A Unique Selling Point (USP) is the factor that makes a good or service different from that of the competition. Basically, it tells others how you are different from other people, why you are special, unique and one-of-a-kind.
‘If you look back in history of the women who are most memorable and most stylish, they were never the followers of fashion. They were the ones who were unique in their style, breakers of the rules. They were authentic, genuine, original. They were not following the trends.’
Nina Garcia, the editor-in-chief of ELLE
If you ever took business management classes at high-school or in college, you would probably be familiar with the term ‘Unique Selling Point’. Nevertheless, if you did not have a chance to study business at the university or read any business books, here are a few points explaining the usefulness of this popular marketing theory.
Why is it important to know yourself first?
I believe that thinking throughout the life about your own Unique Selling Point (USP) will help you to realize your full potential. It will help you to find out who you really are, what you like and dislike, what you agree with and what you will always reject. Because only when you clearly know many things about yourself, you can be fully in charge of your life, your daily choices and making important decisions wisely.
Otherwise, other people can easily influence, persuade or manipulate you to do things which you do not really want to do, or which are not beneficial for you. For example, if you do not know your needs very well, you can be lured to take a mortgage for the house that is way too big for your family, or have dinner in the fast food restaurant while you are trying to cut down on junk food.
Once you know yourself very well, you can start thinking about your strengths and weaknesses. Then, boil down to one thing that you can do really, really well. Maybe you have knowledge and skills in a very narrow discipline of science, or there is something that that only you possess, e.g. you know how to implement business tools into human life like me, you can organize beautiful wedding parties or take breathtaking photographs in the mountains.
How did I find my Unique Selling Point (USP)?
Here, I share a couple of details from my personal life that lead me towards finding my Unique Selling Point (USP):
1. I studied business management in college. I had the opportunity to receive good-quality education. Studying business management helped me with being entrepreneurial, seeing new opportunities, understanding the world of business, etc. It also helped with getting lots of ideas for goods and services based on what other people’s needs and wants are. At the business school, I worked on developing my managerial skills, i.e. planning, organizing, commanding, controlling and evaluating. I learned about successful companies and what great entrepreneurs, who establish great companies, do to become successful. On the other hand, I also found out the biggest mistakes of entrepreneurs and reasons for so many companies to fail. Not everyone who starts doing something, either selling goods services to other people for-profit or taking up a new not-for-profit hobby, does it because he intends to do great things. Unfortunately, some people do what they do just because they are greedy for quick money, and doing good is just a side effect. But, those who start the business organization with intentions to do good, can truly change the world to make it a better place, and at the same time become successful one day in the future.
2. I studied business journalism and business communication in the graduate school. Getting expert knowledge in business journalism and business communication at Tsinghua University helped with getting better at writing and editing business stories. Learning from editors from world’s biggest news agencies how to write up articles was a great experience. My professors included senior editors from Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters. I am still not perfect and sometimes my business writing is messy, but I am way better than when I started writing my first imaginative stories about aliens in the 1st grade of the primary school. At the journalism school, I also learned how to critically analyze business information, follow the money and look at the big picture how the global economy works.
3. I have experience in designing websites and blogging. It helped with setting up and running SuperBusinessManager.com. A couple of years ago, I started my first blog where I was describing my personal experiences from living overseas in China. I self-taught myself some technicalities, e.g. how to set up a website at WordPress, install Plugins, write and edit simple HTML code, modify the website template to match my design concept, etc. Now, after learning from many blogging mistakes which I made in the past (e.g. not providing excellent content), I have a pretty clear idea what I want and what I do not want to do when it comes to running Super Business Manager.
4. I have the international perspective. It helps with understanding how different cultures perceive different things. From the very beginning, I have publicly admitted that I want to write for the global audience. I was born in Central Europe where I grew up, then studied at one of the American universities, to finally live in Asia for around 15 years already. Although I studied and worked with people from over 100 countries (including countries like North Korea, Sri Lanka or Ethiopia), I would love to do more traveling in the future to explore the world. To be completely honest with you, I do not want to have millions of readers to feel proud or feel better than other bloggers. But, I deeply believe that every person in the world should have easy access to business knowledge, opinions and experiences.
5. I have significantly improved my quality of life over the last 15 years. It helps with having knowledge and experience in life management. And, I truly love learning new things every day about personal development. Over the years, I have read countless number of articles, implemented lots of ideas, improved many things which I was dissatisfied with in my life, and I failed many times. I still have a lot to learn, but Super Business Manager is the place where I collect and share all my knowledge I have ever gained on improving quality of life and lifting standard of living.
6. I have worked in secondary and higher education for over a decade. It helps with explaining complicated things using the simple language, analyzing and evaluating. I rarely use complicated words, slang or idioms. I try keep my writing ‘simple, stupid’, so anyone around the world can understand what I want to say (not that I look down upon others). Teaching people different things also helps a little bit with feeling sympathy for others when they know less than you in a specific area of knowledge while wishing to help them to understand things as soon as possible. I do not know it all. Personally, my science knowledge, especially in physics and chemistry, is really poor.
Super Business Manager’s Unique Selling Point (USP)
When starting up Super Business Manager, I tried to carefully consider the factors that make my website stand out from hundreds of other business news websites and personal finance blogs from around the world.
I decided to primarily focus not only on helping business people to find answers to their questions, but also to make the business knowledge more popular around the world for all walks of life as we are all surrounded by different kinds of businesses.
Because, it is very important to our modern life to understand why businesses make certain decisions. And not only that! We can also copy the best business practices and paste them into our individual life to grow our family wealth, make life decisions more effectively and learn new skills to live our lives better than yesterday.
All in all, I decided to blend my passion for business writing with business management knowledge and skills, and previous experience in website design in order to teach people on the global scale how to improve their businesses and their quality of life.
How to find Unique Selling Point (USP)?
If you want to find your own Unique Selling Point (USP), think about who you really are, what your education background is, what kind of work experience you have, what your personality is. Learning about yourself requires hard soul-searching, honesty, bravery and creativity.
You must be brutally honest with yourself, otherwise you will get lost inside your mind. You can focus on one characteristic of yours to drive the strategy in other areas. If you are good at writing, you not necessarily need to write books – you can write for magazines, blogs, create marketing communication materials or write movie scripts.
If you uncover your Unique Selling Point (USP), you can use it to power up your life and do amazing things. But remember that residing within the hearts and minds of other people might not be enough to become successful. What makes you stand out is having good reputation and integrity, being honest with yourself and other people, keeping your promises.
Do not worry too much, if you are still searching. I took me around 15 years to find out what I am really good at and what I want to do with the rest of my life. Do not get discouraged, but keep trying.
