January 27th, 2009 by Dave Harry
Why unique selling propositions are a thing of the past
Category General, Marketing concepts | 16 comments »
Diversified Selling Propositions; the modern equivalent for USP
Back in the 50’s a fellow named Tosser Reeves is said to have come up with the term we all know well these days; ‘Unique selling proposition’ or the more oft used acronym – USP. At least if you’re in the marketing game, you should. The main concept was that by promoting certain key aspects, features and benefits over time would drive home the message creating a strong brand in the consumer’s minds.
And while it is a tried, tested and true methodology over the years for the marketing munchkins, it may not be all powerful and defendable in a modern media world, at least not in every situation. You see the word ‘unique’ alone denotes that there are singular reasons for buying decisions on the part of consumers. For that matter singular actions, as we can certainly have primary and secondary conversions metrics in play.
This fundamentally asserts that telling a people a singular message time and time again ultimately will convince them to purchase. While this can work well these days in many instances, often times it isn’t that simple. Not only do we have a variety of media approaches available to deliver our message, but people are often more complex and buy for different reasons. From the emotional to the practical, buying decisions are varied on a given product (or service).
By approaching your marketing with a singular approach it forces the consumer to adapt the message to their own needs.
Diversified selling propositions
Can we agree to disagree?
Another issue that arises is that the original USP concepts were more of a branding tool for building a long term concept into relationships with consumers. These days buying decisions are often based from a wide variety of factors and the speed of change means more of a moving target. Being more fluid means a more diversified message.
Obviously there is an inherent risk in diluting your over-al message, thus some tactical decisions are paramount. One way to find ideas if to mine existing customers by asking them what qualities drove their buying decision.
- Quality of product/service?
- Competitive/low Prices?
- Quality customer service?
- People that referred them?
- Features or benefits?
- Emotional draw?
Now try and nail down just ONE that represents you. In almost all cases such qualitative data shows that people have a wide variety of reasons for purchasing decisions. There may be common elements, but always a diversified set of factors are involved. Looking deeper, the demographics of age, location, income and the like will also create different buying decision patterns. This speaks to the difficulties in using ‘unique’ propositions over diversified approaches.
This is why in the modern media world you will often see multiple ads for the same campaign. Not only does this allow for targeting a variety of emotions towards purchase but also ensure that the consumer doesn’t ‘tune you out’ after enduring the same angle over and over.
Use with care
Ultimately you should scope out diversified selling propositions to cover a variety of consumer types and maximize the potential for success. This does not mean to get carried away and promise everything under the sun. Not only can this dilute the selling proposition, but runs the risk of not living up to your own promises; which is not the kind of branding we’re after.
Do your homework and isolate what your market holds and where you fit in. Find out what your primary and secondary demographics are and then work down from there as to what primary factors drive their buying decisions. From there some self assessment to find your strengths should begin to carve out your own DSP. What makes you stand out from the crowd and how do you reach out to consumers while filling the voids left by competitors in the market.
Unique is often not the case… it is more a combination of factors which makes you stand out form the crowd, who themselves are a diverse group in a multilevel media world.
It is certainly worth consideration…
Popularity: 50% [?]
January 27th, 2009 at 11:55 am
I think the key point of your argument (That “unique” = “singular”) might not be entirely correct.
Unique (as I see it) simply means that a company’s combination of things is singularly different from their competition’s.
So while we might not be able to point at one of your six features and say “We are unique singularly in THAT one”, we can say that our combination of those six is singularly unique in the marketplace.
I completely agree with the idea that customers make their purchasing decisions based on many factors, and think that your chart is a good one. But I don’t think the definition of USP is tied to one singular feature or benefit that a company offers over its competition. It is a combination of things that create a USP.
January 28th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
VERY interesting article. There is an aspect missing that I believe is what consumers are making more decisions on than ever before. They really don;t care what care you drive or how big your house is any more, they don;t care if you you are in a designer suit, give the right rebuttal… what people are looking for is your PASSION. They want to FEEL you are passionate, they want feel passionate. People don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care.
Christine Hiebel
February 5th, 2009 at 4:39 pm
U.S.P.’s a thing of the past? “Free Shipping” is still one of the best pulling unique selling propositions to push the buyer over the fence. Even in this modern media world people don’t change, technology changes.
