All the Web's a Stage
When my daughter, Madi, was in high school, she was an integral part of the drama department…but she only took to the stage once.
During her four years, she worked tirelessly behind the scenes in different tech crew roles and ultimately discovered her passion was costuming.
Like anything else, you’ve got to start on the low rung by working as a dresser. Don’t get me wrong, Broadway stars whose names you know have personal dressers and these positions are part therapist, part magician, and entirely professional.
Madi worked backstage on high school performances and she worked local community theater productions. She even has a major resume credit from when she was dresser for Spamalot at our local equity theater.
The performers knew she always had an apron stocked with the tricks of the trade that made them look good and kept wardrobe malfunctions at bay.
She had to memorize every line of the script for every show she worked and internalize the timing of each costume change.
She worked silently, clad in black, to make sure every cue and costume change stayed on track.
She was present at every rehearsal and at the theater long after the performers had taken their bows and headed home for the evening yet her name was buried as deeply in the playbill as she was buried in discarded, sweaty costumes the end of each night.
What goes on backstage isn’t always glamorous work but understand that what goes on onstage cannot happen without good work behind the scenes.
If right things aren’t happening backstage for clarifying your website copy and messaging, you simply can’t expect your best work to show up in the glow of the footlights and win the accolades (and dollars) of adoring fans.
This week, I took a comprehensive training on developing your unique selling proposition (USP) with the undisputed champion of breaking down this concept, Ross O’Lochlainn.
Until you do the critical backstage work to figure out why your ideal customers should choose you over your competition, you’re going to end up with a show that is not fully ready to go on.
So how do you do the backstage work to determine what makes you different?
First, you get specific about who your perfect customer persona is. Really dial it in.
“a dog owner who wants to feed their dog tasty, human grade food”
Once you have that person in mind, it’s time to figure out why they should choose you over your competition. It’s a simple spin on your perfect customer statement:
“If I am [perfect customer persona] who wants [product or service or results]
why should I chose [your offer or service] rather than the competition?”
This is where the magic starts to happen. You want to build a comprehensive list of 5-10 things about your product or service that should make your perfect customer want to take action. These are your claims of value. You can also think of them as the “whys”.
You want to dig into what makes your offer the more appealing choice…what do you do with your human grade dog food that competitors don’t do? Do you freeze dry it? Ship it fresh? Have a team of holistic vets who approve all the formulations?
What might your customers not know about human grade dog food? A particular farm you source ingredients from?
Are there other things potential customers might want to know about your product? Some behind the scenes insights?
Once you have your claims of value, you want to score them on appeal and exclusivity. How desirable are these things to your perfect customer persona? Are you the only one who does it that way? Rank the appeal and exclusivity on a scale of 1-5…but here’s the rub: in terms of exclusivity, you can only claim a 5 if no one could ever do that thing.
To clarify using our dog food company example: if you source your meats from an heirloom farm owned by your uncle, you can give yourself a 5 for that. We’ll assume your uncle is going to maintain an exclusive contract with you.
Suffice to say, it’s tough to get a perfect score on exclusivity (but don’t let that get you down).
Now for each claim, you’re going to multiply the appeal score by the exclusivity score. It will look something like this:
meats sourced from a family owned heirloom farm appeal ranking: 5 exclusivity ranking: 5 total score: 25
for each item in your list.
After you have assessed and scored your claims of value, you want to take your top scoring claims of value and assign 2-3 facts that support your top claims of value.
Basically, defend your work. Why is heirloom meat the best choice for human grade dog food? A fact might look like: traditional grass feeding of our heirloom stock bison increases essential fatty acids that reduces inflammation that leads to disease (I’m totally making that up…I think.) You get the idea. Justify those claims.
Now we’re ready to answer that question posed above:
“If I am a dog owner who wants to feed my dog human grade dog food why should I choose you over the competition?”
BECAUSE…
“we develop our tasty, human-grade dog food with the input of a team of holistic vets and we source our heirloom proteins from a small family-owned farm.”
Now, you may be thinking… Wait! This isn’t the polished statement or tagline I want to put on my website.
I totally get it.
But when you have everything about your USP figured out, it’s going to make coming up with your clear and compelling marquee statement so much easier.
You can use this internal USP document to do a table read with employees or new team members.
Everyone knows their marks.
The audience is delighted.
The critics are raving.
Ticket sales are soaring.
The house is sold out!
You literally can’t put on an effective show if you don’t have your USP figured out.
it’s your script to inform all your marketing and messaging so you turn out an amazing performance day after day.
Once you have your value proposition, you are now the director who always know which levers to pull to continue to strengthen your USP, more deeply engage your ideal audience, and ultimately increase conversion rates and sales.
Your USP is the script that is essential to a flawless (website) performance!