Stand Out from the Crowd and Increase Sales
By Kamau Austin
Posted Saturday, August 7, 2004
Since there are over 16.6 million Internet Business Sites in cyberspace how do you stand out from the crowd? One way is to establish an USP. What is an USP you ask? USP stands for unique selling proposition or unique selling point. The reason you need an USP is to establish your business brand and identity so, people remember your web site and want to do business with you. By establishing a USP you can communicate why people should do business with your company, instead of other sites, or your competition on the web.
Resist stating your USP as being the best product or service for your prospects. Self proclaimed superlatives, like the best - fastest - or most, won't be accepted by potential customers because, they will see your USP as self serving hype! Site visitors see the best, fastest, and most superlatives plastered all over the Internet on sites. You have to be more savvy, in your sales copy-editing, to win over your potential customers.
In order to properly arrive at your USP, list the features of your business, and itemize them from the strongest to the weakest. Then translate your features into benefits for your potential customers. In other words, try to think like your customer ( i.e. - what's in it for them). I'm sorry, your customer only cares about what your product or service will do for them. Just keeping it real! Be careful, it is difficult many times to distinguish between the features of your products, and the benefits to your potential customer.
For instance, if I were to state to potential subscribers of KeepitReal...Profitable!, ezine: "subscribe to the only ezine that is written to share the latest tried and true web marketing techniques". This would come off as a self proclaimed feature. On the other hand, if I were to state:
1. Discover how to identify minority business sectors with high consumer demand and low competition;
2. Learn how to get your web site to rank well in the search engines;
3. Find free software to increase your web marketing effectiveness; and ... 4. Obtain syndicated content to add value to your ezine.
These statements would actually be listing some benefits to subscribing to KeepitReal...Profitable!, e-zine. To explain this another way, features just describe aspects of your e business, while benefits tells your potential customers - what's in it for them, when they buy your products and services. Always illustrate benefits of buying from your business first, and then describe features later.
Once you have translated the benefits your customer will obtain from buying your product or services. Then visit the sites of your top competitors and note the differences between their products or services and yours. Just remember, people don't buy based on the features of your business (although they may justify buying based on features). They actually buy emotionally, determined by how your business will fill a want or need in their life. Therefore, many times your USP will be based on your top benefits, presented in a way that is - unique and distinct from your competition.
The full blown process of arriving at your USP is a sophisticated one, that is beyond the scope of this article. However, there are other great e-books and web sites that will help you in the process of developing an USP. Like the free web site of Joe Robson (http://www.AdCopywriting.com), a great low cost source for net copywriting and developing a USP, is Make My Words Sell!, again by Joe Robson and Ken Evoy, two of the most successful web business persons, in terms of small business sales (http://myws.sitesell.com/AdPronline.html).
About the Author
Kamau Austin, helps small and minority business make more money, by creating, search friendly web sites. He is the owner of (http://www.Ebizbydesign.com) , (http://www.Einfonews.com) , and the creator of the Free Search Engine Promotion Tele-course at: (http://www.SearchEngineplan.com). He can be reached at: e-mail or called toll free at 866-324-9669
