Without a doubt the question I get asked most from my community is ‘how do I make my business or website unique”.  In marketing terms, this is known as the unique selling proposition, or USP.  You may have also heard it expressed as your point of difference (POD).

It doesn’t matter what you call it, the point is, differentiating your business from others and defining your USP could be one of the most important decisions will need to make about your business.

Your unique selling proposition is what makes your business stand out. It’s what makes you different and earns you a special place in the minds of your potential customers.

Being clear on how your business stands out from the crowd, and is different from all the others in your industry, will allow you to create a continual flow of clients and customers who will become raving fans.  And raving fans will happily promote your services to their friends and beyond, because they love what you do.

Without an effective USP you will continually struggle to attract lots of your ideal client and it will be even harder to get people to pay attention to what it is that you are saying.

If you consider this from your prospects point of view, there are so many options out there for them to do business. You have to answer their question, “why should I buy from you?” Or, “why should I read your blog, when there are millions of other blogs I could be reading?”

If you don’t give them a great reason why, your potential customers or readers will move on. It’s as simple as that.

Your USP can mean the difference between success and failure.

Different is Better Than Best

Chances are there are others in your industry that offer the same or similar types of services or products as you.  This is a good thing, because it means that while there is competition, there are also grounds that your niche has sufficient demand for your business to have potential success.

The mistake people often make though is they think that having a great product or superb content is enough of a difference to make your business stand out. In most markets, this is not so.   Having great products and content simply earns you the right to be in the industry.

As a newbie, or smaller business, it’s hard to compete on product or content quality alone. You want to aim to change the conversation instead to “Hey, look at me, I have great stuff too,” you want to confidently say, “Hey, I’m all about X, we do things differently. If you’re into X, we’re the only place you can get it.”

The secret is that you don’t want to necessarily be seen as being the best. Instead, you become the best at something no one else is doing in the same way as you.

That’s the power of a unique selling proposition. You want to be the best at something, but you can make it far easier if you define your competitors yourself.

Attracting more customers isn’t something you can simple work on occasionally. It’s something you focus on at every stage of your business, and your unique selling proposition is the first stage.

How to Find Your Unique Selling Proposition

So, I hope that you have realized your USP is important, so the next question is “How do I find mine?”

Whether it is traffic to your website, or clients in your door, it all starts with your story.  From where have you come to be at the point you are at now?  Often it is because of some personal life experiences that you ended up doing what you are doing now.  It might be a lifelong passion to help others in a certain area of expertise or learning as a result of your own learning. Perhaps you have developed an intense desire to help others as a result of people you know, or things you have a strong belief in.  This leads in to how you care for your customers and carries on through to your content, products and relationships you create with your client community.  Put this all together, and this becomes your promotion.

You can approach this in many different ways. Your USP might end up being a combination of things I have just listed.  Be sure that there are no right or wrongs here. And depending on what business you’re in, even a small amount of differentiation could lead to a much greater shot at success.

Here are a few simple ways to differentiate your business. These aren’t the only ways, but it’s a starting point to get you thinking.

Clearly Define Your Target Market and Ideal Client

Most people are afraid of narrowing down their target market for fear of losing potential customers.  But consider this.  Let’s say you are a web designer and you become a web designer for electricians, or a plumber for high rise buildings, or write about online marketing strategies for nutritionist.

Take a look at this from the customers’ viewpoint.  If you were a nutritionist and needed help with online marketing, wouldn’t you be inclined to choose the business that specializes in nutritionists?

The other benefit of specializing in a narrow market segment is that promotion becomes much easier. You know where to find nutritionists together at conferences and where they hang out online, so you know how to target them.

Develop Your Personality

It is most likely that your personal story is how you develop your personality.  If you are in small business then it can often be your personality alone that can make your business different.  You will have different values, beliefs, use of the language than someone else.  These things all go towards making your business unique from another.

By recognizing this and putting your personal stamp on many aspects of your business, there will be people that will resonate with your personality (there is only one you, after all).   In this way alone, you create something that no one else can directly compete with.

