What Sets You Apart?
Photo by Deborah Fitchett
By Alex Greenwood
I spoke with a former accountant and business consultant (who asked to remain anonymous in interests of sharing details of this story) recently who was attempting to (free of charge) help a friend get his small tax prep business off the ground. The friend and his wife shared their business plan with my colleague. In a nutshell, the plan was:
- Do certain types of simple personal taxes.
- Do a lot of that certain types of taxes.
- Make money.
- Rinse. Repeat.
That “plan” gave my colleague pause–mostly because the guy is trying to compete directly with TurboTax and H&R Block–but he pushed forward and inquired about marketing. The tax guy was going to let word of mouth and occasional flyers at church and around town do the job.
“Okay, good start. What message are you sending potential clients?” my colleague asked.
“Beg pardon?”
“What is it that sets you apart from the competition?”
“Oh! Our service. We provide personal service.”
“But don’t all tax preparers provide personal service?” my colleague inquired further.
“Well, yes, but our service will be better than everyone else’s, because it’s personal.“
From there, my colleague made a fairly detailed list of things that the tax guy should consider when starting a new business, not the least of which was to stake out a less vague unique selling proposition–what sets you apart? A word on that from the folks at Entrepreneur.com:
Before you can begin to sell your product or service to anyone else, you have to sell yourself on it. This is especially important when your product or service is similar to those around you. Very few businesses are one-of-a-kind. Just look around you: How many clothing retailers, hardware stores, air conditioning installers and electricians are truly unique? The key to effective selling in this situation is what advertising and marketing professionals call a “unique selling proposition” (USP). Unless you can pinpoint what makes your business unique in a world of homogeneous competitors, you cannot target your sales efforts successfully.
To put it bluntly, “We provide personal service” is not unique. It’s lazy, unimaginative and ultimately failed branding. Every company provides personal service of some kind. “Personal service” is such a vague USP it is effectively meaningless. It’s not even “We provide the best personal service” (though how you quantify that is anybody’s guess, and therefore, useless as a USP).
I won’t equivocate: finding your USP is not as easy as it sounds. Hell, I’ve been in business three years and I’m still searching for that magic mix of what I do well and what sets me apart. My firm does a lot of things–many of them pretty well, including content marketing, product launches/store opens, strategic PR planning, crisis communications, crowdfunding consulting, training and seminars, Social Media strategies, author/book promo and media relations. But try putting that in an elevator speech.
Furthermore, not all of those services have particularly good ROI. I need to find my niche and stick to it so my company can grow more consistently. Another colleague, Andrew Nemiccolo (a very smart guy) once told me straight up that I was so all-over-the-road that it was no wonder I was having a hard time settling on client targets (I paraphrased that, but he’s right, and I’m working on streamlining my company).
Back to the tax guy. My colleague never got another step further with him–the tax guy was certain his personal service would be so outstanding that people would climb on their rooftops, waving a tax refund, shouting “I got a refund and my tax guy’s service was more personal than TurboTax!”
Okay, that guy apparently isn’t going to listen to my colleague, so I asked him what marketing tactics he recommends to others interested in setting up a low-cost tax prep business. He advises would-be tax and accounting businesspeople to find three specialties to develop their USP. For example, his were packages for starting a new business, exploiting an existing network (he has extensive healthcare industry contacts) and helping people struggling with tax problems.
So how did he market his USP?
“Word of mouth is ideal–if you’re willing to take five to ten years to build your practice,” he said. “That’s why I don’t recommend relying on it alone.”
The more immediate activities he recommended include:
- Attend social and networking events for the market niche you wish to work in (Chamber of Commerce Business After Hours, home or business association mixers, etc.)
- Distribute flyers to new homes and housing editions. “You’re trying to reach new homeowners, especially first-time homeowners, who are inevitably changing tax status by buying their first home and may have children thereafter. Establishing a good relationship with market-area Realtors is a good idea, too.”
- An established referral relationship with a banker is also helpful.
- Get out of your shell–once you have your USP, get out there and tell your niche market about it using personal contact, social media and advertising when affordable and sensible.
A final bit of advice from Entrepreneur.com:
Don’t get discouraged. Successful business ownership is not about having a unique product or service; it’s about making your product stand out–even in a market filled with similar items.
