative business online.
Unique Selling Proposition Examples
Here are 12 Unique Selling Proposition examples.
First of how to Remove the pain your competitors add:
Who hasn’t heard of Domino’s pizza nowadays?
In the old days, it was hard for Domino’s to stand out in the highly competitive pizza marketplace.
Then in 1973, Domino’s found one thing that people hated about their competitors: taking a long time to deliver pizza, at which point it’s cold and not so appealing.
They used this statement in their marketing, “Fresh, hot pizza delivered to your door in 30 minutes or less, guaranteed.”
They used this phrase for nearly 20 years before it was replaced in the US due to driver safety concerns.
Domino’s Pizza was built on that phrase. It was a major turning point for their business.
2. Social Triggers
Going back to the online world, I can’t think of a better example than Derek Halpern and his blog Social Triggers.
Derek discovered something interesting. Most bloggers are tired of hearing advice that doesn’t work.
That’s why he doesn’t just give generic advice, instead he backs up everything he says with academic research.
In addition to differentiating himself, it has raised his credibility through the roof.
Brilliant.
3. Interactive Biology
Interactive Biology is a blog written by my friend Leslie Samuel.
He found out that most bloggers who write about biology make it boring. He wanted to change this concept and make biology fun to learn about.
That’s why he created his blog, Interactive Biology.
4. Selz
Selz helps you sell from your site really easily.
Something that made Selz stand out is how quickly and easily you can start selling from your site in just a few minutes. They made it possible with their WP plugin, where you could start selling within your WordPress dashboard. It’s as easy as 1, 2, 3.
Now let’s see some examples of how to create a specialized selling proposition:
6. Firepole Marketing by Danny Iny
Danny Iny is one of my mentors online. He’s a really smart guy.
Danny doesn’t just talk about marketing on Firepole Marketing. He blogs about strategic marketing for amateurs.
He appealed to a small group of people, and they became his raving fans. Not only that, but his well-defined subject-matter appeals more to a broader audience, as well.
As I mentioned in the beginning, his blog is on track to make one and a half million dollars.
7. Nerd Fitness
Steve Kamb the owner of Nerd Fitness was able to build his blog in the over-crowded fitness niche and stand out from the crowd.
There are probably thousands of blogs out there about health and fitness. But there aren’t any blogs about fitness tailored specifically for nerds, other than Nerd Fitness.
He has a highly engaged audience. Check his blog to see what I mean.
He’s done a really amazing job of specializing and catering to a niche group of people.
Finding an intersection between 2 different topics is not easy so here are examples of few great unique selling propositions:
8. Copyblogger
Did you ever wonder why Brian Clark named it that?
At that time, most blogs were talking about how to make money online. No one had a narrowed down topic about copywriting for bloggers.
Brian Clark was a copywriter himself and he found out that copywriting principles could be applied to blogging too.
That’s why he started Copyblogger, which is one of the most popular and influential blogs in existence today: Copywriting + Blogging = Copyblogger
It was a really creative way for Brian Clark to create one of the most popular blogs in an overcrowded topic like marketing.
Another example here is…
9. Social Triggers by Derek Halpern.
Derek’s blog isn’t super old, yet he was able to stand out in an overcrowded niche like marketing and was able to build a following of more than 100k subscribers in just a few years.
Besides being a genius marketer, he was able to stand out because of his powerful value proposition.
His blog Social Triggers is also a crossroad.
He found that a lot of psychology principles could be applied to be able to get more traffic leads and sales. That’s why he combined marketing with psychology.
Marketing + Psychology = Social Triggers
Your personality in your selling proposition is what makes it UNIQUE:
10. Marie Forleo
Who hasn’t heard of this awesome, passionate woman?!
Her blog isn’t for everyone, it’s only for those who love Marie‘s personality. Like me.
Another example is…
11. Noemi Dunford’s IttyBiz
Noemi’s did something very interesting. She used her personality to stand out in the marketing marketplace.
If you don’t like Noemi, you won’t like IttyBiz.
12. There are many others such as
Seth Godin, Noah Kogan, Jon Morrow, Chris Brogan, and Chris Ducker.
