Step 1. Write down 5 competitors and their promises to clients (3 minutes)
Open the websites or social pages of five direct competitors in your city and write down word for word what they say about themselves in the website header or the community description. Don't paraphrase — quote literally. You'll be surprised how similar these phrases are.
Step 2. Cross out everything that repeats at least twice (2 minutes)
“High quality”, “individual approach”, “team of professionals”, “affordable prices” — if it appears at two or more competitors, cross it out without regret. That's not a USP, it's background noise the client physically doesn't notice because they see it everywhere.
Step 3. Answer the question: “what if I ran out of money for ads?” (5 minutes)
If you could tell a client only one thing about your business, what would it be? Not a general “we're the best”, but a concrete fact: you do it faster than anyone in the city, you're the only ones offering a money-back guarantee, you have a unique format nobody else has. Look for a fact, not an epithet.
Step 4. Turn the fact into a phrase through the result for the client (3 minutes)
The fact “we've been working for 8 years” sells nothing on its own. But “in 8 years we haven't failed a single event — even when the host disappeared an hour before the start” is already a story with concrete proof of reliability. The formula is simple: fact + proof + what it means for the client.
Step 5. Check the phrase with the substitution test (2 minutes)
Read your new USP and mentally put it on your nearest competitor's website. Does it sound absurd and implausible there? Great — the phrase truly belongs only to you. Does it sound natural there too? Then you are still describing the industry standard, not what makes you unique.
A good USP doesn't sound nice in a vacuum — it sounds specific against what competitors say. If a phrase could go on any competitor's website unchanged, it doesn't work. Check yourself with this test every time you write something about “quality” and “an individual approach”.
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