Evaluate Your Strengths

Consider that the benefits of your product or service and decide what differentiates it from other solutions available to your clients.  Is it the value your provide, your experience, your results, delivery speed and so on?  Work on quantifying the differences as much as possible.

Analyse Your Market

Find out which benefits are most crucial to your target prospects. What benefits do they appreciate most and which do they actively look for?

I would love to know all about your business and whether you have discovered your USP.  Leave me your comments here.

Even though I have created several offline businesses over the past 20 years, it was a new breed of animal when I started to want to venture into a more global market with my expertise.

At first I struggled a little, until I came to realize that the things I needed to do, were no different from when I had run my successful offline businesses.  Once these foundation things were in place, it amazes me how easy it is to create and grow a successful business.

And it’s why I’m so passionate about helping other women entrepreneurs create the success they have become accustomed to, in other areas of their life, in their business.  One of the things I get such a thrill from is showing them how to break through from trading their time working one-on-one, to taking them into a progressive plan that will allow them to increase their income exponentially.

Here are 5 things you must have in order to make that happen for you:

1. A Plan

When I first launched my business, I went round and round in circles, having lots of busyness, but very little business.  I expected everything to fall into my lap and for business to boom from day one.

I had to step back and look at my history of success to realize that what was missing was a clearly designed plan that I could put into action.  Once this was in place, I started seeing results right away, which gave me the confidence and energy to keep moving ahead.  There are times when this first plan will stop working because of the growth in business, and at that point it will need changing.

Having this first plan and a business model that allowed me to deliver to my clients, gave me the step by step blueprint for massive success.  I know, that as my income goals are reached, that I will need to re-visit my business model and I’m going to have to adapt it again.

When I am working with my Business Makeover and VIP clients, this is one of the first things that we spend time on.  Often there is no existing plan, so we create one. Alternatively, we re-design what is already in place so that it will deliver greater flexibility and income.  By doing this, they know exactly what they are offering their clients, when and how. This provides the clarity and momentum for them to achieve their income goals.

2. Action Beats Knowledge

With your blueprint all laid out before you – the next thing to do is to take action.  This means looking at what needs to be done, and implementing it!  Don’t waste time overthinking, but rather, set your timeline and priorities and move ahead with consistent, confident action.  Keep track of what is going well for you and what is not working.

Don’t get caught up in what many people do – to have a great plan, great ideas and then do nothing with either of them.  Or worse, they create the plan and then re-create it and re-create it and re-create it. And still do nothing.

If you tend to ponder or procrastinate, then you should probably ensure you have some accountability in place.  You could hire someone to join your team that is an action taker. This will be far less costly than you sitting on your ideas forever, and your message and services never getting out into the world in return for money.

3. Be Crystal Clear on Your Positioning

What do I mean by positioning?

When I talk about positioning, I mean more than just who your target market is.  While that is important too, your position in that market is even more important.

It is a crowded market place out there, and you need to know what makes you different from everyone else who is providing the same or similar service to you.

What are you known for?  What do you want to become known for?

Once you are crystal clear on your point of difference you will find that you will magnetically attract new clients, joint venture partners, speaking and other opportunities and your energy and business momentum will become difficult to stop.  You will begin to really enjoy your business because your message and positioning will all be in alignment with who you are and what your business is about.

4.  What Is Your Big WHY?

Whilst we all want to make a profit in business, it is important for there to be a bigger reason why you are in business.

The money is all very nice, but if all you are doing is focusing on the dollars you earn, it will be very difficult for you to attract the flow of abundance that is waiting for you.  Once you embrace a bigger why, your outlook will change.  Being in business is not easy – for everyone there are times that are challenging or difficult.  During these times, you need to have a reason bigger than just the dollars, to keep you focused and moving forward.

5. Swing On The Trapeze

I am sure you have all seen a trapeze artist and felt that moment of fear for them as they let go of one trapeze and spend those few moments suspended in mid air, until they are able to get hold of the second trapeze.

