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Unique selling proposition and positioning
Yesterday I gave a speech to the Louisville Direct Marketing Association entitled The Marketing Toolkit for Growing Businesses. During the course of it, an interesting question came up about the differences between Unique Selling Proposition and Positioning. Here's how I tried to explain it:
Unique Selling Proposition - Is a term introduced by Rosser Reeves in the early '60s. It's typically defined as a marketing strategy that focuses on a particular attribute of a product or service that's distinctive to a brand and offers a significant benefit to the buyer.
Positioning - Is the art of fitting a product or service to market segments so that the product is meaningfully set apart from the competition.
In my mind, using a Unique Selling Proposition is a tactic that's is part of the overall strategy of positioning a product in a buyer's mind. But this field is so wide open to interpretation that I thought I'd get your opinions on this. Did I get it right? What did I miss?
April 12, 2006 in Marketing communications | Permalink
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Comments
I come at this a little differently than you. I consider a unique selling proposition to be, quite literally, what makes you unique in the marketplace. It is the single feature that you can capitalize on that sets you apart from your competition.
Your positioning comes into play when you determine specifically:
1) who your customers are
2) what they get from you
3) why you are the best source for your product
Positioning is all about crafting your product's image to appeal to your customers, not the other way around. That's where most companies fail. They assume that their own image of their product is shared, and they don't bother to find out what customers think and feel.
Remember that branding is all about the emotion that your product or service evokes. It is the summation of a customer's total experience with it. So if you do your positioning properly, you know what buttons to push to encourage your customers to spend money with you.
Posted by: Christine Pilch | Jun 8, 2006 3:41:33 PM
