In business it is key to separate yourself from others in your business field. By you creating a unique selling proposition that lets you stand out from your competition, you can be the one that your customers will choose.
Branding is what separates one product from another of a similar make.
When it comes to marketing, branding yourself and your name is the little-known secret that 99.9% of other marketers don’t get, but it can pay off for you big time when used effectively. I’m also referring here to your USP (Unique Selling Proposition). It’s about the unique fact that separates you from other people out there trying to promote their business.
So the first thing you should know that you should concentrate on separating yourself, but just branding you should leave to the McDonalds and Pepsi companies out there. They spend millions of dollars a year to get their name out there. So we are talking about making yourself the unique service or company.
The first thing you can do is look in your phone book and newspapers and see what all other competitors are saying.
You will probably notice a lot of them say the same old boring thing like cheapest prices or largest selection. You want to start writing a list on the left side of a piece of paper that lists everything that you have to say about your company.
Now on the right side of the piece of paper, you write all the things that your competition is saying about their company. So now you can go through and cross off everything that you wrote that the other company also said.
This way you are now on your way to creating a USP. Now that you have some features and benefits of your company and theirs, go through and pick out the strongest benefit you have on your side. Remember a feature is like twenty four hour customer service and the benefit would be the fact that if you ever have a question or problem someone can assist you any time.
So now that you have the biggest benefit, you will start to create your USP by writing that benefit down again and seeing if you can improve what you are saying.
You need to never state something you can’t do, but list the biggest benefit that will make you stand out. Now a great thing about a USP even though it is supposedly unique, you can mention things that may be obvious but never stated. For example if you are a furniture dealer and you do same day delivery and so do a lot of other places, are they saying it.
Even though almost all do same day delivery, you are stating it first. So now you start to market that message and people will start to think of you now when they are looking for furniture and delivery same day. Do you see how powerful this can be? This can be applied to any business when starting to create your USP.