Designing your unique selling proposition(USP) can amount to be one of the most challenging tasks a business may undertake.  On the surface, it can seem simple and is typically the starting point of any business development, however, the fact remains that shortfalls in the USP design are a leading cause of ultimate business failure.  Typical approaches focus on the product values directly or the ability to provide the intended solution but often do not take into account the factors defining the experience surrounding the value proposition.  With a central focus on the long-term experience of USPs and the solutions they offer, many opportunities are revealed and proper strategy unveiled.  The realities of the marketplace response are revealed when this focus is understood.  People buy on much more than raw utility or even marketing hype.  The proper combination of these among other factors helps develop the USP more fully.  In many companies, the concepts around experience development are disconnected at best, and completely misunderstood or unknown at worst.  The USP Experience Framework has been developed to help us understand the relationship between the factors defining the experience.  By utilizing the framework in strategic analysis and development, in complement with other tools, the USP can be more fully defined and without too much “hit-and-miss” testing.

The USP Experience Framework

The framework is designed to focus on the value proposition(VP) and the experience that accompanies it.  The experience is intentionally designated within the empty, unenclosed space of the model. Ultimately, it is out of our control as a specific criteria, tool, tactic, or otherwise and is composed of the derivatives of the other components.  Depending on the VP, these other components will contribute in different ways to the experience, including the VP itself.  If the actual value proposition is shoddy, the long-term result of the experience will reflect that fact, although it may maintain during the early, short-term stages.

The initial step in understanding and utilizing the framework is to define the addressed problem, the VP, and the desired experience.  The experience must be understood from the eyes of the end-user or buyer.  For that reason, it is important to know to whom the experience appeals OR to whom we want the experience to appeal.  This may reveal the starting place.  You may start with an understanding of the experience and design the outward marketing for those this most appeals or you may start with a desired customer and begin to define the experience around the understanding of the ideal customer.  Ultimately, the VP, experience, and customer must all be clearly understood.  That knowledge allows for the other components to be designed to be congruent with the strategy.

We will explore this framework more fully in future posts, including what “Impact Accelerators” are exactly. This is part 1 in a multi-part series.  Let me know what you think of the concept!