Sometimes it is the same leap of faith that you need in order to move forward.

If you know that you were truly meant to be achieving something bigger than where you are now, that desire didn’t just appear out of nowhere.  It is there as a sign that  even though you might not know how, you can make that desire a reality by climbing the ladder, taking hold of that trapeze, trusting in your intuition and making the jump and hearing the applause when you make it to the other side.

Of course, there is more that you need, but with these foundational steps in place you will be able to build your business to the level of success you desire, more quickly and easily than you can imagine right now.

You’ll need a plan and then some specific action steps that you implement so that all of this flows naturally and produces results – and I will be sharing these in detail with you in my new product launch happening soon!

I’d love to know which if the steps above are the biggest challenge for you right now?

Feel free to let me know below!

Success has its own set of problems, as just about anyone who has built a small business knows.

As I strived to reach the point where I was earning a good income from my business and seeing my business grow by leaps and bounds, a new kind of trouble emerged.  I had to learn how to grow and keep up with the new workload if I wanted to embrace that growth and still have any kind of work life balance.

Most of us are well acquainted with that place of overwhelm.

Overwhelmed, overworked yet still hanging on to our dream to have the success we know we deserve, and have achieved in other areas of our life before now. It is possible to build your dream business while still working another job if you are prepared to make lots of sacrifice, late nights, early mornings and feeling exhausted.

But if you are ready to think big?  When you finally make this decision, it becomes much easier to invest money in setting up systems that you need to have in place, creating your web presence, and any other tasks that do not need your direct input.   It is a financial input, but it is money well spent.

Make Your Business Scalable

Most people struggle for a long time trying to do everything themselves.  For some it is the fact that they just can’t let go of having complete control. For others it is an issue of trying to save money wherever possible.  I know just how you feel – it was exactly the same for me for a long time!  It wasn’t until I started to outsource some technical tasks that I truly realized the benefits.  This meant that I could now concentrate on the real money making tasks that would ensure my business could keep growing and generating revenue while also increasing my operating margin.  This is something that every growing small business faces at some stage and you always have to be careful that the cost of expansion does not put you dangerously in the red.

Sure, it cost me money to hire an assistant, but had reached the point where I couldn’t afford not to hire someone if I wanted to keep growing.

In his book the Cashflow Quadrant: Rich Dad’s Guide to Financial  Freedom, Robert Kiyosaki points out that it is difficult to achieve wealth as a self employed person.   I was recently reminded of this when a friend working for herself was advised that she had to take a period of ‘time off’ to recover from an illness.  In this instance this illness will severely affect her income, as would many other instances that can sideline your business.  Your bank account will be impacted very quickly!

So how do you avoid such pitfalls if you are a solopreneur?  Kiyosaki suggests creating business systems that work independently of you.  “If you have a secure system that produces more and more money with less and less work, then you really do not need to worry about living below your means”.

The trouble is, so few people know just how to create the type of systems, products and programs that will allow them to reap the benefits of recurring income, even when they are spending time away from their business.   It can be as simple as setting up autoresponders to send your email newsletter out automatically, re-purposing work you have already created and selling it on a sales page, creating a video that you upload onto YouTube that drives traffic to your website, or creating programs that your currently deliver on a small scale and upgrading that to reach a wider audience.

All of these things will allow you to reap the benefits of enjoying a continued income stream while you spend your time marketing your business further and being creative on new programs and products. In other words, the activities that will increase your bottom line even further.

I have assistants now that handle my book keeping, website upgrades and sales page creation and newsletter and article submissions. This allows me to scale up my business big time and at a much faster rate.

The one thing you do need to decide though is….  Are you even prepared to think big?

Leave me your comments and tell me how big you are thinking.

Fay

We all want to be seen and be known or heard about when we are in business. Whether it is online or offline, creating a buzz around your business is something that is essential and can boost profits enormously.  But how does one go about creating a buzz? Let’s face it, just because you have created a you beaut website does not mean that traffic will instantly come your way.  So, wouldn’t it be great if you knew how to go about creating the BUZZ that will instantly attract more clients?

