What is a unique selling point? Put simply, your business model could be lacking clarity and sense of direction without a clear focus on unique selling points. Read on and we’ll explain how to make sure you aren’t falling into this trap.
Distinguishing your brand from the rest is crucial. This is where understanding your unique selling point (USP) comes into play. A USP not only sets your product or service apart from its competitors but also becomes the cornerstone of effective marketing strategies. In this comprehensive guide, we delve into the meaning of a unique selling point, exploring its vital role in differentiating your brand, attracting and retaining customers, and ultimately driving success. Whether you are a seasoned business owner or an entrepreneur, mastering the art of your USP is an essential step in carving out your niche in the marketplace.
In short, it explains what a particular product can offer that other products from competitors cannot.
Table of Contents
What Is a Unique Selling Point?
The USP must be something that is meaningful or important to consumers. Marketers use unique and competitive selling points to attract clients and to build their brands.
Marketers understand that it is not possible to convince other people to sell their products before you have convinced yourself. This is especially so when you are dealing with products and services that are highly competitive.
It is almost impossible to find a business whose products or services are completely unique. Therefore, it’s important to convince prospective customers that they should choose your products over competitors’.
In other words, you need to know what sets your product apart.
Just because the market for whatever products you are selling is crowded doesn’t mean you can’t have unique services or products.
By pointing out the specific features that make your products special, you increase the chances of attracting clients.
How to Use Your USP to Your Advantage
You need to find a unique selling point that can work well to your advantage. To do so, it is important to analyse the unique selling points of competitors and to understand what clients want. Look at what they sell beyond their specific products.
One beauty products company, for example, could claim to be selling confidence.
A car dealership could claim to sell luxury or class. It is important to find out exactly what competing businesses claim to sell and tailor your own unique selling point to be competitive.
Your unique selling point could be based on the four Ps of marketing. These are:
- Product features,
- Product pricing,
- Placement (location and areas of distribution)
- Promotional strategy.
Any of these could be used to give a business advantage to competitors.
This does not mean that a business needs to use all the four Ps of marketing to have a successful unique selling point.
They may choose to use just one or two which will still work just as well. Some generic USP examples may include – ‘Highest quality in the market’, or ‘Lowest price in the market.’
Why Is Having a USP Important?
There are many benefits to figuring out your unique selling point early on. Every day wasted without something that sets you apart from competition means less customers. Less customers means less revenue, and eventually failure.
In the end, everyone wants to see their ideas through to success while making a lot of money in the process, and a unique selling point will do just that.
Here are some of the key ways that having a clear USP can boost your revenue.
1. Focus Leads to Excellence
When someone is feeling ill, they don’t just go to any doctor and get the treatment they need. They usually go to a hospital, then see a specialist. If a patient requires surgery, it has to be a specialist in a specific field according to the patient’s needs.
Why is that? Because the human body is a complex system, and to perfect a practice you need to focus on as small an area as possible. The same rules apply to business.
The more closely your product and messaging align with your customers needs, the easier you’ll find it to shift units.
2. Use Your USP to Inspire Trust
Not only is having a unique selling point better for you, it also inspires customers to trust you more. The average person knows that no one can do everything at once.
If you claim to have the best in everything, then chances are you’re probably lying as far as they’re concerned. This doesn’t mean you can’t be known for more than one thing. Pizza Hut for example, aside from pizza, are known for their breadsticks, and chicken wings.
However, they stay true to their core product – pizza.
3. Attracting More Customers
You might be thinking that appealing to a larger crowd with different needs is better. If you shoot at more targets, you’re more likely to hit something, right?
Wrong.
It’s much better to focus your efforts on one target and hitting that bullseye. When you’re running a business, it’s just the same, you want to strike gold. You want to be the best at what you do.
After you’ve made your name as a leader and specialist, opportunities to hit more targets will present themselves. Eventually, it’s much more profitable and effective to attract more customers in a single segment.
How To Find Your Unique Selling Point
A good unique selling point can help companies to make clear their unique position. It makes it easy for customers to understand what a business is about and to differentiate it from competitors since it is a part of their brand.
A unique selling point basically tells you everything that a business believes in and hopes to achieve in just a single sentence.
Since there are usually many similar products in the market, it is easier for customers to pick one whose unique selling point meets their needs. For the employees of a business, it makes it clear what exactly they are working towards.
There may be absolutely nothing special about the business you offer but a good unique selling point may make all the difference.
Consider the following steps to come up with a good unique selling point.
Stand In Your Customer’s Shoes
It’s common for marketers to get so caught up in their strategies that they end up forgetting whose needs they are trying to meet. Just because you love something about a product or service does not mean your customers will.
