Crafting Your USP - It's Not What You Do It's How You Do It

There are very few totally unique business types in this world (and if they start out unique they don't stay that way for very long).That means there are thousands of businesses in the same industry as yours.

So what makes you different from them?Why should people buy from you and not them?

In the past, businesses focused on tangible things such as price, product range and decor to try and make themselves stand out.That is fine as far as it goes, but all of these can be replicated.

If you compete on price there will always be someone who will undercut you.If you compete on range then someone will extend their range or mirror your product range.These are all temporary solutions.

If you want to create a business with longevity you need to be aware that what people really buy is something intangible.Every business creates a feeling or emotion that goes beyond what you do.It is this feeling or emotion that is the true essence of your USP.

To start with you need to look at what human needs you are fulfilling.Abraham Maslow back in 1943 proposed that people have different human needs.At the base level are the physiological needs for survival - food, water and sleep.Without these needs being met, then the body shuts down.

Next come the safety and security needs - personal safety, financial security, health and well-being.These needs take over when the base needs are generally met.

Next come the social needs - a need for belonging, for close friendships and supportive communities.

Next comes self esteem, respect by others, respect for others, confidence and achievement.

Finally comes self-actualisation - the need to maximise your potential.

While Maslow has his detractors, it is still a very useful model to consider.When you are in business you are really in the business of satisfying one or more of these human needs.But it is how you satisfy these needs that makes your business stand apart from others.

Take motels which provide a bed to sleep in.If it were as simple as just providing a bed then all motels would be the same, but motels provide much more.Some provide a safe haven, others provide a family atmosphere.Some are status symbols that show a person has "arrived" and others provide opportunities for personal reflection and growth.

But within these options the motels you are happiest in are the ones that make you feel a certain way.Think about ...you can be staying at the highest quality hotel, but if you are treated like garbage then you won't want to return.If you are treated with value and respect, then you will feel important and want to replicate this feeling.

There have been some studies that have shown that the greatest predictor of whether or not a doctor will be sued is not whether he or she made a mistake, it is how they made the patient and their family feel when they treated them.If they made a mistake but still were caring and made the patient feel valued, then the likelihood of being sued was dramatically less.

What makes a business totally unique is the feeling they give to their consumers.This feeling is intangible and can be broken in an instant if you do not act consistently with the feeling.It can also be the strongest bond on earth that attracts customers to you as if by magic if your business is truly in alignment with this feeling.

It is this feeling that needs to be reflected in all of your marketing, in all of your copywriting, all of your business images and all of your thoughts and actions.When you do this, then customers naturally are attracted to you and your marketing is much more effective.

So how do you put into words the unique feeling you give to people?

First you need to discover what that feeling is.You can do this through a range of means: talking with your favourite clients, listening to your employees when they talk about your business, taking time to reflect or meditate on the peak interactions you have had around your business.You can even have someone interview you to quietly tease out the threads of this feeling and help you put it into words.

Generally you will get snippets of words, fragments of ideas and wisps of concepts.By weaving these wisps together and then testing them with people to gauge their response, you will begin to be able to craft together the right words.

It may take quite a few variations to get the combination of words right, but when you do will you will have a solid "yes" in your heart.

Creating your USP this way is more challenging than having a marketing company go away and "write one for you", but it is a more fulfilling and more successful process.A good marketing company or copywriter will help you through this process so your end marketing material resonates with the true essence of your business.

Once you know how you want to make people feel, then you need to review all of your business processes and actions to ensure you give that experience in everything that you do.

After all ...it is how you do what you do that really makes the most difference in business.

About the Author

Ingrid Cliff is a freelance writer and the Chief Word Wizard of Heart Harmony - a writing services studio that helps put your business into words.

For a free copy of the "7 Secrets of Compelling Copy & Powerful Words" visit her website http://www.heartharmony.com.au "> www.heartharmony.com.au .

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Ways To Have A Successful Online Business

Some people say online business is very difficult, I think that is a load of non sense because I believe anyone can do it.See the thing is most people do not know how to do to it and just think that once they read one book the will be able to make a six figure income.Well this is far from the truth my friends because if you are not a master at marketing online then you will not be successful.You have to increase your working hours at home and make them more efficient.Finding the right coach and the right books to read and get your knowledge is one 75% of the battle.This is how the majority of the gurus succeed in working an online business.

