What’s your USP?

Business consultants and sales trainers talk about ‘Unique Selling Propositions’.  But what is one of those really - and do your business, your services and your products all need to have one?

We all have competition - there are few truly unique businesses.  That means that ‘unique’ is a hard thing to define for most business owners.  As the business environment is more and more based on networking, referrals and connectors, that hard sell is less likely to be a big issue, but that doesn’t mean you don’t need to be clear about what you’re offering.

Know your audience

I bang on at length about ideal customers - if you’re trying to help everybody, you’ll find growing your business an uphill struggle.  The most important part of your business plan is to have one or more detailed client avatars.  This gives you focus and makes finding your potential clients in the places they gather and then giving them exactly what they really need.

Know their challenges

Go and sit in your ideal client’s seat.  What are they having to deal with?  What are the challenges they face? What keeps them awake at night?  When you’ve got a clear idea of the answers you’ve got the gold nuggets that will help you to craft the offers that will have them falling gratefully into your hands.

Understand how you can help them

Look at each of your services or products and test it against how it helps your potential clients with their issues and problems.  Not what it DOES, but what they GET from having it.  Known in the sales business as ‘benefits’, these are really solutions to their problems.  

When you’re generating benefits, remember the key phrase ‘So what?’  If what you’ve listed as a benefit can be challenged by ‘So what?’ you have not yet arrived at the benefit, you’re still talking about advantages - keep going!

This is the foundation for your promotion.  When you’re talking to ideal clients (or people who might refer you to an ideal client) you should be focused on their problems and outcomes, not what you do (HINT: they don’t care what you do!).

Educate

When you’ve got your benefits clear, it’s time to talk about them.  When you go to networking events or meet business connections and you’re asked ‘what do you do?’ use these benefits to educate people.  I find it works well to tell a story about a (fictitious) client who experienced a typical problem, then got the service or product you’re offering and got all these amazing outcomes (the benefits).

If your listener either has similar problems or knows someone who does, they’ll join up the dots really quickly!

So your USP isn’t really about what you’re offering - it’s what the recipient gets in the way of results.

How to plan a book

If you’re thinking of writing a book you probably have the subject in mind, but how do you get from an idea to a finished manuscript?

I’m talking about non-fiction books in this article - there are different approaches to fiction and non-fiction, and non-fiction is usually easier to put together.

First step: Make sure someone else hasn’t just published something very, very similar 

While you make your book unique, because it’s your thoughts on the subject, there’s only so many ways to rehash any subject - unless you’ve come up with something revolutionary or a different way of looking at your subject.

Doing this research has a dual purpose.  Not only are you ensuring you’re not reinventing the wheel, but it will also give you more ideas about what kind of approaches to your subject work - and what don’t.

Second step: Plan your content first 

This process creates your skeleton plan.  First plan out the subjects for each chapter, then add what you want to include in each one in more detail.  You can include:

• Theory
• Anecdotes and stories
• Case studies
• Quotes
• Models and diagrams
• Exercises or activities

Third step: Create your chapter ‘recipe’

Before you start organising the content you’ve gathered, think about what your chapter structure will look like.  

• Will there be an introduction?
• Will you start with a story or quotation?
• Will each chapter feature a case study?
• Will the chapter be broken into sections under subheadings?
• Will you end the chapter with a summary, a quotation or an action plan?

These are just a few of the things you’ll need to consider.  Once you’ve decided on your recipe, then each chapter needs to follow that.

Fourth step: Fit your content into the recipe structure for each chapter

I usually do this as a mind-map, but if you like lists then by all means do a list.  Effectively you’ll have a template for each chapter and you just need to add the content into the template.  Now you have your skeleton plan.

Fifth step: Write around your skeleton plan

Writing your book should now be reasonably easy as you’re literally filling in the gaps and expanding your material.

While there’s no rule about how long a book should be - you’ll need to aim at a minimum of about 40,000 words to give you a book that has substance and is thick enough to be visible on a bookshelf.  If it’s too thin it will disappear among the other books - not good news when your book is on the bookseller’s shelves.

If you’ve got ten chapters that means you’re aiming at around 4,000 words per chapter.  If you aim to write a chapter each week, your book will be done in ten weeks!

