What Makes Your Business Unique? (It's Hard to See When You’re In It)

3 Questions to Help You Find Your Wow-Factor

I get really excited about this topic. There are lots of questions I ask during strategy sessions with clients, but these three are currently my favorite questions to ask small business owners to really get their brains churning. Don't be surprised if you stare at the ceiling for a minute, though. They are made to make you think…and a lot of times, they don’t get answered immediately.

Let’s see what you come up with. Answer away!

1. What do you believe customers deserve that they aren't consistently getting from your industry? And how do you solve this problem?

This one tends to get people a little fired up, and I am HERE for it.

What makes you roll your eyes about how things are usually done? What are customers always complaining about by the time they find you?

Try finishing this sentence:

"Everyone in my industry [what they do], but customers deserve [what they deserve]."

Then comes the important part: what do you actually DO about it? It can’t just be empty words. Or what COULD you actually do about it if you find there is a gap your business could fill?

2. What do you do or could you do that would be inconvenient, expensive, or difficult for a competitor to copy?

Anyone can copy your prices. Anyone can copy your Instagram captions. (Some of them probably already have. Rude.)

But can they copy your years of experience or even a very specific story that’s shaped your business? Your seamless process that took years of trial and error to get right? Your handwritten thank-you note everyone else stopped sending forever ago? That extra step that makes everyone else say, "Why on earth would you bother with that?"

Look for the thing that took you years to build, costs you more to do right, or that you refuse to cut even when it would be so much easier. 

And please don't skip the local element to your wow-factor. Read more about local branding.

A national chain can't bottle your town's history, your landmarks, the inside jokes only locals get, or the relationships you've built here. So what's true about your business BECAUSE of where it is? You can't pick that up and move it across the country. (And no, you don't have to be a lifelong local to have one!)

3. What does your customer gain beyond the product or service they purchased? And why does that matter to them?

Nobody is just buying the thing.

You might book a haircut, but you're really hoping to walk out feeling like yourself again. So what changes for your customers after they work with you? Do they sleep better? Get their Saturdays back? Finally stop worrying about that one thing?

Then keep asking "why does that matter?" until you land on something that feels human. If it gives you a little lump in your throat, you're there.

Where's the Wow-Factor?

Review your answers to the above questions:

1. Circle some of your favorite findings. You might be saying the same thing in three different ways.
2. Do the swap test. Could a competitor slap their name on that sentence and have it still be true? Then it's not your wow-factor yet.
3. Ask your favorite customers why they picked you. Then steal their exact words to see if that could be it.

Now for the fill-in-the-blank I use all the time in strategy sessions:

[Your business] is the only brand that does/has [your wow-factor].

Or try the local version:

[Your business] is the only brand in [your town] that does/has [your wow-factor].

If writing "the only" feels a little scary, that’s OK. If you can't fill in that last blank yet, or a competitor could say the same thing, keep digging. That's how you know you're not there yet.

This doesn't need to be your final tagline. It's your starting point. Once you can say it out loud, it's so much easier to show how your business stands out in your branding, on your website, your Google Business Profile, your social media, AND at that next networking event.

Your Wow-Factor Only Works If People Remember It

Finding your wow-factor part of a bigger picture. The thing is, most people don't need you the second they see you. They need you six months later, when something breaks, a project finally gets the green light, or a friend asks, "Who do you use for that?"

That's where brand recognition comes in. It's when someone spots a van across a parking lot and knows whose it is before they can read a single word. Or scrolls past a post and knows who wrote it before they see the name.

Your wow-factor is WHY they choose you, but your brand is how they remember it's you. You need both.

A Quick Story About Purple

I once worked with a client and we chose a distinct purple. No one else in their market had it, and it really worked.

Now, was purple their wow-factor? Absolutely not! Anyone can buy a can of purple paint.

It worked because it stood out from everything else in their industry and gave people an easy way to remember them. 

And here’s a really cool part: once people connect a look with you, it gets a lot harder to copy. A competitor who borrows it just reminds everyone of you.

What Makes a Brand Recognizable?

Color is the obvious one, but it's only one piece of the puzzle. Your brand is more than a logo, friend.

• Your color. If your whole industry is navy blue, you've got an opening.
• Your personality. Your captions, emails, and voicemail should all sound like the same human. Specifically, you.
• Your words. A phrase customers repeat back to you is pure gold.
• Your visual details. Think patterns, photos, and all the little things beyond the logo.
• Your consistency. This is the least exciting one and the one that makes all the others work. Same look, same voice, everywhere, for a long time.

And this is exactly why visuals come last in my process. I want to know what we're saying before we decide what it looks like. The prettiest brand in Iowa won't do much if it isn't saying anything.

Still not sure what your wow-factor is?

If you made it through all of this and you're still staring at a blank page, you're not doing it wrong. You're busy running a business, and you’re the prettiest girl looking in the mirror.

This is my favorite part of the job. I pull and prod, ask the annoying follow-up questions, and get way too excited about the thing you've been brushing off as "no big deal." (It's usually a very big deal.)

Then I turn it into words and a brand that people actually remember.

I help small businesses get found and chosen, and finding your wow-factor is kind of my passion.

Too busy or too close to dig into this yourself? Let’s talk about your brand.

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Your designer friend always,