They’ve all created what Sonia loves to call persona-driven brands. They’ve made extraordinary businesses through the power of their own personality.
This is something you need to consider. There’s only one you in the world. Showing your potential customers your personality could differentiate your business.
How to Create a Unique Selling Proposition
You may feel overwhelmed by all the methods listed above and how that can help creating a unique selling proposition.
Of course, you’re probably thinking about how to apply it to your business.
So let’s get to the practical stuff.
Here’s a step by step guide to follow:
- Identify your ideal reader and define him/her on paper. This makes everything clearer. If you skip this part, then don’t waste your time trying to build a business online.
- Check the 5 tactics and identify your possible unique selling proposition.
- Start crossing out the ones that you won’t use or don’t apply to your business.
- Think about the ones that will appeal and resonate more with your audience, not what you think will.
- Use the resulting selling proposition in your marketing message and everything in your business after that. Communicate it well in everything you do after that.
Embrace your Unique Selling Proposition
The only reason you need a unique selling proposition is to find a clear answer to the question, “Why you? Why should I listen to YOU?”
You should always keep this question in your mind.
The answer will be your unique value proposition. But it is your job to communicate it with your readers.
Don’t just leave it somewhere, hoping that they notice it. Instead, make it clear by putting it right in front of them.
Communicate it in everything you do. You need to focus your entire marketing efforts on getting this message across.
That’s the role of your branding, messaging, and design. Having a great tagline, logo, and design can really help you show your uniqueness.
Support your unique selling proposition with every aspect of your business.
Even With Your Content
Every aspect of your business needs to communicate and support your unique value proposition, even the content on your blog.
If you narrowed your topic down, stick to it. Don’t lose your focus.
People will start to notice your uniqueness, and you’ll start getting more comments, more shares and more traffic. The most important part is that you’ll have an engaged audience who’ll be your ravings fans forever.
Those are the people who will keep you business going, so try to engage with them.
- From now on, think about every piece of content that you publish.
- Does it fit that narrow topic?
- Does it communicate your unique value proposition and show how you’re different from your competitors?
If the answer is yes, then go for it, and do your best to promote it. If the answer is no, then don’t publish it.
Use the Divide and Conquer Technique
Focusing on a narrow niche could be very hard. There will come at a time when you won’t have any ideas to write about.
That’s why you need to use the divide and conquer technique.
The idea behind it is that you divide your market into segments and try to go for a very narrow topic. Write about that topic to demonstrate your expertise.
When you conquer it and people know that you’re an expert in that topic, move to the next one, conquer it, and so on.
When you conquer one topic at a time, it’ll be easier for you to stand out.
According to the halo effect principle, when people know that you’re an expert about one thing, they’ll think that you’re an expert on everything related to that topic.
Being the expert in a tight niche is an easier job. Using the halo effect, you could be seen as an expert on that topic.
Let’s talk about Derek Halpern and see how he applied this technique.
When Derek first started, he didn’t just talk about how to use psychology in marketing. Instead, he was more specific: he was writing about how to use psychology to increase conversion rates. This is a really powerful unique value proposition because he combined two in one.
He started posting about this narrow topic until he conquered it and people thought he was a conversion optimization expert.
After that, he started to talk about how to use psychology to increase sales. He conquered it.
Then he started to write about email marketing… and he conquered it.
Now, everyone thinks that he’s an expert on anything related to marketing, whether it’s blogging or anything else.
If he started to talk about SEO tomorrow, people would think he was an expert, even though he really isn’t.
Now it’s your turn to Creating a Unique Selling Proposition
Your audience now knows why you’re different from others.
They know why they should listen to you.
You start getting more comments, more shares, more subscribers, and most importantly, getting more sales and clients.
But all this only happens when your unique value proposition is well-defined and you communicate it well.
After creating a unique selling proposition and communicating it well with everything you do, the task of conquering your niche and having a lucrative online business is 100 times easier.
So get a paper and start completing the steps listed above to find your uniqueness and the answer to the question, “Why you?”
For more ways to grow your business have a look at this eCommerce 101 tutorial.
your usp article and the example products like domino’z is really good thanks for sharing the article