Small Business Marketing and Advertising Strategy

Develop a Sales and Marketing Strategy Using Best Practices for Small Business

Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

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By Shawn McGee

Marketing Consultant and Author

A key Leverage Marketing best practice for small business is to develop a Unique Selling Proposition. You may have heard it expressed before as a unique buying advantage, unique value proposition or any number of other ways.

A USP is an attempt to express the uniqueness of your business in a single statement. It can be a promise no one else makes. It can also be a unique benefit that applies only to your product or service. Either way, it serves to differentiate you from your competition.

It’s a one to two sentence phrase that clearly lets your customers know why they should buy your product instead of your competitors’ products. Your unique selling proposition should be a concept that you apply to all of your marketing efforts.

Your USP should spell out exactly what your major benefit is. What will your product or service do for the prospect if he or she buys? Remember, you want to focus on your unique appeal.

You want to cement that benefit or promise to your product or service. And you want this benefit to be important enough to get consumers clamoring to buy from you. You need to find your most marketable attribute and then create an irresistible message from it.

Here are the basics to a profit pulling USP:

Your USP should describe you favorably.
Your aim is to try to fill an obvious void in the marketplace.
Your positioning should set you apart from your competition.

In the process, it should get prospective customers excited about your product or service.

Having a USP helps make you look like you are on the customer’s side and not just out to prey on unsuspecting passers by. Instead of claiming that your business is number one (like everyone else), appeal to the needs of your customers.

Prospective customers really don’t care how great your company is (especially if it is coming from you) or how long you’ve been in business. They want to know what’s in it for them. What benefits will they get if they purchase from you instead of your competition? That’s your USP.

You want to create awareness of your business so that when an individual needs what you have, they choose you immediately. You don’t want to just exist in the marketplace; you want to be the company of choice.

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Shawn McGee is a marketing consultant and author of the Leverage Marketing: Unique Selling Proposition Development Kit.

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