USP: Do you have a USP? What is a USP

April 1, 2009

I hope you enjoy our first guest post. Dirtbag have been around a long time and really established themselves as a quality brand in their arena. Doug has been kind enough to share his insights with us. I hope you find them as valuable and though provoking as I did.

An open letter to Entrepreneurs and small business owners.

Do You have a USP?

What The Hell is a USP?

One of the most important things I have learned over the past 12 years is
the importance of a USP. What is a USP? A USP is a unique selling
proposition. To create a USP you need to ask yourself the following
questions:

1.What sets my product or service apart from every other company in the
marketplace?
2.Why should a customer buy from me?
3.If a customer asks me “What’s in it for me?” What is my response?
4.What is so special about my company?
5.Why should anyone care about what my company is doing?

USP Examples:

The USP for Dominos pizza was very simple: “Pizza to your door 30 minutes or
less.” They never mentioned anything about the taste or the quality of the
pizza they were making. Fed Ex’s USP is overnight delivery. What is your
USP? If you don’t have one stop right now and figure it out, otherwise
you’re wasting your time and money on ads and marketing that are
meaningless. At Dirtbag Clothing our USP for 13 years has been: “Authentic
clothing for the Rock And Roll Lifestyle” and we back that up with hundreds
of bands wearing our product on tours all over the world. And we also convey
this on our blog and in the real world at live events and trade shows.

Your USP can not be a few sentences that you pull out of thin air in 20
minutes. Whatever sets you apart must be real and not just hype or marketing
fluff. If you don’t have a USP or can’t think of one then you may be in the
wrong business! A made up USP may work for a while, but eventually your
customers will catch on and respond by refusing to buy and using word of
mouth or the internet to expose you. So, if you’re going to go through the
trouble to create a USP please make sure it’s legitimate!

Creating Your USP:

If you use a special cotton, fabric or screen-printing process, talk about
that. If you use hemp or organic materials that can be a USP. If you produce
all of your products in the U.S. that may be a USP. Don’t make the mistake
of trying to be all things to all people. It won’t work. We learned that 12
years ago and made the decision to focus specifically on rock music. So far
it has worked pretty well. All you need to do is explore what makes you
different or better and expand on that.

Although the USP is a fairly simple concept, very few Entrepreneurs or
business owners I have met even know what a USP is. The USP is the hub of
any company, it’s the driving force that separates you from your
competition.

If you have a solid grasp of the importance of a USP I think everything else
will fall into place for you and your company. If you do not have a USP
there’s a good chance you will end up lost in the shuffle with the thousands
of other companies that are all singing the same song that nobody wants to
listen to. Banner ads on Myspace are a good example of this.

Let’s face it, we live in a time where attention spans are very short and we
as consumers are constantly bombarded with banner ads, penis enlargement
email offers, billboards, TV commercials and the list goes on. The reality
is that people just don’t give a damn about you or your product.

A great USP gives people a reason to listen to you. Without a USP you’re
just another jerk with a mega phone competing and screaming for attention!

Suggestions:

Promote your USP to a small group of people who do care and let them do the
work for you. A great example of this is a band with a great following that
can make a living without the help of a major label. This can be done on
blogs and sites like Facebook, Twitter, Myspace and Linked In. And, you
don’t need to spend a ton of cash to do this. Dirtbag does this with the
bands we sponsor, try something similar and see how it works.

A True Story:

When we first started Dirtbag back in 1996 we went to the ASR trade show in
Long Beach thinking that we could break our way into the skate surf market.
We had no USP, we had no message and we wanted to be all things to all
people. We had absolutely no chance in hell with that strategy, so we came
up with another idea!

As musicians my business partners and I noticed that kids that were into
skating, snowboarding and extreme sports were also into rock and punk music.
So, instead of trying to penetrate the skate/surf scene we decided to start
sponsoring rock and punk bands. Within a year we had 100 bands wearing our
product and we also found our niche and our USP! Now, 13 years later Dirtbag
IS considered a respected rock and roll apparel brand. Mission accomplished.

Summary:

If some of this went over your head here are the Cliff’s Notes:

1. Create and fine tune your USP and make sure it’s real!
2. “Narrowcast” and find the people who care and tell them your brand or
company story
3. Give these people the tools to tell their friends and spread the word
4. Do not try and be all things to all people, carve out a niche and focus
on that

Now maybe you can see the value of a well defined USP. If you want some more
information on USP’s, sales and marketing I would highly recommend you check
out the links below. These are 2 of my favorite books.

Further Reading

#1 Triggers by Joe Sugarman (Free PDF Ebook)
http://seminar.org/downloads/triggers.pdf

#2 The Ultmate Marketing Plan By dan Kennedy $10.00 on Amazon

Enjoy! Doug Canning founder of Dirtbag Clothing
doug@dirtbag.com

www.dirtbagclothing.com

Posted in Marketing