If you already have computer and internet knowledge this will help out a lot.If you do not then it is not the end of the world you are just going to have to pay a little more money to get work done for you.This is really very simple once you know the ins and outs of the business and the rewards are most powerful then any job you can get.The most common problem most people will have when starting is focus.Making money online and working from home is a great adventure when you learn how.It is a lot of fun and you get to work for yourself.

Okay now you know a little bit about the online world but this is probably the best way and the way a lot of people are getting rich through eBay.Become a master affiliate.Now to get good at being an affiliate you are going to have to do a lot of reading.Check out all the affiliate and Google adwords informational products.

Determine the types of skills that you have that will translate well to an online position.Because there is so much competition, you really need to know what your strengths are when you want to work from home online.This requires a lot of discipline because there are many distractions when you work from home online.Make sure you treat your online job with the same respect and dedication that you would any other job.

Knowing how to become self employed can be as easy as knowing where the work at home jobs are found.Some of the best work at home jobs are being done by people who looked and looked until they finally found their own dream job.One huge benefit of work from home online is the global marketplace you will have access to.

It's important to understand that ANY business online can be successful as long as you learn it, practice it, and master it.A big and maybe the most important benefit you'll gain by working from home online is the lifestyle.No matter how you choose to spend your time and money, working from home online will give you all you need to experience your dream of freedom.The first step you are taking today in creating an online income is going to sound very simple to you.

You will read a lot of articles and blogs saying that it is easy to make money online.This is the biggest line of bs I have every heard in my life.It is not easy it is actually pretty freaking hard.I think a lot of people want to make the big bucks online but are not willing to spend the money to learn the business.They just jump in the water with out testing it.See the gurus on the other hand have read 10-50 books about affiliate marketing or starting your own informational product, books on pay per click, etc.
People love to blame it on the one book they bought or the one membership site that join.It is not that at all.

People do not treat it like a brick and mortar business.Normally you would have to go to school to be good which cost anywhere from $15,000-30,000 a year for 4 years.You have to buy a business which cost another $100,000 to 500,000.So right now we are looking at a minimum of $160,000 but people do not want to spend $5,000 or less to learn about the business.

So we are going to go on and I am going to state that most online business fail not because they do not have enough money it is because they knowledge of the subject is poor.So for this reason people should not be mad at the book they bought and return it to get there money back.They should just buy more books and get as much information as possible.

Okay, if you spend at minimum $60,000 for college and the national average for people that graduated college is $47,000 then what would make you think you can only spend $47-$197 and make $1,000,000.This is the best ROI you are going to get because if you do get a couple of books and read them inside and out there is no reason you will not be successful at online business.

About the Author

Melissa is an established online marketer who has learned many tips and techniques about online marketing and she wants to teach you what she knows.

For more information please visit http://www.thesecret2onlinemoney.com

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5 Critical Rules Of Effective Company Website Design

Your companys website needs to incorporate an attractive front-end that captures the interest of your visitors. It should encourage their trust and elevate their perception of your business. But, proper website design also involves creating a robust back-end that can support your companys growth over time. Many website owners approach the development of their sites without giving sufficient attention to navigation, search engine friendliness, and scalability. This article provides you with the five critical rules of effective website design.

Rule 1: Search Engine-Friendly Structure

Some websites dont need to receive traffic from the search engines. Sites such as CNN online and NYPost online enjoy tens of thousands of visitors each day because theyve achieved a "top of notification" comment on the internet. Although, Some web pages need commerce delight in Google, Yahoo and MSN. Accepted online page organization concerns building places so the chief hunt engines can delicately catch, move slowly, and index themselves.

Rule 2: Intuitive Navigation

This present day, people experience more brusk attention spans than forever ahead. Anytime theyre rummaging for admonition on your online page, they want to right to use it soon or theyll simply variation on to look up in other places. Your websites navigation mission should be intuitive and effortless to get hold of. Graphics and buttons should use in any case-exact labels. Links should be fixed and right away well known. This is an until the end of time overlooked rule of proper web page design and it can sabotage an another way prosperous affair.

If youre designing your neighborhood on your own, ask for the recommend of an seasoned website developer. Chicago is one of a few prime cities homestead to a hefty cadre of expert designers who may possibly be thrilled to abstract your web page. Chicago online page blueprint corporations submit to precise proficiency in intuitive navigation.

