USP’s are just part of a whole raft of propaganda around marketing and starting your own business that I believe exists only to keep the majority of people down.
At the core of this propaganda is the idea that to be successful in business you need to be completely original and unique. These ideas are perpetuated in popular business programmes like The Apprentice and Dragons Den and well established marketing ideas like Unique Selling Points and Gaps in the Market.
Now lets be honest, there are now more than 6 billion of us on the planet, there are more than 60 million of us and more than 4 million businesses in the UK alone – so finding unique is going to be a challenge. The second thing is that when you are marketing something that is truly original and unique no-one is going to see it coming, or be looking for it which means you are going to have to educate the market from scratch. Educaters, famously, don’t make much money.
I accept that if you can identify an original and unique opportunity that fills a gaping whole in the market that everyone will identify with immediately and rush out to buy then that is certainly desirable, fantastic, miraculous – a bit like winning the lottery. We love Apple for example, for their innovation, but that isn’t the preserve of the majority of us and Apple have spent 32 years and millions of dollars developing the opportunity and the right to innovate.
For Effective Marketing sales and marketing is really quite simple, all you have to do is identify what people want to buy and then make it really easy for them to buy it from you and give them an incredible experience so that they continue to come back and rave about you to their friends. If someone is already doing it, roll your sleeves up and do it a little bit better. If you are ambitious you can do it a lot better. Now that may sound a little too easy, too simple, too accessible, too achievable but it is absolutely true.
Anyone can run there own business and everyone should have a go at it.
The answer to the question is that if you are unique and successful, then that is truly unique.
