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Your unique selling point

If you've ever attended a marketing course or read a marketing book, you will know one of the most important things your business must have is a unique selling point (USP): there must be something uniquely special about your product or service that your competitors cannot offer. Ideally, you will have more than one USP.

This is relatively easy if you have a bricks and mortar business (ie. a business that does not sell on-line). Your USP need only be unique in your geographical market. But when you put your business on-line, you must be unique across a much wider market - very possibly the global market (unless, of course, your Internet business only covers the same market as your bricks and mortar business).

In short, the chances are, you will need to modify or change your USP when you start selling on-line. Moreover, you will need to ensure it is clear to visitors to your web site.

How to determine or develop your on-line USP

1. Write down your off-line USP(s)

2. Visit the web sites of your competitors as well as similar businesses around the world (you can use a search engine such as Google or Yahoo to find them)

3. Determine whether your competitors offer a similar USP (in which case it will not be very unique!)

4. Make a list of the other USPs your competitors offer

5. Now sit down with your staff and determine what on-line USP(s) you can offer your customers. Brainstorming can be a good technique. (You can also try out BrainStormer software to help you brainstorm)

6. Recheck your competitors immediately and from time to time thereafter to ensure they really can't match you on this USP

Areas to consider for a USP

• Synergies between your on-line shop and off-line shop(s), such as opportunity to collect orders at your shop as well as via delivery to the customer's door, after-sales service centres in your shops, delivery from nearest shop rather than from central warehouse, etc.

• More experience than competitors.

• Trusted name: owing to lack of trust in the on-line world, people are far more likely to buy from a name they are familiar with than one they do not know.

• Wider range of goods

• Web site and customer service in multiple languages

• Lower price - but be careful with this one. Having the cheapest products doesn't always work - and it's just too easy for a big, or well funded competitor to offer cheaper prices than you.

Good luck!

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• Marketing 1: Keeping customers
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• Getting paid: accepting credit cards and other on-line payment systems
• Setting up your on-line shop: the options, costs and recommendations