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What Makes Your Business Different?

To find out what makes your business stand out from the crowd, you need to ask yourself some key questions:

• What does our business do better than anyone else?
• What makes us different?
• What do our customers say to us when we ask them why they chose us or what they like best about us?
• Which of these things that make us different do our customers value most?

Stand out from your competition and give your customers a clear reason for choosing your business over theirs.

When you think about it, very few businesses are one-of-a-kind and chances are you operate in an industry where you have competitors offering similar products and services. To make your business stand out in the eyes of your target customers, you need to pinpoint what makes your business different, and connect this to their needs and desires.

Unique selling point

The first step is to uncover your Unique Selling Point or USP. A Unique Selling Point (sometimes called a Unique Sales Proposition) is a feature or benefit that sets your product or service apart from the crowd. It makes your offering special and seem better than your competitors.

Your USP can be an actual fact or a perceived difference and can be expressed as a summary of what you do and how you do it better or differently than others. Sometimes businesses are able to sum this up in just a few words and this becomes their tag-line or slogan e.g. ‘where everyone gets a bargain’ sums up The Warehouse’s USP perfectly. For many businesses however it is not that clear cut and their unique selling point needs to be communicated in more subtle ways. But regardless of how you express it, your USP should focus on how it benefits the customer.

What's unique about you ?

Pinpointing what is unique about your business, products and services can take some soul-searching and creativity, especially when you have lots of competitors. You need to take a good hard look at what you do and how you do it. Look at your current customers and those you wish to attract.