However, procrastination is the writer’s biggest enemy - so my advice is put regular time slots in your diary and treat them as critical appointments.  You’ll find that your manuscript grows quicker than you might have thought it will.

How hard is your website working?

How to be a ‘YouTuber’

There are so many success stories for people who have started out posting quirky videos and now make a small fortune as professional ‘YouTubers’.  Some of them have got so famous that they’ve become mainstream celebrities.  

That’s what you want for your business - not necessarily to become a famous ‘YouTuber’, but to attract that level of interest for your business.  So how did these people do it?

For many of them it was an accident.  They started posting their videos and hit a demographic that really liked what they posted and started following and telling their friends - and the channel went viral.

But that doesn’t mean you need a happy accident.  You do need to know your audience though.  

• What will reach them?  
• What are the problems they want to solve?  
• What do they want to learn?

That will give you the content focus.  

The next step is to make videos that will not only deliver the content, but will also entertain and has a personal spin that will make your take on things unique.

What equipment do you need?

You don’t need a posh recording studio and state-of-the-art equipment.  You do need to be able to record video footage that is appealing and interesting though.  Shaky, faded footage won’t work - you’ll need to be able to create clear video, even if you’re using your smartphone.

These days most smartphones will outperform the old video cameras that were considered top end 20 years ago, so they will do the job.  When you’ve gained a following and started monetising your channel you can invest in more sophisticated equipment.

You’ll benefit from learning how to do basic video editing or find someone who can do this for you on Fiverr.com or one of the other freelance platforms.

You can use programs like Vidnami.com or InVideo.io to make informer videos.  These platforms allow you to use images and video clips, which can be your own original material you upload or material from their libraries.

I’d advise that you use your own voice if possible, even if you prefer not to appear in the video yourself.  It will help people to feel that you’re a real person talking to them directly, rather than a corporate producer.

Style AND Substance

You may have heard people referring to something as ‘Style over substance’, which usually means it looks good, but there’s nothing worth having when you take a closer look.  

In other words, your presentations must have great value - but style is still important.  It’s what will make you stand out from your competitors and give you a better chance of going viral.

If you want to make videos that are worth watching you’ll need your own style - and that will need to be consistent.  If you’re not a natural video presenter it’s worth spending some time planning both the content and how you can put your own spin on it.

What creates style?

I know people who always wear the same colour shirt, dress head to toe in purple or wear statement jewellery.  

The way you talk about your subject can also create a unique style.  Think of radio and TV presenters - whether it’s the acerbic outspoken approach of Piers Morgan or the ditzy approach of Zoe Ball.  They’re memorable and that’s what you want.

Invest time in thinking ahead and planning and you’ll create videos that get watched to the end.

Your email marketing checklist

Email marketing is far from dead.  You may keep hearing that email is going ‘out of fashion’ in favour of apps like WhatsApp and Messenger, but most people still use email, especially in business.  A good email campaign can bring in significant improvements in sales volume.

These are the main elements of successful email marketing:

Focus

• What is the end goal?
• What is the time frame or end date for the campaign?
• Who are the recipients?  
• What are their current pain points?
• How does your offer solve their problems?

Campaign structure

• Work backwards from the end date, typically the frequency increases towards the end of the campaign.

For example:  The last 5 days for a special offer you would send emails on day 5, 4, 2 and 1.

A longer term campaign can have emails spaced out as far as 2 weeks apart at the beginning.

• Plan the email content before you start writing.

Email structure

• The subject line must make people want to open it to find out more

Names in the subject line don’t work like they used to - don’t do it!

• The opening paragraph should address a ‘pain’ for the reader.
• Short bullet point lists draw the reader’s eye - 3-5 is enough.  A long list has the opposite effect. 
• If you’re smart you can pick out essential sentences in bold and the reader will get the essence of the message by just reading the bold text.
• Ask for action at the end - then stop.
• Buttons are great to encourage people to do something.
• Postscripts (P.S.) are good to either give an additional push or to offer a lower cost offer as a fallback.  However, the fewer calls to action the better, don’t confuse and distract with asking people to do too many different things.

Check your open and click rates and test different subject lines to improve these.