Many of these same principles will apply whether you are offline or online. Some of the methods of attracting more clients to grow your business used to be things like placing your business information into publications such as the yellow pages or printed newspapers (remember those?). Whilst you will still find these things around, they seem to becoming a thing of the past.  It is more common nowadays for people to be looking for more original or unique methods to create business buzz. You still see a lot of businesses offering discount coupons or loyalty cards, contests or giveaways as ways to attract more clients.  This thought process can work just as effectively online as well, and with the considerable use of the internet, it is easier now than ever to reach more people than ever before with every marketing strategy you use.

Any savvy business owner must acknowledge the importance of having some sort of online presence.   This could be as simple as a social media presence, a one page website or sales page.  Whichever you decide, your online presence with increase the opportunity of you connecting with your ideal audience at some level. Fortunately, the availability of social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter allow us to build relationships with individuals on a greater scale than if we were simply trying to share our business amongst our community.  I challenge you to see whether or not you are using these networks as a no-cost method of growing your business.

It is this kind of sharing of information about your business that is one of the very first methods of creating the buzz that you are chasing for your business.  This does not mean that you immediately add everyone that has every sent you an email to your list (in fact I get really annoyed at this).  This would be spamming and nobody appreciates it.  What these social media platforms do allow you to do though, it to offer yourself as being available for easy access to information.  You can openly promote conferences, workshops, any competitions you may conduct in your business or discount periods that you have coming up.

If you are wanting to create business buzz, remember to consider your brand and what you stand for.  Keep it consistent so that when people come in contact with your business, they don’t get a feeling of ‘disconnect’ depending on where they came across you.  Most larger corporations have a logo, taglines etc, and even though you may be a smaller business, perhaps operating from home, this consistency is important in the buzz creation for any business. Online websites, business cards, brochures, advertising and face to face interaction will all leave a lasting impression.  Yes, you want to be remembered, but in a good way.

So how will you create a buzz that will be essential for your business?

Remember these key points for creating business buzz and attracting more clients:

• Create an online presence via website, sales page or blog
• Be clear on your branding – logo, tagline, colours, photos
• Engage in appropriate social media platforms regularly
• Create excitement with free giveaways, contests or discount services
• Connect with others who have your clients before and after you and offer your services
• Respect people’s privacy and no spamming
• Spread the words on what you are up to in your business, be creative – Create the BUZZ today!

P.S. Some of my favorite ways to grow your business and attract more clients can be found in my free audio interview

http://www.TheAussieBusinessCoach.com Check it out for more Buzz-Building!

I think this is huge!

You need to decide the parameters for your life, and mold it to your businesss to fit that. Not the other way around, which most people to just sort of squeezing life out if there’s room afterwards. I think that’s wrong. I think you’ve got your priorities wrong if this sounds like you.

If your goal is to build a multi-billion dollar empire, then maybe you’ll have to have some sort of compromise going on there. I really think that you can create a sort of life you want first, and then have your business fit that.

Whatever takes priority in your life is where your energy is going to flow. When I was starting my company, I wrote down a list of everything I wanted in that business, and then I worked my business around that.

Have you decided how you want your life to look as you grow your business?

I suggest you make these kind of decisions sooner rather than later, or you will end up having created a ‘monster’ type of business that does nothing but sap and drain your energy and leave you no time for all the fun things in life.

What do you think?

Recently speaking with clients, many of them are still concerned that they are unsure of exactly what their niche or target market is.  During our conversations I explain the importance of identifying who your Ideal Client is instead.  This truly is one of the very first, foundational things that you can do for your business to ensure your success.  After all, your message will be quite different depending on who it is that you want to reach.  If you don’t know precisely who you want to reach, your message can fall on many deaf ears.

I am sure you have heard of Target Markets

Recently my husband asked me to help him put together an advert for his property mentoring services.  He told me (and I already know) that the market he wanted to reach was anyone from 18-70 years old.

