“No one else does what I do; my business is unique.”

This is what I hear from time to time from prospective clients. They are convinced that they don’t have any competitors and that no one does exactly what they do. This means that they don’t worry too much about getting their marketing right – they are so unique that they think they don’t have to!

If this is you, then you are REALLY lucky. However, if you’re a coach, a consultant or a trainer, then I would be prepared to put money on the fact that you are not alone and that someone, somewhere, is running a similar business to you. (I’m up for a challenge, so if you think that you can win this bet, please get in touch!)

Over the past 18 years of running Appletree, I have met literally hundreds of coaches, consultants and trainers. I have over 1500 readers of Scribbles, my email newsletter and there are about the same number of people on my database. I have over 1000 connections on LinkedIn. While I haven’t met all these people and while there is some overlap, this shows that I actually know thousands of coaches, consultants and trainers. Somebody, somewhere is competing with you!

This is why it is so important that you stand out from the crowd; you need to show your potential clients what makes you different and why they should work with you, instead of spending their money somewhere else.

How Do You Show Off Your Uniqueness?

When you provide a service to your clients – rather than selling products – you shouldn’t try to compete on price (because you’ll just end up cutting your price, decreasing the value you provide to clients and not earning any money!) You can’t compete on features, either, because your service can’t be seen and compared to others. Telling a prospect that you are faster at delivery or that your customer service is better doesn’t really cut it, as it’s difficult to prove either of these.

Think instead about why people buy from you – not the rational ‘I need it’ reasons, but the irrational ‘I want it/I want to work with this person’ reasons. Once you get to grips with emotional USPs (Unique Selling Points) then you can really show off what makes your business different.

What is an Emotional USP?

There are six human emotional needs first articulated by Tony Robbins. These have been further developed into a structure for formulating the emotional USP for your business. This helps you to establish and articulate the key reason why people will buy from you – the wants rather than the needs.

Here are the six emotional needs and how they translate into business USPs driven by emotion:

Certainty – someone will buy from you because they know you’ll get the job done. You provide security and consistency.

Contribution – they will buy from you because they know you’ll help them make a significant contribution through their business or their life.

Connection – they’ll buy because they know that you can connect them with the people they need to know.

Growth – someone will buy from you because they know you’ll help them or their business to grow. They want continual personal or business development.

Significance – they’ll buy because they know you’ll help them to feel valued. They want to feel important and needed.

Variety – they will buy because they know you’ll bring them the variety they want. They prefer uncertainty over certainty.

At Appletree Marketing, our emotional USP is certainty. Our clients work with us because they know we’ll get their marketing done for them, on time, on budget and without them having to worry about it. We use this in our marketing messages, to tell prospective clients that they can trust us to do their marketing and find them new clients. ‘Certainty’ is not sexy or exciting, but when you understand that you’re known as a ‘safe pair of hands’ or a trusted advisor by your favourite clients, when you promote your business with those terms, guess what? You get more of the types of clients that you really want to work with! When I understood this, I changed the way that we were promoting Appletree and it attracts our ideal clients to ask for our help with their marketing.

What is your emotional USP?

Take some time to identify your emotional USP and then use the most appropriate language in your marketing to make your business really stand out.

If you’re still not sure how to do this and you would like some help (or you’d like to take up my uniqueness challenge) give me a call on 01635 578 500 or click here to email me.