Your Unique Selling Proposition: Why It’s Important and How to Find It
by Marvin Hines, AMP Staff Writer

We live in a commoditized world. Nearly everything a business offers today is offered by similar businesses. Most new ideas actually consist of old ideas repackaged for current consumption. In fact, some business strategies owe their existence to this truth. So how can the micro- or small-business owner/entrepreneur respond to this significant challenge to business success? Putting it bluntly, how can small businesses throw off the suffocating mantel of Me-Tooism?

Avoiding Me-Too status can be achieved by defining your Unique Selling Proposition, a tool all businesses should have but few actually do. Merely having a well thought out Unique Selling Proposition, or USP, places your business above most of your competitors. Including a USP for all your product or service offerings guarantees your success as a business owner.

A Unique Selling Proposition is that distinct and appealing idea that sets your offer apart from your competitors.

A good Unique Selling Proposition and the process you go through to discover it gives you many benefits. Arriving at your USP:

Helps you to identify and focus on the needs going unfulfilled within your industry.
Clarifies your customer’s wants, namely a big benefit your service offers for prospects that want it in a way no other service provides it.
Places you on the customer’s side. How many businesses you deal with frequently know and understand your motives for selecting their products or services over others? Wouldn’t it be nice if they had this perspective?
Allows you to fully integrated its power into your marketing activities. Every employee with any public contact or customer interaction, or anyone who makes any decision impacting your business, must fully understand, embrace and believe in your USP.
Insures that it is carefully integrated into the headline and body copy of every ad you run and in every direct mail and email piece you send out.
Makes your business distinctive, so that your customers have no doubts about the uniqueness of your service or product.
Tells everyone why he or she should do business with you.

You can see that successfully implementing a viable, productive and ongoing business plan that includes your USP requires considerable effort from you. You define the USP, instill it in your employees, make customers and prospects aware of it, reinforce its daily guidance and reward those sharing your passion and vision. The positive feedback you receive from having a USP and continuously following its guidance offsets the energy you expend in maintaining and nurturing it.

Good Unique Selling Propositions are Simple and Easily Stated

A good USP can be simply put. Coming up with a good USP may not be easy. Don’t make the mistake of confusing simple with easy!

Let’s examine a few good examples to demonstrate the target you’re trying to hit. Notice that the power of these ideas (USPs) wasn’t earth shattering. Even so, they allowed their users to make lots of money.

Manufacturers of mass-marketed chocolate candies sometimes lost sales because their products melted and became messy during warm weather. Offering them to children under six also posed potential problems when party clothes were worn or a nice carpet was underfoot. Mars, the candy maker, adopted the idea of surrounding their chocolate with an appropriate shell. Mars had a significant benefit for chocolate lovers. But, as is often the case, a better mousetrap didn’t bring people running to their door.

Faced with the problem of marketing M&M’s, Mars enlisted the services of copywriter Rosser Reeves who expressed their product’s benefit (USP) perfectly:

“The only candy that melts in your mouth, not in your hands.”

Rosser Reeves coined the term Unique Selling Proposition. Other examples of his USP creations include “Colgate cleans your breath, while it cleans your teeth” and “How do you spell relief? R-O-L-A-I-D-S.”

Car manufacturing has become exceedingly competitive during the last two decades. So what are the ideas on which they base their USPs? Volvo’s USP has espoused safety for many years. When car buyers are asked, “which cars are the safest,” Volvo is always on the list. Japanese cars populate most lists highlighting value. Want price competitive cars? Think Korean. Or, one day soon, Chinese.

Toyota has made quality their USP. They’ve taken the concept of the Kaizen method of continuous incremental improvement and used the results to define their USP. The Kaizen method permeates all aspects of their operations. Even non-Japanese employees are brought to understand the importance of continuous incremental improvement in producing outstanding results. Toyota provides solid evidence that your customers can actually see, feel, hear, touch, and smell your USP if it is a good one and you deliver on its promise.

Can you articulate or sense the USPs for Ford and General Motors?

