In today’s episode, I’m going to be sharing with you how to articulate your unique value proposition in your messaging and marketing.
This is going to be really helpful for those of you who struggle to talk about what you do in a way that has your ideal clients saying “Yes, that’s exactly what I need.”
Here for the links referenced in the show notes?
Nail Your Niche free training: tashcorbin.com/niche
Fast-Track Your Start-Up free training: tashcorbin.com/fasttrack
If that’s you, jump on in and let’s get started with this episode!
It is such a common issue for women entrepreneurs, in particular, to struggle with how they sum themselves up, sum up their business or portray their value quickly and easily.
The term ‘unique value proposition’ is often thrown around as one of those special secret keys to helping you get your business really thriving and getting your messaging clear. This helps people know very quickly, “Are you for me or not? Should I work with you or not? How do I work with you?”
The thing is that there’s not a lot of great advice out there about how you actually do that.
How do you start to really articulate your unique value proposition in a way that’s meaningful for your ideal clients? In a way that portrays your value quickly and easily, and helps you build messaging that you can use in your business on all of your different platforms?
I’ve come up with six tips for you on how you can really get good at articulating that value proposition, and how you can incorporate that into your messaging and marketing.
1. Stop playing the Highlander game
If you’re not familiar with the movie Highlander, what I’m saying with this is that it’s very easy to think that your unique value proposition or your messaging in your business should be this one catchy phrase. That it should be this one catchy statement, tagline, or a couple of sentences that you just have to learn off by heart and if you say them over and over again, people will start getting it.
But that’s actually not really helpful.
If you think about it, there are two ways you could craft that phrase. The first way is that you craft that phrase using really common words and language that people actually understand. But then if you do, you’re going to sound like every other person who works in your industry.
Then the second way is you could use really unique words. Some people make up their own modalities and they make up all these words that they think have really special meaning, but that may be open to interpretation. If you use those unique words (I call them ‘sparkly words’) then often when you say that statement, the first thing people say is, “What does that mean?” or “I don’t quite get it. I don’t understand. Is that me?”
That is the last thing you want when people are first finding out about your business.
If you play the Highlander game and just keep looking for that one phrase to rule them all, chances are you’ll either create a phrase that makes you sound like everyone else that isn’t unique, or create a phrase that’s unique, but no one understands.
That’s why we need to let go of that belief system instead.
2. See your messaging as an ecosystem
We want to see your messaging as an ecosystem. Your blog posts contribute to that messaging. The posts you put on Facebook contribute to that messaging. The words on your website, the words on your banners, on your Facebook page, all of those words and the posts that you do, are actually all part of the one ecosystem.
That’s why it’s really important for you to understand what your unique value proposition is and what your core messaging is, so that when you do post consistently, you know that you’re hitting the pieces of your value ecosystem.
Inside my Take Off program, we actually build that ecosystem out in a beautiful diagram. We call it our messaging onion, and it shows the different ways that you articulate your value proposition depending on how hot the audience is or how cold the audience is.
We have different layers of the ways that we talk about our business, the value proposition and our messaging.
This ensures that it’s connecting with people at the appropriate level for what stage they are in, in terms of the customer journey.
Instead of looking at your messaging as this one thing that you need to just nail, view all of the words that you use in your business – as well as your visuals – as part of your messaging ecosystem. When you are clear on what it is you want to say in that ecosystem and where it’s appropriate to say it for each person, it makes it so much easier to be able to speak about your business in a way that makes sense to people.
Remember that messaging is an ecosystem, not Highlander.
3. Make sure you’ve nailed your niche
If you’re struggling to articulate your unique value proposition and if you’re struggling to articulate your messaging, then chances are the issue goes back to your niche.
If you haven’t nailed your niche then you will struggle to articulate your unique value proposition.
First and foremost, you need to make sure you’ve absolutely nailed your niche decisions because they are the things that directly inform your core message and your unique value proposition.
Your value proposition is different to someone who is a time-poor entrepreneur, versus your value proposition compared to someone who’s working in a job and is energy-poor – they’ve got plenty of time, but they just don’t have the energy to do anything with it.
If you think about the way that you’re trying to explain your business, chances are that if you’re struggling with it, it’s because you’re trying to speak to everyone.
We know that when you try to speak to everyone, you end up resonating with no one.
First and foremost, before you go about changing up any messaging or worrying about whether you’re able to articulate your unique value proposition properly, go back to the initial question of: what is your niche? And if you cannot answer that effectively, and you don’t cover a mix of demographics, psychographics and sensor graphics in that niche statement, then we need to sort that out first.
4. Write down 10 sure signs that someone in your niche needs YOU
Once you’re clear on your niche, then I want you to write down 10 sure signs that someone who’s in your niche needs YOU specifically, they need YOUR products and services – be really specific about this.
If they’re tired all the time, they might need you or they might need someone else. If they are wanting to make more sales, that might be your job or it might be something else.
