Your USP: Play to your strengths!
I am posting the following at the suggestion of a partner/client of mine after sending him the advice therein by email. I have removed the specifics to protect the innocent and clarify the message. This message is critical to help a web site succeed.
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The idea of a USP (unique selling proposition) of a site is critical. Some (not all) people will intrinsically understand the advantage of a particular site over the others but the case should be made clearly and immediately.
It must be the first thing that people see when they get to the site. The top of the home page (in the main text area where people actually look) has to emphasize clearly on the home page that the site has something to offer that the others don’t and couldn’t even if they wanted to. All individuals, businesses and yes, web sites, have something very special that (almost) no one else has. By pushing the unfair, insurmountable advantages you have over
the other guys you tilt the board in your favor. The competitors will lose if the visitor/potential client focusses on what you are the best at. And if the competitor makes the mistake of trying to emulate you he will be competing against you on your home turf and get beaten even worse.
If you think you don’t have such a special advantage, think again. No two people are the same and no two sites are the same, mirror sites and duplicate content excluded. What do you have to offer that is different, special, cheaper or better?
Your email list (you are fanatically collecting your visitors’ email addresses, aren’t you?) can be a bit more subtle than your site because people are hopefully going to read more than just one of your emails so you have more than one shot at them. But your emails, or better your autoresponses, should also focus on what you have to offer that the other guys don’t, and can’t.
This is a critical point in business — play to your own strengths. I learned this point last summer from Rich Shefren. Unbelievably I had been focussing on my weaknesses over the years and competing with other guys where they were strong and I was weak — design. I am a programmer, and SEO guy, an Internet Marketer, a great analyst, but not a designer. I have figured out what my strengths are and have been pushing them and it has really made a huge difference in they way that people look at me and the kind of clients I have begun working for.
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