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Your Unique Selling Point

Written by: Pasquale Spadafora

Article Overview: How to come up with a Unique Selling Point (USP) and use it to promote your online business. Your USP defines and emphasizes your competitive advantage.

Your Unique Selling Point

For any business web site, the single most important asset it can possess, one that answers the question that every customer asks: "Why should I buy from you?" is the unique selling point (USP). A great and compelling USP sets you apart from your competition and makes your web marketing a lot more effective.

When developing your USP, it's important to put yourself in your customers' shoes. Look at your product or service from the point of view of someone thinking about buying it. What would be a compelling reason for that customer to buy from you instead of your competition?


The Benefits of Your USP

When potential customers come to your website, they'll be focused on the benefits of your product or service. Essentially, what can it do for them. How does using your product solve a problem or improve an outcome. The key to unlocking the decision to buy is providing benefits that outweigh what the competition offers.

However, you need to know the difference between a benefit and a feature. Benefits are about how your product adds value for your customer. Features relate to what goes into making the product, and how it's delivered to customers. This is a very important distinction because your customers aren't necessarily interested in features. But they will be motivated by benefits.

For example, the lifetime guarantee on your products is a feature. The benefit is that customers don't assume any risk by buying your product. A powerful USP is one that is focused on benefits that only you can offer.


Find the Benefits of Your Products

To create a list of all the benefits your product or service offers, start with listing all the features. When you can't think of any more, go through each feature and look at it from the customer's point of view. What benefit comes with each feature?

Your Unique Selling Point should only focus on benefits that you offer. So, eliminate the ones from your list that your competition also offers. If you find yourself with no benefits left, go back to your list of features. Keep working on this until you can clearly find one or more benefits that separate you from the rest of the field. You might have to tweak some features so that they result in unique benefits.

When you finally come up with your list of benefits, decide which one is the most suitable as the focus of your USP. Ask yourself these questions:

• Which benefits are the most important to your customer?
• Which benefits are the most difficult for your competitors to offer?
• Which benefits can be most easily understood by my customers?


What is a Good USP?

When you've settled on a couple of benefits you can use, it's time to write down your USP. Start off with a paragraph that describes the unique benefit or list of benefits. Eliminate all unnecessary words, you want to have one sentence only that says it all.

A good USP should be:
• Only one sentence.
• Clearly written so that everyone can understand it.
• Comprise of benefits that are unique to your company or product.

When you have your USP, make sure that it is incorporated in all your on- and offline marketing materials to potential customers. Your USP will eventually attract a strong following of loyal customers and your online business will thrive.

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Related Forum Posts
Re: This is Marketing Warfare! - Hey GT, I guess this was from a while back, and it'll test your memory a bit but could you possibly elaborate on Unique Selling Proposition? Can you give us some examples of good USPs?
Re: Readers, Money or SEO? Which comes first? - [quote="WebBizIdeas.com":35az7o03]Hi Chris, Do you have any great PR strategies to share? [/quote:35az7o03] Be different. Its hard to promote anything that doesn't have strong Unique Selling Points. Read 'Purple Cow' by Seth Godin for inspiration and why good PR and promotion starts with a great product. As a publisher, our content is a significant part of our product lineup. Following that you need to reach out and network with influencers. I've managed to get mainstream press coverage a few times in the past, but I'm certainly not an expert on this though and I'm always learning.
Re: New Homepage Layout! - Thanks for the feedback GT - I'm glad you enjoy the new layout! Point taken on the Forums Hot Topics - we'll see how it develops. Right now it shows topics that have over 1,000 views on them and it's sorted by the most recent at the top.
Re: 10 More Ways To Get Business From Twitter - Point taken GT - Next week I'll post a couple examples of how I've used Twitter in the past week that has had an impact on my business (and anybody can copy). Stay tuned!
Re: Kevin's Case Study #10 - When to become an entrepreneur? - When the bug bite you. A lot of successful entrepreneurs started in their teens or at school. Selling sweets to fellow students or lemonade to firends in the neighbourhood.


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