One Step At A Time: What Makes You Unique?
Welcome back to the blog series, “Change Your Message” and the Magic of a UVP!
Right now, I’m talking about your UVP message – not the delivery method for getting it out there. I’ll go into the countless forms of available media, advertising, and sales opportunities later. But, talking about delivery channels before the message will do you about as much good as choosing a shipping provider before deciding what exactly you plan to send. No matter your ultimate medium of choice—or how you measure “success”—just make sure your unique value proposition is crystal clear…then keep stating it, again and again. What exactly is this magic UVP that I keep bringing up?
A Value Proposition is an inherent promise of benefit that a company gives its customers, employees, or business partners. That value is usually measured in terms of “benefit minus cost.” A large part of determining value lies in comparing alternatives.
A Unique Value Proposition (sometimes called Unique Selling Proposition or USP) communicates the unique contribution your cause, company, products, and/or services are able to provide to the market in a way that is markedly different from your competitors.
Once you’ve developed your unique value proposition (click here for a free worksheet) and carried it throughout your company, it’s time to put it out there in the world, ideally to the right target market that is primed to take it in. In the golden days of advertising, you simply stuck to the essential “Four Ps” of marketing: product, place, price, and promotion. In the ensuing decades, as the marketplace changed, that concept evolved—the four P’s became the four C’s, and now there’s even an online course that now offers the fourteen P’s
Unfortunately, all of the acronyms in the world just won’t cut it anymore. In a crowded marketplace, what is enough to truly differentiate you from your competition?
Watch for the next post of this blog series, “Change Your Message” where we ask, “What is it that’s so different about your product, service or cause?” AND if you haven’t already gotten Olga Mizrahi’s UVP Worksheet, click on this link, other goodies or visit ChunkofChange.com.