February 5th, 2009 at 4:47 pm
Good article but one point missing is that people buy from people they trust. Buyers need to know that what they buy is backed by a trustworthy person or company. Somoone thay can go back to for further advice or help. My take on markteing these days is that it is about building good, long term relationships.
February 5th, 2009 at 5:11 pm
On the Internet, YOU are your own best USP. Passion is a very important part of the mix and would come under “emotional draw”. However, in affiliate marketing for example, passion alone is not enough if you do not convince the prospect that you know what you are doing. Offering “something extra” to sharpen your “singularity” works well as either the initial hook or the final persuasion…
February 5th, 2009 at 8:12 pm
I agree with Christine. I am so tired of seeing all these fancy cars and mansions just to get you to sign up, but just once I would like to have someone stick with me longer than a month. It seems that after they get your money, they’re history.
February 6th, 2009 at 5:19 am
I think perhaps you meant Rosser Reeves, ‘Tosser’ just doesn’t seem to do him justice!
February 9th, 2009 at 4:18 pm
I appreciate your fresh take on the old maxim of USP
Unique selling proposition was fine when all we had was direct mail and “push” advertising.
I think “diversified selling proposition” fits much better with the new media and “pull” advertising.
February 13th, 2009 at 3:52 am
Hey, Dave! Thanks! A topic I understand, and learned about, back-in-the-day. (1990s, not 1950s!)
Jarred is correct. USP isn’t singular, it is what makes you different from your competition. Again, back-in-the-day, my USP for writing resumes wasn’t simply “blue-collar job-seekers,” (which worked well in my part of the city.) My resumes were geared for blue-collar/technicians/recent college grads in certain fields, who couldn’t afford nor ream any benefits from the high-costs, management/COs/professional resumes from the other parts of my city. Heck, my location was also part of my USP. (Used to be able to state it all in a sentence, and as a blurb on my business cards.)
You’re absolutely right, there should never be a singular reason for anyone’s service/product – too many reasons dropped to the side of the road for many, that just screwed you out of customers. I’m not sure if small businesses or even large, single product/service businesses go for the singular approach. Never read that as I was laerning marketing, but then again, I kinda think branding is something the big boys have the time and money to do, while small businesses are busy figuring out the quickest, best way to get money going, anyway. Back in my day the “Must Read” authors were Jay Conrad Levinson and Sarah and Paul Edwards.
BUT, basically, this is a semantical problem here. Second rule of Semantics is “understand the word by context.” There is more than one meaning for the word “unique,” and, although I’ve never heard of Reeves, I can’t imagine he meant “singular” when he wrote “unique.” (If he did, then the 50s really were a simpilar time.) I’m not unique as a woman, not unique as a lefty, not unique as a transplant into the city of Philadelphia, and not unique as long-winded even. I am, however, a lot more unique as a left-handed, long-winded, Philadelphian woman! My subset has just decreased the number like me in the world from millions to maybe a few dozen! THAT’s how one becomes unique. (Just a demonstration, not a good selling point for any business.)
Oh, and I disagree with those who said that customers want to see your passion. Reminds me of the idiot salesperson trying to convince us to buy a sofa from him, because his boss is rich. (He was an idiot for spending 5 minutes, before we simply walked away, telling us how his boss lived.) We buy because of stuff WE want. It’s never about what the seller feels. I’m from Philly. Everyone is passionate here. (Just start talking sports teams.) Who cares how passionate the seller is? Does he/she know enough about the product/service to answer my questions and tell me why I should buy from him/her? And, are his/her USP right up my alley?
Keep writing marketing stuff! THIS stuff I get. lol Thanks!
February 20th, 2009 at 11:08 am
Hi, I am from Australia. I am no marketing guru as such but a cool article generating some food for thought and a bit of debate!
As a consumer, I do feel that organisation’s need to take a step back before they even think about devising their Value Proposition – Unique or Diversified, which they will use to attract me.
Quite simply I want to raise a question that organisations, no matter how big or small, got to ask themselves – “TO WHOM ARE WE WHAT?”. In other words, what is their target market and how are they meeting their respective market’s expectations. I know you will think that this is just Marketing 101 – Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning. But I beg to differ – its a step beyond your typical STP.
