Unique Selling Position

There are a lot of websites on the world wide web. For most businesses this means that there is normally a lot of competition when trying to sell a product or service. The nature of the internet is also that most people tend to research various sites before deciding to make any type of purchasing decision. So while it’s important to get people to visit your site, it is equally important to convert the maximum number of these visitors into actual paying clients.

What’s Your Point of Difference?
Marketing in the online world is not dissimilar to marketing in the off-line world – most of it is based on common sense. A shop in a suburban street has the same issues in trying to attract customers as an online business. The difference is that with most business types, there can be significantly more competition online. The main principle to consider is to that you need to be clear about what you are selling and whom you are selling to.

Paid Inclusion
Some search engines offer a paid inclusion service where website owners can pay a fee and in return receive a guarantee that their site will be placed in the relevant search results within a certain time period. Note that this doesn't provide a guarantee of any ranking preference, only guaranteed inclusion into the results. This model has lost favour with most of the larger search engines/directories with Yahoo the main operator still offering this service.

An important principle in marketing is to establish your Point of Difference. In terms of web marketing, this simply means that you need to communicate why you are better or different to another website. With so much competition, communicating this point to your visitors is what will ultimately determine your rate of conversion.

Developing your USP
Determining a Point of Difference is also known by the similar concept of Unique Selling Position (USP). As the name implies, it relates to how you define what makes your business important and unique compared to other similar sites. You also need to communicate why a visitor to your site should buy your product/service rather than visiting other sites.

To develop your own USP, consider various possible statements that sum up what your site is really about. Don’t be afraid to ask for suggestions from your family or friends – it’s your business, but they may be able to give you a different perspective.

Once you’re comfortable and can clearly define what your site is about, these USP statements will be used to write the sales copy that will hopefully convert more of your visitors into paying customers.

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