It’s important to take some time and study the needs and expectations of your customers.
Put yourself in their shoes.
The first step is to write a brief description of your target market. A good way to do this is using representative buyer personas. Write down what problem your products hope to solve and why they should choose them over competitors.
If, for example, you are trying to sell beauty products for women, you would need to ask, ‘What kind of women am I targeting?’
Why would someone want to buy beauty products? What do they expect from my products? And what exactly are they hoping to accomplish?
What are my competitors offering that I’m not? What are they not offering that I can offer? How can my USP be helpful?
Do not just make assumptions. Conduct a market survey and find out what you need to do. Once you know the specific things that your customers want, you can come up with a unique
selling point that appeal to them
Find Out What Your Customers Like About Your Product
You need to know what competitive advantage your products have over those of competitors.
Get this information from your loyal customer. The beauty products entrepreneur, for example, may find that their products are less expensive or maybe they are milder to the skin.
By knowing what makes your products unique, you get your unique selling point. It may also help you to improve on areas that aren’t doing very well.
You may also ask your customers to list the features that are most important to them, and design your offering around this.
Learn The Buying Behavior Of Your Customers
You need to know what motivates your customers’ buying behavior. Do not just assume that it is the traditional demographic factors like age, sex, or income. It is usually a lot more than that.
Still in the beauty products company, an entrepreneur may know that 80% of their clients are aged between 16 to 35.
However, that does not explain why certain people buy the specific beauty products that they do. They could be motivated by other factors such as glamour and peer influence. People do not always buy what they need.
These days, people often buy into a lifestyle or a set of brand values.
Once you understand what makes people buy what they buy, you can come up with a unique selling point that attracts them.
What is a Unique Selling Point? USP Marketing
USP marketing is more than coming up with a line to describe what you offer. There are various steps that you can take to make it more successful.
They include the following;
Understand Your Target Market
As with all marketing techniques, you need to conduct research on your target market first. Find out what they need, what inspires them to buy the products and services that they do and observe them for patterns.
After all, if you don’t know what you’re aiming for, you’re wasting your time.
If you know your audience well, then you are better suited to cater for their needs. If you are just starting out your business and you do not have many clients to research on, you can conduct a research on other buyers within your target market.
Make Your USP Compelling
Your USP will probably be your first way to communicate with clients. Make it unique to your business. Do not try to copy other businesses, especially competitors as you may just end up confusing prospective customers.
You need to find out what exactly makes your business special and focus on it.
Do not make it a broad, boring line. Saying ‘Good beauty products,’ for example, isn’t enough. You need to be more specific. You can say, ‘ We sell the best quality makeup with a sun protection factor of at least 30’.
Ensure that it fills gaps left by competitors, and that it is convincing. Your unique selling point should be the first thing that your customers remember about you. It doesn’t necessarily have to be your slogan.
It just needs to help you increase profits and keep your employees motivated.
Emotional Selling Proposition Or Unique Selling Proposition?
Your emotional selling proposition, (ESP) refers to the specific feelings that consumers associate with certain products. A certain car, for example, could be associated with luxury. Marketing communication that uses ESPs puts more focus on emotions than logic.
For example, a beauty company using emotional selling propositions would use phrases such as, ‘Feel confident.’ Marketers understand that most people base their purchases on both logic and emotions.
An ESP can be used to make potential customers feel valued, special, trendy, and beautiful or like they belong and therefore convince them into making purchases.
Entrepreneurs need to learn how to use both ESPs and USPs because they are both important. It is no longer enough to just be different from other companies. You need to also add an emotional touch to what you need.
People tend to buy from businesses and companies that they can connect with.
No matter how logical your explanations may be, most customers are not going to buy from you if they do not feel a connection. It is the connection that helps them develop trust and loyalty to your company.
Why Should You Develop an ESP?
It is not possible to deliver effective communications to customers without a good emotion selling proposition. Only a good ESP can help adjust the attitudes and demands of customers.
Since most people’s emotions determine their actions and buying behavior, ESPs can target them. It should address authority figures, psychological triggers, risk aversion, rewards for using certain products and security. People tend to spend more money when they are happy.
If your business offers services that can make people happy, then you can make more sales. Such services include; convenience, a sense of accomplishment, friendliness, variety and discounts.
Is a USP Your Key To More Sales?
Both ESPs and USPs are crucial for the establishment of a brand. If you can combine emotional and logical appeal, then you can definitely convince more and more people to buy.
Since it is impossible to have a business that is completely unique, entrepreneurs have no choice but to do whatever they can to make their products and services competitive.
The most effective way to do that is to explain to people why they should buy your products while making them feel confident, happy and secure.
If you want to find out more about positioning your product on the market, contact ProfileTree today.
