Unique Selling Point

When you mention branding the really inexperience entrepreneur tends to think of their logo, whilst the business person who has read up a little thinks of their USP (unique selling proposition). The overall thinking tends to be that you slap your logo on everything, mention your USP a few times and you have branded your company! If only it was that simple.

Let’s start at the beginning. A logo is a graphic that is associated with your business – think of McDonalds “Golden Arches” or Nikes “swoosh”. That’s the easy bit. When you start to look at your brand it is also the colours and fonts that you use on your company marketing, advertising, documents and web sites. Do they all support your logo?

Your USP is that which sets you aside from your competitors, makes you memorable to your customers and uniquely identifies your company. A simple example would be Dominoes “Get the Door”. They were the first pizza company to deliver pizzas and are still remembered as such. The company’s years of experience and passion for delivering hot and fresh pizzas has earned it numerous awards and the loyalty of millions of pizza lovers around the world and this remains its USP.

Your company’s brand has to be visible within every single thing that your company does or produces. Your brand is the all-encompassing collection of business principles, business strategy, sales, customer relations, appearance, attitude, products, services, advertising, copywriting, Web site design, brochures…in fact your entire company.

Think about the greatest brand in the world for example – Disney. Think Disney and you think characters such as Mickey Mouse, films and Theme Parks. Then they are wholesome, family orientated quality producers. Is that their USP?

When you phone the Walt Disney Company you are greeted by a professional, friendly, helpful person. When you visit one of the Walt Disney World locations, the staff are helpful, the facility is clean, the environment is family-oriented and the accommodations are first class. So you trust them to be like this, you happily take your children to their films and Theme Parks knowing they will be safe and well looked after. If this was not the case, the Disney brand would have faded away many years ago. In fact they work very hard to maintain their image and brand. This is what you need to do.

• When deciding upon your company brand image you need to consider the following:
• What do you want you want you company to be know for?
• What do you want your customers to think of when they think about your company?
• What do you want said about your company?

Give this a good thought and then write down a few sentences to describe your company brand. Now focus your promotional efforts, your USP, your logo, marketing plan and business strategy on this brand. Lastly train all your staff and set up your business processes to reinforce this branding and image and start building your business recognition.

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© Copyright 2010 Biz Guru Ltd

Lee Lister writes as The Biz Guru, for a number of web sites where she provides advice and assistance for the business entrepreneur. She is a published author – her latest book Entrepreneur’s Apprentice can be found on www.startmynewbusiness.com

With over 20 year’s management and business consultancy experience with businesses large and small as well as being a serial entrepreneur, she now helps others set up, develop and market their businesses. If you would like more help and assistance in setting up your new marketing strategy as well as some great marketing services then visit: www.MarketingGuerrillas.com

This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.

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