My immediate comment to him is that both our son and my dad are in that target market. They couldn’t be more different: Our son is just starting out his career, my dad is in retirement; our son yet started a family, and dad is the father of four adult children; I could go on as I’m sure you can imagine.

But the thing that really stood out was this: neither our son or my dad listen to the same radio stations, read the same magazines, use the same language.  So how was he supposed to reach them both with one advert? I’ll tell you how. By buying advertising in multiple magazines or radio stations  – a strategy that absolutely cost more money and undoubtedly included a lot of waste “exposure.”

This is the reason you need to go deeper than just a Target Market.

I have always found it far more effective to choose “Ideal Clients” instead.  Ideal clients are a smaller group within a wide target market. Within this smaller group you can start to take into account other characteristics such as age and gender, it takes it one step further and includes values, motivations, habits, likes & dislikes. It is a detailed description of all the things, tangible and not, that make up that person and influence their buying behaviors.

I Like To Go Even One Step Further

When I spend time with my clients in our coaching and training, I teach them to take that identification of their ideal client even one step further, and to actually create a ‘character’.  This character is a fictional person that clearly represents your ideal client.  I even get them to give this person a name, an address, a family if they have one.  To describe a typical day, their fears, desires, challenges, friends, what they enjoy doing in their spare time.  I even encourage them to create or find a picture that represents this person and put it up on your office wall.

Then, whenever you are doing any of your marketing, whether it be a sales call, a brochure, flyer or web page, make sure you are speaking directly to this ONE  person.

And that is how you create a marketing message that resonates. Your ideal client will wonder how on earth you know what she is thinking.  They will wonder how on earth you managed to get inside their head.  And when your ideal clients feel you know them that well, they will also be more likely to feel like you can help them, and place their trust (and their money) with you for that help.

The Finishing Step – Create Your Character

The final step in this process is to combine your original target market, with the avatar of your ideal client.

If you are unsure what an Avatar is – it’s a personification of a familiar idea, a person who represents an abstract quality.

When you combine the essence of your Avatar – a personification of a specific person, with the concept of Target Market – those people you are “targeting” with your marketing message, you truly hit the ‘sweet spot’.

So I want to ask you, who are you marketing to?

1) A wide target market: in which case it’s most likely your message is not specific enough and loses it’s ability to truly resonate with them. If this is the case, you may not be getting the results you want

2) An ideal client: a detailed definition, sometimes still a “bullet point” list of characteristics of an unknown identity.

3) An Avatar: a character that represents your ideal client, in full living detail. Thoughts, feelings, actions and all.

If you want to improve the results you are getting  in your business, my advice is that you will hugely benefit from getting more specific and focusing all your marketing to #3.

This post as always will have more impact if you share your perspective!

I’d love to know what your experience is and what you think. Please post a comment and share, and let’s start a conversation!

I think this avatar looks a bit like me don’t you?

Fay

Here’s a quick video blog post for you. It’s all about how I messed up, what I learned and what I would like to do to fix it!

If you want to see how I want to make it up to you, then here is a link telling you all about it. Go and check it out for yourself by clicking here.

I want to check it out..

One of the biggest mistakes solepreneurs make is undercharging for their expertise and knowledge. Although it is important to be sure that you are charging accordingly for your expertise, this is sometimes something that people are uncomfortable with when they are first starting out in their own business.

In this instance, I recommend that if you are just starting out, that you provide your service to clients at a rate that you feel comfortable with. Work with a couple of people at this rate and get really great results, and then with each new client, you will feel more comfortable about increasing your fees.

You can then continue with this increase until you reach a point where you are charging well for your time, and in accordance with what benefits you are providing your clients with as a result of working with you.

The more time you are giving to your clients on a personal level, the higher the fee for that time should be.  A premium priced product is where you are helping your clients to actually implement something for them by providing personal attention.  As you work down the ladder and have groups working together, or are providing information in a virtual environment to many, possibly hundreds, then you would most likely reduce the cost of those services accordingly.

