What is your USP?
Do you know what your USP is and does this matter anyway? A USP is a ‘Unique Selling Point’ or ‘Unique Selling Proposition’ which is a short marketing statement that differentiates a product, service or brand from its competitors. It therefore forms part of a business’ overall Value Proposition (which describes the advantages and benefits of using the products and services to the customer) and as it turns out, it does matter, let’s explore why.
A winning ingredient of success for any business is being able to supply products or services to its customers which are better than the competition, but how will customers know that these products and services are better if they haven’t used them before? This is the role of marketing which the Oxford Dictionary defines as “the activity or business of promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising”. It is the process that enables sales – the more effective your marketing, the more likely you are to increase sales.
Marketing itself covers a wide range of functions all the way from identifying and defining the USP, through to decisions about how and where best to place the marketing messages, e.g. websites, magazines, billboards, radio and TV etc (the “marketing channels”) and finally what format these should take, i.e. the look, feel and sound of the messages themselves. There is much that can be said about all these areas, but today we’ll focus on where it all starts: identifying and defining the USP.
As the term implies, we are looking for the unique selling point and these days there is precious little that you can do or produce that could not be replicated by some other business given sufficient resources and training. What typically makes a product or service unique is the way in which it is sold. As Simon Sinek wisely noted:
“People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it.”
So, the key here is to work out how you supply goods and services that is different to anyone else and describe this clearly and succinctly. At first sight it may be tempting to talk about how you are better, cheaper or faster than anyone else or are more customer-focused etc, but you need to take care here since many businesses will claim to offer superior quality, lower prices or better customer experience than the rest and so these things won’t necessarily be seen as “differentiators”. Most customers these days expect these things as a given and the vast majority of SMEs will find it difficult to compete with larger customers on price anyway due to the buying power of the latter. Developing a powerful USP is therefore not quite such an easy task and there are a few key principles to help here:
1. Don’t try to appeal to everyone, make sure the statement relates to your target audience
2. Be specific about the one thing you do better than the others
3. Be succinct - in marketing, ‘less is more’ and you want customers to understand it quickly
Here are some examples of good USPs:
“Our candidates don’t just fit, they belong” (OrgMent Talent Solutions (recruitment business) - https://www.omtalent.com.au/)
“Everyone's Private Driver” (Uber - https://www.uber.com/au/en/)
“Lowest Prices: “We'll Beat It By 10%”! " (Bunnings - https://www.bunnings.com.au/)
“If you can imagine it, I can cake it” (Funky Cakes - https://www.funkycakes.com.au/)
Ian Ash ACC, AInstIB
Managing Director OrgMent Talent Solutions www.omtalent.com.au