Here, have another really annoying business acronym – at this rate you’ll have an entire glossary of terms to ignore. I’ve lovingly written this post in the hope it will help you understand how knowing your USP can boost your organic traffic. But before we get into all of that good stuff, what am I … Continued
Here, have another really annoying business acronym – at this rate you’ll have an entire glossary of terms to ignore. I’ve lovingly written this post in the hope it will help you understand how knowing your USP can boost your organic traffic.
But before we get into all of that good stuff, what am I even talking about?
USP stands for Unique Selling Proposition
In normal English, what makes you different from all the other businesses in your industry?
Perhaps you don’t do anything wildly different, so maybe think about this – what are you offering and why should people choose you over a competitor?
Big brands have been doing this for years. Their USP will often become their company slogan. And they’re nearly always short and memorable:
“When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight” FedEx Corporation
You might think that’s a rubbish slogan but as USPs go, it’s pretty good. Some business slogans are just that, I dunno why, I’m not a brand/marketing/advertising guru but for example, McDonald’s and their “I’m lovin’ it” is utterly useless as a USP.
Maybe you haven’t given it much thought. If you’re a sole trader or freelancer, this kind of thing is often something you don’t involve yourself with. Hell, you might only have just realised what it means because of this helpful post. The truth is, you already have one, you just never bothered to write it down.
Ask yourself these questions:
You’ll probably end up with a tasty little paragraph from those answers. And what you’ve done there, is not only start to figure out your USP but you’ve begun to build some detailed keyword phrases, or as I like to call them (and the rest of the SEO world) LTKs.
Isn’t that exciting? Yes, it’s more exciting than the most exciting thing that happened on the 12th of exciting, in the year – exciting
I love LTKs. They describe exactly what you do. The organic traffic you get from them is less but it’s the right kind of traffic. You’ll struggle to get clicks targeting broad keywords. If you’ve spent loads of time focusing on general competitive terms, chances are, they’ll yield next to no traffic. Just think how many people are targeting the same words. Unless you’ve spent a fuck-ton on ads, or happen to be one of the first ‘graphic designers’ or ‘photographers’ to grab a website, you won’t make the second page of Google, let alone the first.
This is why I bang on about having a niche within your industry. It will help you get the traffic you want and that means the clients you want. But the niche can be anything, it doesn’t have to be related to your industry.
Say, what?
Take me for example. I’m offering a certain kind of content for a certain kind of business. I’m attracting a personality type I want to work with, I couldn’t care less what they do
Well, they won’t, you’ll have to write them. For example, my business USP (content with more bite) tells you that I create content that has a bit of a kick.
Your USP will guide your content writing. It will soon become really clear to your prospects what you do for them. It will also help you decide what you actually want to offer and maybe get rid of stuff you really fucking hate.
I’m going to continue to use me as an example. It allows me to add keywords and phrases relevant to my industry – what a sneaky bastard I am.
My business name and USP work well together – The Sarky Type, content with more bite. And, it nearly rhymes. With my USP in mind, I start to think about the kinds of things ideal clients are going to be searching for, so that they find me.
Here are a few examples:
Using your location will help get you seen by the people in your area, especially if what you offer is only available regionally. When you develop your LTKs you’ll get found by the prospects you crave and all those looking for a broad-brush, in terms of your industry will leave you alone. And once you have those LTKs, you can add them to your meta tags, page content, and image titles.
Create your own USP phrase or slogan and if you can’t define what you do in a single line, hire me to do it. Even if you reduced your offering to a couple of sentences, you still have the basis to build your LTKs. And that’s a pretty impressive start.
