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Differentiate or Die!

Finding Your Unique Selling Position (USP) May be The Most Critical Activity for Your Success. Your advertising lives in a world of complexity and confusion. Consumers have so many choices in almost every product classification. When you're shopping for a service or product it's common to have even thousands of choices..

If you don't believe me just search the Internet for common products to buy and look at the search results. You could be faced with alternatives in the millions.

That's a good thing right? Sure . . . if you're the consumer. What about all of us marketing professionals who come to work everyday and try to find better ways of selling? How do we survive in such a world?

Your Advertising Needs to Set You Apart or You've Failed. The number one job of your advertising is to show your customer that you're NOT the same as everyone else. While working with a small business client the other day, we looked in the yellow pages for her business and saw an excellent example of how advertising should never be done.

We found pages and pages of ads--all so much the same that you could literally substitute one company name for another and not have to change the ads at all!

My client was depressed over this, but I was energized! Why? This was a great opportunity for her to differentiate her business. Whoever differentiates wins the battle for business!

When there are no apparent differences customers will decide based on price. So what happens when customers are faced with hundreds of choices and dont see any difference between one business and another? The only thing left to compare is price, so that's how they make their choice. If you haven't shown that you're different, price will be the deciding factor for your customers too. That's not the best thing for you and your business, and this might surprise you, but it's not good for your customer either--especially if your value is best recognized by establishing a long-term relationship with the customer. Business you get because you have the best price will go somewhere else as soon as they find a lower price. You may be the fastest gun in the West. But no matter how fast you are, there's always someone faster. That's a dangerous game. It's much safer to differentiate.

You can command higher prices through differentiation. Companies who effectively differentiate themselves from their competitors can demand higher prices for their products or services. The lowest price is not always the winner. Think about this for a minute. You don't always buy the lowest price. Even if you're the world's biggest cheapskate you can differentiate between bruised and fresh vegetables and you'll pay the higher price for the fresh produce. Right?

Are your customers any different? No. Certainly, you must have a reasonable price, but if you have highlighted an important difference in your product or service, customers will pay extra to have that benefit.

So, your key to increased sales, happier customers and increased profits is to simply find the thing which makes you different from your competitors and make certain you're getting that message out in your advertising.

Article Source: http://www.advertisingww.com/articles

The author, Craig Mecham, is the founder of of The Mecham Company The Mecham Company, a marketing consulting firm. With two decades success in Business to Business Marketing and promotions, Mr. Mecham advises national and international business.
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