Use a Powerful USP to Drive Your Marketing Success

Marketing is a major factor for the survival of your business. Without a strong, effective marketing process, you will be unable to attract prospects and fail to generate custom for your business, meaning that you can't achieve critical mass in sales. This could easily threaten the survival of your business.

A USP to Create the Punch
Your marketing message is at the root of your marketing effort. Vigourous marketing activity that fails to convey a compelling message will still fail. That is where your Unique Selling Proposition, USP, comes in.

What it Means
Your USP is the thing or idea that sets your business favourably apart from the competition. It is the special benefit or advantage you are putting on the table for customers, which other businesses in your trade cannot or are not extending. It differentiates your business from the pack, being what makes it unique and distinct. The customer who is attracted by this benefit has no choice but to come to you. In effect, while we could be in the same industry, offering similar products, I am able to identify and canvass to the market why they should come to me. When you convey such USP edge, cusomers who value what makes your offer different will head to you.

Basis for This Concept
The important place of the USP in the marketing process traces back to the early 1940's when an American company, Ted Bates & Company, undertook an extensive market research to understand what was at the root of the success of certain advert campaigns. Their identification of two key attributes, penetration and usage pull, became the basis of the concept of USP. They found that to be successful, a campaign must make a unique proposition to the cutomer: "buy this product and you will get this benefit", the proposition must in itself be unique: something the competition does not or will not offer, and it should be powerful enough to pull new customers to the product. Ever since, the USP has become an important ingredient of marketing campaigns.

USP and Benefits
It is clear from this foundational premise of USP that it is anchored primarily in benefits to the customer (not product features or company information). It focuses on a response to the customer's question: "what's in it for me?" and provides a unique WIIFM. This must be borne in mind when you develop your USP.

Determining a Powerful USP for Your Business
The challenge is in the word 'unique'. Generic claims like: "we offer satisfaction guaranteed"; "we have the best prices", or "we sell only quality products" fail that test of uniqueness and will not be powerful USPs. Your business may still sell, but it can hardly be on the strength of such tags. It means you must identify a void in the market that you can effectively fill. That will ultimately be crafted into a unique offer to the market. It implies having knowledge about your competition to understand what they don't or can't offer. Identifying and defining such void or gap may however not be easy but that is what you must do to differentiate. This calls for critical questions which you need to answer to identify the opportunities that may exist to bring something different and distinct to the market:

• What is unique or special about my business relative to competion?


• Is there any particular reason a customer should by from me and not my competitor?


• What are the things most important to people who buy my product or service and does anybody currently meet them?


• What can I provide to customers that others can't?
  Are there things I can do that the others can't?

Questions like these will help you come up with a benefit that is unique enough to provide the market pull that can move your business.

Conveying Your USP With a Solid Punch
When you have decided on a USP that is sufficiently powerful and compelling, you must go to work to put it across to the market. Capturing it in pulsating language will reinforce the benefit and uniqueness. Communicating the message will require a range of marketing tools, depending on your financial strength. Media advertising, promotions, email marketing and any promotional platforms you can afford should be put to work to strongly convey that message.

Three High-rated USP Examples
Given the strength of marketing in the USA economy, it should be no surprise that these examples are from that environment:

• Domino's Pizza: "You get fresh, hot pizza delivered to your door in 30 minutes or less."


• FedEx: "Your package absolutely, positively has to get there overnight"


• Ronseal: "You get exactly what it says on the tin"

The Bottom Line
Don't run a nondescript, run-of-the-mill business that can't carve its unique position in the market. Proper positioning can make all the difference in generating a torrent of customer patronage that helps your business grow and consolidate its share of the market. Your USP is a vital starting in that positioning effort, which is why you must identify and powerfully offer it to the market.

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