Who is your target audience? What do they need? How can you help them? Why should they choose you instead of your competition? Your Unique Value Proposition (UVP) is a statement that answers all of those questions. In this episode, I will walk you through the four simple steps you need to take to create your UVP. I’ll also give you a few examples to show you the process.
Transcript
Chrissy (00:08):
Welcome to Website Success. I’m your host, Chrissy Rey, and I have more than 25 years of experience helping my clients make websites that their clients love. Tune in each week as I share tips and tricks that’ll help you make your website the best it can be.
(00:27):
Welcome back. In this episode, we’re gonna talk about your unique value proposition or UVP. It’s a statement that’s going to answer a few questions about your business. So, for example, who do you help? What do they need? How can you help them? And what makes your solution or offer the best choice for those customers? And it’s going to tell your customers why they should go with your offer over every other offer that’s available to them. What makes you the best choice?
(00:59):
So some version of the statement should appear pretty prominently on your website and all of your other marketing materials, but it’s actually something that you should do for your business in general. So that way, when someone asks you, “What do you do,” you can answer with your unique value proposition to give them pretty much all of the information that they need to know about whether or not they should work with you.
(01:22):
So how do you create the perfect unique value proposition for your business and your website and your marketing materials? I’ve got four steps for you to follow.
(01:31):
The first one is going to be to identify your target audience. And your target audience needs to know that you are addressing them. So unless they know for some reason, if it’s sort of a given with your unique value proposition, then you do need to identify your target audience. And if you’ve been following along with me, then you are using my website planner. If you’re not, you can grab it from websitesuccessacademy.com, but you’ve already identified that target audience in the website planner. You’ve already created a ICA for your ideal customer. So you already know who your target audience is.
(02:10):
Number two, you’re going to identify that target audience’s problem. So what is it that your target audience needs to do? What is causing them pain? What is, what is, what is their problem? And again, you’ve already identified this if you’re using my website planner. So go back, fill that out. If you didn’t do it already, go back to the target audience, exercise and identify what your target audience’s problem is.
(02:35):
Number three, you’re going to identify your solution to that problem. So your UVP or unique value proposition should identify how you can help your target audience, but it should highlight the benefits of your offer and not just its features. Benefits are going to be what your customers really care about. So try to focus on them. And again, if you’re using my website planner, so this is a good reason to use that website planner, one of the very first things that you did was you documented the features and benefits of your offer. So you should already have those benefits ready to go for your unique value proposition.
(03:14):
The last step, number four, is going to be to identify how you are different from your competitors. You need to know what your competitors are offering to do this, and you also need to know how you’re different from them. So again, using that website planner, you’ve already identified this information. You already know what your differences are. You already know how you are, how you are different from your competitors. So you’ve already documented that. So you should already have that information.
(03:40):
So now what you’re going to do to create the UVP is take those four things you identified and then turn them into a single concise statement about your offer, your solution, your business, your whatever it is that you’re offering.
(03:52):
So let’s say that I have a doggy daycare, for example, my target audience is gonna be busy dog owners who live in College Park, Maryland. And their problem is that they need a place to take their dogs while they work. And they work weird hours. They work really early in the morning, really late at night. Sometimes they work overnight. So they work pretty much 24/7. And my solution is a dog daycare that keeps the pets safe and happy. The daycare is the offer. The features are going to be things like we watch the dogs, we play with the dogs, we feed the dogs, et cetera, et cetera. And the benefits are going to be having safe and happy pets. My competitive advantage over all of the other doggy daycares are out there, all of my competitors, is that my doggy daycare happens to be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So that’s why we are the one that my target audience should choose. Now, I can take all of that and turn it into a single statement. So I’ve got these four bullet points that I’ve identified. I just need to turn them into a short statement sentence or two. And so for example, I could say, “Doggy Daycare helps busy dog parents in college park, Maryland. Keep their fur baby safe and happy while they work by providing 24/7 doggy daycare.” Or something like that. It doesn’t have to be exactly that, but that’s a pretty good starting point. And then you can refine it from there.
(05:15):
Let me do another example. This time it’s going to be for an escape room center. So if you’ve ever done an escape room, you know that they usually have 1, 2, 3 or more different escape rooms there. And so in this case, my target audience is parents with children between the ages of six and 12 who live in Annapolis, Maryland. And their problem is that they need to find something fun for their whole family on a weekend, evening, daytime, whatever, whatever it is. So they, they just need to find something fun for their whole family. And they’ve gone to other escape rooms and the kids maybe didn’t enjoy them because the escape rooms were too hard for them. So remember these, they, they have kids between the ages of six and 12. So my solution is a selection of escape room games. So escape room puzzles, and the features are going to include challenging puzzles that are appropriate for ages six and up. So I’ve, I’ve gone through and I’ve, I’ve made these puzzles challenging, but still appropriate for younger kids. So, so younger kids are gonna be able to help figure them out with their family, and the benefit is going to be fun for the whole family. So the feature again, is these challenging puzzles that are appropriate for ages six and up. And the benefits include things like being fun for the whole family. Now, my competitive advantage is that it’s that the puzzles are appropriate for children because again, many escape rooms, they’re geared towards adults, which is great, but this particular escape room is kid friendly. It, we wanna, we wanna make it fun for the whole family. So I can take all of that. And we’re just gonna say that my escape room center is called Escape City. And we’ll say Escape City is the perfect destination for families looking for a fun activity in the Annapolis area. We offer a challenging selection of escape rooms with kid-friendly puzzles, ensuring fun for the whole family. There we go. Sounds pretty good. That was two sentences.
(07:11):
Now you’ve got your unique value proposition. It can be longer than one sentence, but you want to try to keep it pretty short. Try to stay away from jargon unless you know that your target audience knows the jargon, you, you’re absolutely sure. So for example, with my doggy daycare, I use furbaby, but that’s what dog owners a lot of times call their dogs. So that was okay. But you don’t wanna use big jargon-y technical words within your UVP unless they really make sense for you. Don’t wanna, you don’t wanna come off sounding too smart. I mean, you wanna sound smart, but you don’t wanna come off sounding like you used the thesaurus to make your uvp because it’s, it’s not really gonna resonate as much with your audience. So again, stay away from jargon, stay away from vague statements. You wanna keep it as concrete as possible.
(08:01):
Now that you know what a UVP is, I want you to make one. So create one that you can use for your website, for your business in general. And if you’re following along in the website planner, there is a section on your unique value proposition. So make sure you document it in there so you can use it later on for your website. And if you’re not using the website planner, then do make sure that you document this uvp. And again, it is something that you should be using for your business in general. I hope you found this useful and I will see you in the next episode.