Stand Out from the Crowd and Increase Sales
by Kamau Austin
More Business
Skills Articles
Published on this site: January 2004 - See
more articles from this month
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:
- Discover how to identify minority
business sectors with high consumer demand and low competition;
-
Learn how to get your web site to rank well in the search engines;
-
Find free software to increase your web marketing effectiveness; and ...
-
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 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 ( myws.sitesell.com/AdPronline.html
)
Kamau Austin, helps small and minority business make
more money, by creating, search friendly web sites. He is
the owner of www.Ebizbydesign.com
, www.Einfonews.com
, and the creator of the Free Search Engine Promotion Tele-course
at: www.SearchEngineplan.com
. He can be reached at:
[email protected]
or called toll free at 866-324-9669
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