Finding Your Unique Selling Position (USP) May be The Most Critical Activity for Your Success. Your advertising lives in a world of complexity and confusion. Consumers have so many choices in almost every product classification. When you're shopping for a service or product it's common to have even thousands of choices..



If you don't believe me just search the Internet for common products to buy and look at the search results. You could be faced with alternatives in the millions.

So that's good right? You're sure to like it if you're the buyer. But us markteters will find it a challenge? What are we to do in order for our companies to survive?

If Your Advertising Doesn't Make You Different, You've Missed the Mark. The first thing your advertising must do is show your customer how you're different from everyone else. I was consulting with a small business client the other day and we went to the yellow pages for her product category and saw a perfect example of how advertising should not be done..

There were pages upon pages of ads with one thing in common. They were all alike. You could have substituted one company name for another without changing the ad in the slightest and it still would have made sense to the customer.

My client found this depressing, but I was thrilled! Why? She had a great opportunity to differentiate her business. Whoever differentiates will win the business battle!

When there's no obvious difference, your customers will decide based on who has the best price. When customers are faced with hundreds of choices but dont see any difference between one business and another, what happens? The only thing they can compare is price, so that's how they make their choice. If your differences arent clear, price will be the deciding factor for your customers. That's not the ideal thing for you and your business. And it's not that good for your customer either--especially if the value of your business is best appreciated through a long-term relationship with your customer. Customers who come to you because you have the best price will go to your competitors as soon as they find one with a better price. What if you're the fastest gun in the West? But no matter how fast you are, there will always someone faster. That's not a long-term game. It's better and smarter to differentiate.

If you can differentiate yourself, you can charge higher prices. Companies who can communicate their important differences to their customers can justify charging higher prices. The cheapest product or service does not always win the business. Consider this. No one will buy the cheapest product or service every time. Even if you're a world class tightwad, you can differentiate between bruised and fresh produce. You'll pay a higher price for the non-bruised produce. Certainly!

Are your customers any different? No. Certainly, you must have a reasonable price, but if you have highlighted an important difference in your product or service, customers will pay extra to have that benefit.

So, your key to increased sales, happier customers and increased profits is to simply find the thing which makes you different from your competitors and make certain you're getting that message out in your advertising.