Is your USP helping, or hindering your business?

By simon | 29 December

Sitting down writing a marketing plan for a current client, I devoted the
second section to identifying and communicating their USP - unique selling
point - or as another client/friend of mine talks about: competitive advantage. It was here that I realised that maybe the latter description is a better one to hold up to the light, than the former.

For starters, whilst my first client has a number of unique selling points, maybe only one or two of them can translate into a competitive advantage. The reality is that whilst a part of your business could be positioned as unique, will that necessarily deliver you an advantage over your competitors? And vice versa, is there a part of your business that ISN'T unique but because of other component parts of your operation, your location or simply you circumstances that does deliver you an advantage?

Unique doesn't always translate to an advantage. And sometimes uniqueness is simply a thin veneer to hide lack of a decent competitive advantage. Look at the major banks in Australia. All would love to present their banking offerings as unique but the reality is that underneath the shiny American-bashing adverts and glossy re-branding, there's little advantage amongst them.

So how does this translate for your business?

When you re-visit your marketing/business plan (obviously, they should both be the same plan, or at least heavily integrated into each other!), then look again at what your competitive advantages are. Is it your people? Your approach? Your vision for your clients? If something you manufacture is unique then great, but how does that create an advantage for you. There maybe an advantage hidden that you haven't even seen. As one client of TwoCents Group pointed out, their high price - almost twice as high as their competitors - actually became a competitive advantage for them. Marketed correctly to their customers, it became one of their lead communication tools.

Looking back at the current plan we're writing, we see that the client is offering an information toolkit across multiple platforms. This will definitely be unique, but other competitors might offer differing services across single platforms - and if their services are superior, then our unique selling point actually becomes a hindrance. To turn this USP into a competitive advantage we will have to make sure the benefits of this multi-platform approach are communicated to the consumer properly.

In conclusion, a USP is great, but make sure its working for you properly. You may have multiple USPs and other ideas may perform better for you in the long run. And even after all that, dig deeper in your business, look at everything from a different angle and see if you can find a competitive advantage that perhaps you didn't see the first time around.