However you are providing your service to your clients, you must still be sure that you are covering your costs.  Some people make the mistake of thinking that if they are providing services in a virtual environment, that they have no associated costs.  You must remember though that there are still things like audio services, transcription costs, teleseminar hosting fees,  email service providers.  All of these things need to be taken into account just as hall hire, printing costs and staff costs need to be taken into account for offline pricing.

Most of all, be very clear about the  value and outcome you provide to your client and use this as a basis for the pricing structure you put in place.

Although I have lived in Australia for the past 43 years, it was only yesterday I took a pledge and officially became an Australian Citizen.
Once the ceremony was over I began to reflect on what it now meant to be an Australian in the formal sense. I was amazed at the feelings that were coming up for me, even though I have lived in Australia for such a long time already, was raised here, and raised my own family here.

Suddenly there was an enormous sense of belonging. And it got me thinking that this is so like the environment we can create for our clients in business. To recognise and celebrate the achievements of your clients, to invite them to share in your successes and you in theirs, to listen to their opinions and ideas. All these things will give them a sense of being an appreciated part of your organisation. And the sense of belonging is something that so many people are missing and wanting today. You can’t place a dollar value on how important this is, but to know that each and every one of us has a yearning to feel like we belong, is important.

If you can create this feeling amongst your clients you will create amazing relationships, a level of trust and rapport with them, that it will be yet another reason they will want to do business with you and become a loyal long term client.

Every place you turn on the internet these days there is someone offering you a Quick Start to Instant Cash, Overnight Millions and other similar headlines.  I have been attending workshops and purchasing programs for several years now, and as sure as night follows day, I can assure you, there is no such thing as instant success!   Yes, there are folks who can show you wonderful bank statements of cash coming in quickly, but what most of them don’t say, is that the ‘instant cash’, took them 4 years of hard work to get to that point.

I am not saying that your journey needs to be long, drawn out and laboriously difficult. Indeed no. What I am saying is that going into any business and achieving long term success requires certain factors.  Operating your own business can be physically, emotionally, socially and financially draining if you are not careful.

The initial idea of your own business is often draped with bright lights.  The possibility of flexibility, of more time to yourself and cash flow are some of the attractive elements.  All of these outcomes are most definitely there for the taking providing you also follow these simple guidelines:

Be passionate about what you do:   Loving what you do in your business will be essential to helping you to overcome some of the hurdles and obstacles that you will meet along the way.

Be determined to succeed: When the bright lights have dimmed, you want to have a real raw determination that you will continue to progress with your plans until you get the outcome you want.  Too often the initial idea sounds great, and then as a few months pass and you need to start scheduling regular tasks that will help you to grow you list, it all seems like the return is not worth the effort.  Be patient and determined, and the results will show up for you.

Believe in yourself: Continual self doubt is one of the biggest saboteurs to solopreneurs. Avoid underestimating how valuable the information you have is to others. Target an audience at a level to which you do feel competent and experienced and as you continue to increase your own knowledge your target audience may change. You will most certainly not achieve success if you don’t first of all believe you are capable of it.

A clear strategy: Whilst a good overall view is great, don’t let yourself get overwhelmed with stages of your business growth that you have not yet reached.   Look at your current three month plan, and work to that.  Work backwards to create your monthly, weekly and daily actions to ensure you achieve your goals but remember that they can change.  Continually re-assess what is right for you based on new experiences, learnings, desires and opportunities.

Never be afraid to ask for help: One of the workshops I attended 18 months ago had a flip chart that said “Be hungry for coaching”.  I will never forget this and it has helped spur me on many times.  How often do you find yourself stuck or confused as to what to do next and yet you don’t go out and find someone who can help you to get over the barrier you are facing?  For sustainable success you want to be always open to offers of coaching or assistance, researching what you feel is a weakness. There are many places you can go to get help such as forums, social networking, a mentor or personal coach perhaps.  If you want to know something – find out who knows and go and ask!

Leave me a comment on challenges you face during your businesses growth.