By Alan Dodson, “Wedding Wizard”
Before I can help you with your USP, you need to know what it is. USP is your Unique Selling Proposition, or Unique Sales Position in your marketplace. This is best defined as those aspects of your business that set you apart from others in the same general category. It is what makes you the best choice for your specific and ideal customers. Before you get started on a USP, know your ideal customer!
Why Do You Need a USP?
If your market region is like most, it is filled with Disc Jockeys of all sizes, types and price points. It’s likely that many of your prospective customers have difficulty deciding which DJ is the one that deserves their time, money and trust with their special event.
This selection can be an overwhelming process for prospects that don’t have the experience to know what separates one DJ business from another. Most times they simply revert to price, and that can be the worst possible way to choose a quality entertainer. They might get lucky, but the odds are against them.
That’s why it is your job to assist them by making your unique selling proposition obvious, different and memorable enough that they can see exactly what you have to offer that the other choices do not.
The better you understand your ideal customer, the better you can attract and retain those customers.
“Instead of working so hard to prove the skeptics wrong, it makes a lot more sense to delight the true believers. They deserve it, after all, and they’re the ones that are going to spread the word for you.” – Seth Godin
Being a great DJ and MC is probably not enough of a difference to make you stand out. In most cases having excellent skills is just a baseline requirement, sure there are exceptions, but assume everyone is as good as you at the common skills we all use in our business.
How do I compete with the others except on price you may ask? How I avoid the “pricing game”?
The answer is that you don’t compete at all. Instead, you become the best at something no one else is attempting. For example, you could concentrate on getting media coverage of your accomplishments as a wedding DJ, or club DJ or about specific events. This puts you in a “celebrity” status in your regional marketplace. So instead of playing the same game as your competition, you change the game to your rules. That’s the power of a unique selling proposition. Anyone can become the best (loosely defined) at something, but you can make it far easier if you define your competitors yourself.
Here are a few simple ways to differentiate your DJ business from others.
- The power of your personality: As a single operator like myself, your personality can play a big part of building your USP. Putting your personal touch on specific aspects of your business can set you apart. After all, there is only ONE you!
- Narrow your focus: Instead of being the DJ that can do “all kinds of parties” limit your reach to a specialty. Personally I specialize in weddings, but do a few corporate events and charity functions. I can easily do any type of event, but I only market to wedding clients. People prefer doing business with specialists rather than generalists.
- Narrow your target audience: When you specialize it is much easier to focus your marketing efforts on that one or two region group of prospects.
Be unique, but do it in a manner that is consistent with your skill set and business concept. Just being unique for the sake of uniqueness can be very bad. For example, selling roller skates at a water park would be very unique, totally useless and a failure, but unique.
Remember That It’s Still about Selling
Just as relationship marketing is as much about the marketing as is it about the relationships, the same applies for creating a unique selling proposition; it’s a form of differentiation that needs to be built around selling more services, not just to make your DJ business into a quirky brand that stands out but still cannot get business at the prices you need to charge.
