Define your USP

Here are some steps to work through to define a USP for one of your products or services.

• Start with the product or service that you most want to succeed, or has the greatest potential or provides the largest contribution to your profits.
• List all the main features of the product or service. Features describe what your product or service does. Your list should include features such as quality, service, delivery, price, and functional or technical characteristics.
• Convert each feature into one or more benefits. While features describe what your product or service does, a benefit describes what customer need it fulfils. Converting features into benefits is very important because customers buy benefits, not features. Some benefits will be more important to the customer than others. Make a list of benefits and rank them in priority order.
• Consider each benefit in turn and indicate whether this benefit is: Standard to all competing suppliers' products or services. Something that is different and special to you, these are candidates for your USP.
• If all your benefits are rated as standard then this indicates that there are no obvious differences between your products or services and those of your competitors. In this case there are two things you can do.
• Consider how your company scores against your competitors on those benefits that the customer considers to be most important. Look for those benefits which you rate highly, and shows the biggest difference between you and the competition. This analysis will reveal whether you have particular strength that may be exploited in a similar way to a USP.
• Consider how you could develop your product or service features to deliver new customer benefits that are not provided by other suppliers.
• Repeat this process for all other major products or services, and when you have done this, think about your promotional activities.

Now consider your message?

When you have defined a USP for each of the products or services you are considering, then you should decide what your message should be and how to communicate it to your target audience.