STar wants to help you identify what makes your business unique

Posted: 07/12/2011

Your Unique Selling Proposition (or USP) is what makes you stand out from your competitors and will help potential customers to understand why they should buy from you.

It is important that you identify and understand what your USP is, so you can focus on the key benefits that help to sell your products and services. It may be that you identify a different USP for each of your product or services; alternatively you may use a general USP i.e. first class customer service.

STar has put together the following four key steps to help you identify your USP, which will in turn improve the position and marketability of your business:

• Evaluate your company’s greatest strengths and competencies – This is where your SWOT analysis comes into play. Find your strengths and also look at what differentiates your product or service’s best qualities from the rest of the market. Is it your excellent after-sales support? Your superior analytical skills? The quality or value of your product? The speed at which you deliver? Try to quantify the differences as much as possible!
• Which benefits are most important to your target market – Think about what your customers (and potential customers) value most highly. Do some market research – talk to your customers. You can also read trade journals, the internet and relevant sector newsletters for trends about your target market or ‘niche.’
• Now compare your answers from last two points – Put a circle around the matches. When details from both lists match, you can start to build up your USP around these factors. If you haven’t got any matches at the moment, dig deeper until you find some, it isn’t always easy but if you think long and hard you will find some. If not perhaps you need to work on refining your offering so that it is more in tune with your market, or perhaps you need to consider which market you’re operating in and whether you need to think about moving into different markets or differentiating you offering.
• Use your top match or matches to position yourself in the market - Summarise the results from step 3 into one sentence that describes what it is about your company that makes you unique and what your niche is looking for.

   
Tomorrow STar will tackle the next step before you write your marketing strategy – carrying out a competitor analysis.

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Call us on 0845 075 5955 or drop us an email: hello@horizonworks-marketing.co.uk.