They aren’t sure signs that they definitely need you, but YOU know when you’re clear on your niche, that if you’re talking to someone and they’re saying all the things that they need – and if that’s exactly the thing that you do – that THEY need YOU.
For me personally, I know that when someone says to me, “Oh, I’m not making any sales, and I feel like I’ve tried webinars and I’ve tried challenges, and I’ve tried Facebook ads, and nothing really seems to be getting me that initial momentum in my business.” Then that is a sure sign that they need me.
I want you to write down 10 sure signs that someone needs you, and they need you specifically.
5. Practice and pay attention
The other thing is that no great messaging was built on theory. No unique value proposition was built on theory.
You may have ideas and theories in your head about what your messaging should be and what your unique value proposition is, but you won’t know whether it’s resonating with people and whether it works until you actually start using it and practice talking about your business through that lens.
Practice and pay attention to the way that people respond to you talking about your business.
If you are at a networking event, and someone asks you what you do and they seem disinterested by your answer, then you know that it hasn’t necessarily hit the mark for them.
By the same token, if you are speaking to someone, and you know that 100% they are your ideal client, and you are talking about your work with them, and they keep saying, “Yeah, but I don’t quite understand,” and they keep asking questions that indicate to you that they’re not getting it, then we need to actually review that messaging.
And the types of questions that people ask you often give you really juicy insights into what it is that you actually need to be saying.
Something that I discovered very early in my business was that I could see that the two biggest areas where people needed my help were in niching and messaging. And yet when I talked about niching and messaging in the online business space – and in the spaces where my audience were hanging out – a lot of people weren’t really getting it. They would say, “Yeah, I understand about messaging. I reckon I’ve got it nailed, but I just don’t know how to write an offer,” and I would be like, “Well, that’s actually part of your messaging.”
People are actually identifying this as ‘crafting offers’, so, therefore, I need to talk about how I help people craft offers.
If I said things about niching people say, “Oh yeah, I’ve got a niche, I’m a kinesiologist” and I’d realise that some people think their modality is actually a niche, when your niche is actually the group of people you focus on when you’re marketing. That meant that I needed to understand that I can’t say “I help online business owners with niching and messaging,” because that doesn’t actually articulate the unique value proposition of what I do, and it certainly doesn’t articulate it in a way that works for my audience – particularly for cold audiences.
That’s where I need to be really mindful about how I express my value proposition and my messaging, depending on the audience that I’m speaking to.
6. Talk and talk and talk
My final tip on learning how to articulate your unique value proposition in your messaging and your marketing is to talk and talk and talk.
The more you do Facebook Lives, the more you record videos, the more you type up blog posts, the more you do posts on social media, the more you have sales conversations with potential clients, the more clients you actually work with, the easier and easier it gets for you to start articulating this.
It’s really important that we don’t create messaging and value proposition statements in our own bubbles based completely on theory.
Whilst we might make assumptions about what people would understand and what they wouldn’t understand, or what people want and what people need, honestly, the best way you can actually practice and refine is by refining it with an audience, and by talking about it in as many ways as you can.
If you’ve been thinking, ‘Yeah, I will do blogging, but I’m gonna wait until I’ve got my messaging sorted,’ then you’ve actually put them the wrong way around – by blogging, you sort your messaging.
If you’ve been saying, “Yes, I’m going to do offers into Facebook groups, but I’ve got to get my messaging sorted first,” then you’re doing it the wrong way around – start sharing offers so you can refine your messaging.
Again, I want to reiterate tip 3: You do need to make those niche decisions first.
I also love validating your niche through using things like market research, but as soon as you feel like you understand what your niche is, and you understand what they want and need, then it’s time to start practicing with an audience.
It’s not time to journal, journal, journal and type, type, type, and theorise all the way in the background, and then unleash all of this messaging all at once on your audience, and then not know which bits of it are resonating and which bits aren’t or why it’s not working if what happens is that you get crickets.
As much as possible, get out there and talk about it with an audience.
If you do then it’s going to give you the most valuable feedback you could ever get in relation to your messaging.
With that in mind, I have a very special invite for you today and that is for you to come over to the Heart-Centred, Soul-Driven entrepreneurs Facebook community, and using #podcastaha, let me know you’ve been reading episode number 214, and I’d love to know any lightbulb moments that have happened for you as a result of this podcast episode.
I also want to encourage you to start practising talking about your message and your unique value proposition.
You’ve got a beautiful audience of 33,000+ women ready to cheer you on and support you in the development of your messaging.
If you’ve been reading along and thinking you’re ready to “fast track” your business, get it off the ground, and build a business model around your strengths, I have a great free resource for you!
It’s called Fast-Track Your Start-Up.
It’s all about building your business and getting money in the door quickly by building a business to your innate strengths.
I’d love for you to go and check that out
Until next time, I cannot WAIT to see you SHINE.
