USP or Bust – The 7 Ps

Dan Rudy | February 25, 2017 | Digital Marketing, SEO | No Comments

Does your business have a Unique Selling Proposition (the “7 Ps”)? If not, perhaps that’s why it’s not thriving. Traditionally, a USP was composed of 4 Ps: Product, Price, Place and Promotion. But today, you must also add three newer ones – People, Process and Packaging.

Why does your business need all these Ps? As a thought exercise, compare a company to a fire. If you try to light even dry logs with a match, they will never light. Your company is like the logs and the advertising is like the match. You may need to start by lighting kindling and work your way up to burning logs. Some companies are like green logs. No matter how much inducement you use, the logs will never light. To get the fire roaring, you need to go back to the fundamentals of the USP and the 7 Ps of marketing.

A man named Rosser Reeves invented the term “unique selling proposition” in the first years of the 20^th century. His idea stemmed from his observation that the best-selling products offered plenty of value. The first four are his, the remaining three came along later:

Product: This includes anything you offer, including services, expertise and value. It’s the proverbial “better mousetrap.” To compete well, your product must be preeminent in some way – quality, price, features, design, efficiency, speed, service, etc. You must deal with many factors when deciding your product mix, including expertise, research & development costs, your business model, lead time, production considerations, distribution strategy, branding, packaging and many more. Your marketing strategy should include ways of telling potential customers about the unique characteristics of your product.
Price: After you decide what to offer, you must establish a price list that allows you compete against similar products, make a sufficient profit, sell to a segmented market (for example, by having economy and luxury lines of products) and generate enough demand. Price elasticity must be factored in.
Place: The product and price must be right, but so does the place(s) where you do your selling. It could be on the Internet, at brick-and-mortar stores, or both. You may have to evaluate regional demand, logistics, and many other factors to decide where you will operate and where you will sell.
Promotion: How should you spread the word about your product(s). Consumers must become aware of your presence in the market, and what makes you better or unique in some way. You must decide how much you will spend and where you’ll spend it (in both the geographic and medium senses). Internet advertising is the most cost-effective way to promote your offerings, but you must consider other media, including broadcast TV and radio, cable, and newsprint.
People: Your business needs the best people it can afford in the company’s management structure, including marketing management. Smaller businesses may have a hard time recruiting really good people, but that can be largely circumvented by hiring an excellent marketing company, like Leading Edge Digital.
Process: There are operational and budgetary constraints to consider when you choose what to offer, how to produce it and how to market it. Your marketing process should be planned, documented and followed. Typically, it would include strategies and tactics, as well as a way to measure the ROI on your marketing expenditures and to refine your campaigns to make them more effective. Analytics play a central role in guiding your Internet advertising campaigns.
Packaging: It’s not just the wrapper or box your product comes in. It’s how its presented to the public. External attributes can play a major role in a product’s sales. For Internet sales and/or marketing, you must understand what works and what doesn’t. You need to package your website and your ads to attract (positive) attention and, ultimately, to drive sales. You should also have a strategy for bundling multiple products, or products + services, together. For example, many Internet software and service companies offer a basic item for free and then push upgrades and cross-selling. Search engine optimization should play an important role in how you package your product and its marketing.