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The starting point in developing your marketing strategy is to come up with your unique selling proposition (USP). A USP is what makes your product or service stand out from your competitors and is generally the reason why customers will purchase your product or service over those of your competitors.

Some of the common USP's are 'best service', 'lowest price', ‘best value', and ‘most advanced technology'.  The aim is to identify these factors and convey them in the marketplace. To convey your USP to customers, you can consider developing it as a tagline to go with your logo if you have one and printing it on all your marketing communications such as business cards, letter heads, brochures, web site etc. 

Consider Intel's USP; in order to be in line with Cyrix's fast computer chips, Intel launched its 'Intel Inside' campaign which aimed at awarding all manufacturers and dealers of computers an advertising allowance to include the 'Intel inside' symbol. Through the co-branded advertising with its business customers, the 'Intel Inside' logo became very popular among the final consumers. This well created unique selling proposition has increased sales and rewarded Intel with large profits.    

Some other examples of famous taglines are following;

• Canon - Advanced Simplicty
• Nike - Just Do It!
• MasterCard - There are some things money cant buy
• Honda- The Power of Dreams
• Microsoft - Where Do You Want to Go Today ; Your Potential Our Passion
• HSBC - The World's Local Bank
• BMW - The Ultimate Driving Machine

In order to maximise the overall benefit from your USP, ensure that you also communicate it to your staff so that they can understand what it is and why it exists so they can feel a sense of ownership and commitment to it.

Adding Value to your products 

Adding value to your product or service is an important point  to consider when developing a USP. Value adding is when organisations provide their customers a product or service that is over and above the core product / service. The value added component is therefore not necessarily expected by the customer, but when supplied with the purchase provides additional benefit and a potential source of differentiation from competitors.

An example of value adding can be things like extended product warranties, free delivery, or bonus product features.