Beginning the Search for Your Unique Selling Proposition

Whether its candy, cars or coconuts, having a good USP puts your product and service on a winning track. So, how do you figure out your USP? You can start by identifying the needs going unfulfilled within your industry, which may include:

An insufficiently broad selection
Big discounts
Valued advice and assistance
Convenience (location, quick service, fully stocked shelves, immediate delivery)
Top-of- the-line products
Speedy service
Service above and beyond the basics
A longer and more comprehensive warranty or guarantee than the norm
Any need not listed above.

You can incorporate the specific benefit included in your offer.

Price
Service
Quality
Exclusivity
Other marketing gambits.

Copywriter Bob Bly proposes a simple for identifying your USP that he calls a USP Generator. Just fill in the blanks.

My product/service_________________________________________________

Does what? _______________________________________________________

For whom? _______________________________________________________

By what method? __________________________________________________

Still can’t quite put you finger on the best USP for your business? Copywriter Kathy Widenhouse suggests you examine what it is about your business that makes it distinctive.

DISTINCTIVES BETWEEN YOU AND YOUR COMPETITION

1. How is your product different from the competition?
2. What additional features does your product have?
3. What features are better in your product?
4. What features are more effective in your product?
5. Do you offer a competitive price/value?
6. How does your product/service excel in quality?

DISTINCTIVE NEEDS YOUR PRODUCT MEETS

7. What physical needs/desires does your product meet?
8. What emotional needs/desires does the product meet?
9. How does your product meet those needs/desires?
10. What specific/timely event(s) do you address?

DEMOGRAPHIC DISTINCTIVES

11. Are you the only local business making your offer?
12. What age, gender or income level do you target?
13. What other groups find appeal in your product?

CUSTOMER SERVICE DISTINCTIVES

14. In what ways does your customer care excel?
15. Do you offer advice and technical support?
16. In what ways do you offer confidentiality?
17. Do you answer questions or fulfill orders fast?
18. Do you offer a range of payment methods and plans?
19. How else do you excel in customer service?
20. What kinds of contact methods do you offer (website,
24/7 hotline, toll-free number, e-mail)?

DISTINCTIVE OFFERS AND DEALS

21. What kinds of product discounts do you offer?
22. Do you provide free or discounted shipping?
23. Are you known for unique, special premium gifts?
24. Do you offer value-added incentives (free
information, newsletters, complimentary services)?

STAFF DISTINCTIVES

25. What special skills do staff members have?
26. Do your staff members have special training?
27. Is your staff especially excited about the product
and does it show in their work?

TRACK RECORD DISTINCTIVES

28. How long have you successfully been in business?
29. If you're new, how do you explain quick success?
30. What are your product success statistics?
31. What are your customer satisfaction statistics?
32. What do clients or customers say about you?
33. Do you have any celebrity endorsements?

VISIONARY DISTINCTIVES

34. Is your product visionary in any way?
35. Are you on the forefront of a trend?
36. Is your product one-of-a-kind?
37. How do you stay on the cutting edge?
38. In what ways is your product/organization a calling
as well as a business?

Nurturing Your Unique Selling Proposition

Other sources for ideas when generating your USP include:

Your customers. Not just their needs, but more importantly, their wants. You’re not a psychologist, you say? That’s OK. You’re a person and your customers are people. Just ask them and then listen, listen, listen. You’ll soon get the hang of it.
Your competitor’s customers. When your competitor’s customers stray into your place of business or you find yourself in their businesses or homes, ask them about alternative providers—what they like and don’t like about them.
Your competitors. Your competitors generally won’t come right out and give you any good ideas on how to improve your business, but sometimes they just can’t help themselves. When this happens, remember that not all the good ideas you use have to be invented by you.
Your suppliers and venders. These folks see a lot of businesses. They may not volunteer valuable information they possess without some prompting. Again, ask and listen.
Answer the question “why did you start (or decide to rejuvenate) your business in the first place?”

These methods present many ways to derive your own special Unique Selling Proposition. Maybe too many ways. A danger lurks in trying to be everything to everybody. Simply focus on the one niche, need, or gap that is most sorely lacking—provided you can keep the promise you make.

The USP is the nucleus around which you build your success, fame, and wealth, so you better be able to state it. If you can’t state it, your prospects won’t see it.

Conveying your USP through your marketing and business performance leads to your business success. So, before you incorporate and communicate your chosen USP through various marketing avenues, boil it down to its bare essence and articulate it crisply and clearly.

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