The original article makes a reference to Demographics based segmentation, where two people in the same age bracket or having same income will respond to a value proposition in the same way. But do you think this would be the case all the time? Your friend, who could be as old as you or makes the same amount of money as you do, would also be very keen to go to a Star Wars movie marathon with you? Perhaps not. Most people are different, infact everyone has their individual likes and dis-likes and different needs and variables wants. Therefore the segmentation ought to be NEEDS based, where focus should be paid to consumer’s buying experiences, benefit inferences and cognitive categorisation of products and services.
I feel the ‘need’ to explain this using an example. Take a DVD Rental stores for instance. They are essentially catering to a vast market, renting out DVDs and Games. In other words, they are being everything to everyone. However, the case may be that some of their customers are seeking Value – affordability or wanting some extras for free, or no late fees or a longer rental period. Others may be seeking Convenience – finding the movie they want or needing the DVD store to be closer to their homes or having available parking or being able to purchase everyday products – bread, milk, newspaper, etc. You get my drift. Most DVD rental stores are trying to be all things to all people, with no particular competitor (store based) that is clearly targeting (the above mentioned) a chosen segment.
But if you think about online DVD stores and more recently DVD vending/kiosk type rentals that may be catering well to the Value seeking segment by addressing their needs. That is their Selling Propostion, to a segment that seeks Value. This proposition in itself is unique and it could be targeting quite a few different demographics. But I would like to stress upon the fact that their marketing efforts will be in vain, if their core value proposition does not satisfy the basic needs and wants of a particular set of consumers. Therefore assessing the customer base on the foundations of what drives them and what are their core needs and wants is of utmost importance.
What I am getting to is that advertising or pitching different Value Propositions to the same market segment (based on demographics) may or may not work! A DVD rental store advertising to me in a number of different ways, may or may not affect my final decision in favour of them and them only. In effect my decision will be based on what I really NEED and/or WANT.
In addition to finding out what the “market holds and where the organisation fits in”, I agree that we need to identify the strengths within the organisation but we should also evaluate the key success factors that can deliver on the promises made to the customer, because the customer will eventually perceive this as VALUE. This reflection exercise will help the organisation to gauge it’s ability to perform in the market place (in a competitive environment) and also assess it’s market attractiveness.
March 13th, 2009 at 6:10 am
great resources
March 16th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
A lot of intersting thought. As a business owner who’s trade is marketing consulting I sit with many clients who think their business is the only one that does what they do. It’s not till we focus on there USPs we uncover what they have to truly attract the customer and differentiate from the competition.
Too many businesses throw away excellent money because they don’t have their USPs and with the rapid changes in media, marketing, cultures, social norms, etc… sometimes wisdom should be evolved and progressed, but not necessarily rebutted.
Great thoughts in the article and some interesting choice of thought flow. At the end of it all, whether you call it USPs or something else, as long as an organization doesn’t get lost in the mosaic of competitive noise and can grow in all dimensions – use whatever terms are necessary to get them there.
April 16th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
Great post I fully agree. People’s lives are complex enough, they want accessibility.
May 23rd, 2009 at 12:53 pm
I’m so glad I stumbled upon this website. I’ve been putting a lot of thought lately into branding (starting a new company soon)and trying to come up with a USP.
I too, thought of the word “unique” as being the ONE thing that sets my company apart – all the while thinking to myself that there are actually several things that go into my whole concept.
Many of you confirmed my thoughts on this and I’m glad to know that others feel the same way. I’m in no way devaluing the importance of having a USP but I don’t feel nearly as compelled to “follow this rule” to the letter.
Great article. I enjoyed reading everyone’s posts and seeing diffent ways to look at the same issue.
July 12th, 2009 at 2:45 am
Great article, thank you for a nice read! I’d emphasize the key of targeted marketing to predefined segments of population. Because consumers will usually do most of primary research and compare online, they come to shop very well prepared and educated.
August 21st, 2009 at 8:00 am
I would strongly agree that the flaw is that USP means what is the differentation of your biz from the other biz!