Clued companies try to differentiate themselves to stay ahead of competitors, and some try to innovate for the same reason.  But few have caught on to the merit of mixing them together.  And doing just that could be a strategic winner…

There are several tools to help you differentiate, and our marketing company happened to create an enduring model: USP Derivation.  The idea of a Unique Selling Proposition is old (developed in 1961) but the idea of a methodical way to get it isn’t.

Take a 60 second look and then let’s talk about this mix with innovation…

Your USP

The USP of a company shouldn’t be confused with a slogan or a mission.  Your USP is a ‘proposition’, a kind of promise that suggests an explicit outcome of purchasing your product or service.  It’s a ‘selling’ proposition so it’s not just passive, but tries to compel.  And it’s a ‘unique’ selling proposition in that no other companies should be putting it forward.

You need three things to ‘derive’ a USP… You need to know what the market wants, what competitors are promising and what your company’s strengths and weaknesses are.

When you have these, you can literally ‘triangulate’ the crux of what your USP needs to be, because you can answer a potent little question:

“What does my market want, which my competitors are failing to adequately claim, but which I could deliver?”

The answer is your USP.  Now to the mix with innovation…

Innovation

You have limited time and money to invest in innovation.  You could innovate in operations, in customer service, in customer-knowledge, in price-competing efficiencies, in software or financial management.

But what do you choose and prioritise?

An idea is to look at what lies behind your USP and your key differentiation and innovate there to protect it and turn your competitive edge into a kind of ‘stay-sharp’ strategy.

You use your USP as a guide to resource planning and you prioritise innovation investments so that less critical opportunities are ignored while you put more resources toward the growing that difference that lies behind your USP.

For example, your USP might revolve around how you target and serve a particular sub-market better than others.  Look for new ways in which you can reach them, serve them, inform them and be even more geared to exactly that subset of the market.

USAA is an American insurance company that focuses on military personnel.  So they created an app that allows military personnel to deposit cheques from their smartphones, since this market is inherently on the move.  The technology has since been adopted by other banks.  The company reportedly has a 98% customer-retention rate.

Look again at what makes you different.  What are your company’s strengths?  What do your customers love about you?  What do competitors miss?

Take it from a marketing company: it’s pretty hard to beat competitors in their areas of differentiation.  So perhaps don’t try to.  Instead, strengthen your own differences.