Rule 3: Sparkling And Simple To Comprehended

A general mistake that millions of interest owners type is to clutter their web pages in addition to multiple fonts and graphics. Whats tougher, they until the end of time cram so much briefing onto their web pages that guests develop into overwhelmed and leave. Your online page should use fonts and graphics to produce agree with and call guests to stay on your district. That instrument each page should be sparkling and simple to read. There should be tons of pallid cubicle that allows visitors eyes to alleviate once they grasp concentration.

Rule 4: Built For Scalability

As your problem grows, your online page necessitate to grow plus it. In the starting off, you may certainly confer one or two products. Ahead prolonged, you may grant dozens of wareses and services, when dealing with scores of blogs to market your organization. Your web page blueprint plans should incorporates room for explosion. Youll crave to agree having a guaranteed window shop cart that is joined to an inventory database. You should plan to go through a content administration procedure that includes blogs.

The key to scalability is arrangements in any case in proposes. A few people outsource this test to a website developer. Chicago, New York, San Antonio and Los Angeles self-praise a couple of developers who can abet recommendation your design efforts to abet your companys outbreak.

Rule 5: Consistent Look And Consider

Steadiness incessantly falls via the explodes when a web page grows. Old designs, fonts, and graphics can be delicately forgotten and show to pages that skill conflicting appearances. Regrettably, this lack of reliability across the pages on your online page can ruin the visitors view of your problem. Your website design should market a consistent glance and trust across every page that is within reach by the public.

Your website is the first intuitive feeling that clientele and leads will suffer of your interest. Prior to they articulation you, theyll begin developing a opinion of your capacity to assure their involves. To that end, your web page arrangement should encourage their consider by deploying an intuitive navigation task and a consistent gander and perceive. It should further be clean and straightforward to understood. Finally, your online page should be look up engine-friendly and be established for scalability. These are the five important rules of successful website plan that can perfectly type or ease your problem.


Concerning the Creator

Aaron Wittersheim is an inventor for Whoast, a leading

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Internet Marketing - 15 Ways To Bring Traffic To Your Website

Every website owner wants to believe that their site is unique but for the most part there are hundreds of sites selling the same products or services with very little uniqueness between them. The key to uniqueness is in your internet marketing campaign. You must not only tell your potential customers what you have to offer thats unique from others, you must also offers something they need to change a personal situation. All of this begins by first getting traffic to your website. Every website achieves this in their own way. Here are 15 ways to bring traffic to your website.

1. Submit to the search engines - There are many big search engines including Google, MSN, Yahoo, Ask, AltaVista, Alexa, and more. You can either submit manually or you can use a paid service. Dont multi submit the same site in a short period of time as this could get your site blocked.

2. Submit to Google Reader - Submit your sites RSS to Google reader and it will quickly be crawled by the Google Blog Search.

3. Use My Yahoo Service - Here you can submit your websites RSS feed on My Yahoo to abet your web page in quickly getting indexed.

4. Submission to web directories - Submit to the top web directories cherish Yahoo Directory, or dmoz. There are variant directories so find each other out.

5. Use pinging services - Use a pinging provision such as ping-o-matic each era you add new satisfied to your neighborhood. This will add you extra visibility and additional links for your online page.

6. RSS Submission - Add your blog or online page to the some RSS submission directories and hunt engines. You may well not be able to submit to all but you should be able to submit to a great deal. Use one of the directories as a device.

7. PPC Programs - Pay per click is a category of promoting that can get serious rejoinder for your region. Whenever you use PPC your location gets scheduled in the sponsored sections on the hunt engines. All of the hunt engines such as MSN, Yahoo, or Google confer this type of advertising.

8. Comments on blogs and forums - Evoking comments on the variegated blogs and websites of others is a nice niche that allows you get a handful entirely unique one way links to your website. These comments crave to be of examine or you can foresee webmasters to almost immediately cancel. Not merely should your comments add assess they should be unique and not junk mail. In assorted lines, dont keep up a correspondence something cherish "nice region." Right comments bode anyways for your district as variant visitors will studied these comments.

9. Piece of writing submission - this is one of the fastest grown issues of bringing business to a web page. It brings in one way links too. Articles are submitted to script banks and anytime others obtain the notice educational they are potential to use the link at the underneath leading to your online page. Goarticles, findarticles, ezinearticles, and articlecity are certainly a few of the locales available.

10. Squidoo and Hubpages - You can go to these places to motivate your hubs and lens. In not up to a half hour you can get this up and pouring.

11. E-mail signature - Welding back to your web page via an piece of email signature. You can use this signature on all your outgoing electronic mail. Its a severe way to bring forth a traffic coast to your region and its fully unengaged.

12. Social Media Advertisement - This is one of the fastest sprouting categories of internet commercial. Places cherish Digg, Facebook, Reddit, My Area, and Newsvine all offer great occasions for your website.

13. Wring Releases - Are free of charge and a acute machine for creating commerce to your region and branding your say as at any rate as what you present. If you consider this has to be compound youd be incorrect. You effortlessly pass through to be able to be in contact apposite duplicate that gets printed.

14. Business Exchange Programs - There are all types of traffic exchange programs on the net. All you taste to do is a instantaneous hunt on one of the search engines and youll go through a lengthy agenda. Its a apposite way to get trade to your district.

15. Yahoo Way out Services - Answerbag and Allexperts are wonder way out means. You can go by the use of the posted queries and whenever you give an solution you get a link. This is a terrific information superhighway sales promotion appliance.
There you suffer it - 15 ways to bring commerce to your web page and deep-seated share of your internet commercial.


Close to the Originator

If youre dependably amazed and crave a adolescent urge in addition to web marketing. Carry make a remark: As a well known information superhighway marketer delight in Australia Ive grew a fully without charge internet sales promotion route for attempting browse cyberspace salesmen which can be came across at The Without charge Web Sales promotion Recommendation. This road was improved as well as the beginner in comment and as the inventor I am all the time contactable to abet. :

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Melting Autoresponders and Shopping Carts into One Effective Marketing Tool

One of the most overlooked e-business tools on the internet today is the ability to integrate your shopping cart checkouts with an autoresponder in order to verify the information that was received at the time of purchase. This very simple and effective method offers two different e-business tools to the internet marketer. First, the built in system not only gives your clientele a sense of professionalism and that they just made a purchase from a reputable website, but it also helps to eliminate the costly mistakes caused by simple human error.

When you are setting up your website or improving an existing website you should be able to find shopping cart systems that come with the autoresponder systems already built into the program, which if course enables you to start preventing human error mistakes and building your professionalism right away.

Messages that let the consumer know that you appreciate their business and perhaps even mention that it generally takes 3 business days to send out their order or something more time specific to your site should be kept as a separate autoresponder message from the receipt of purchase. Build a little confidence with your customer or potential client by using your e-business tools to communicate appreciation. Everyone loves to be appreciated. Melting your shopping cart into an autoresponder message that makes a customer feel as though their business counts is a great way to head off those cancellations that can accompany an immediate receipt of sale. Since autoresponder messages that show the customer access to all of their sale information might encourage a quick rethink of the purchase, which can then lead to a cancellation of the purchase.

If you are going for a super effective e-business tool with your shopping cart and autoresponder integration system, take a brief line or two to remind the consumer why they made their purchase in the first place, and how they can expect to benefit from their purchase and what a smart and excellent decision they made. Dont coat it on too thick, but giving them the feeling that they made a purchase that is not only appreciated by you but also will be appreciated by them is just one more way to confirm the sale and cement the sale simultaneously.

This is also a perfect opportunity to apply your e-business tool to the power of impulse buying and accessory purchasing. If you have additional items that can help enhance their purchase, tell them about it. If you are running a super special that will save them money on something that they might need to enhance their purchase, by all means, let them know. In some cases, it is perfectly acceptable to write out a few lines explaining that you want to thank them for their purchase by offering them a discount on these items that will enhance their purchase or offer them a discount on their next purchase of made within a specific time frame. For example, you could plug in, "As our way of congratulating you on your new purchase, we are offering you a fabulous 30 off of your next purchase when made within the next 48 hours" or "We appreciate your business and we can also reward your decision to join the XYY team by offering any accessory item for a percentage off if purchased within the next six months." You want to leave them with the understanding that there is more that will benefit them and your e-business is happy to accommodate them to the best of your ability.

Use your autoresponder as an e-business tool rather than a method of harassing your customers. Do not send out chronic emails that will simply begin to annoy them and even dissuade them from future business with you. Think about how you feel about getting sales email too regularly. Cut your own autoresponder timing down to less than that and update your messages regularly to avoid duplicated effort.


About the Author

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The Importance of Marketing Mix and the 4 Key Mix Elements

The marketing mix section of your small business marketing plan concentrates on the tactics used to achieve the marketing and business plan. Those tactics can be categorized as the four Ps of marketing: product, price, promotion and placealso known as the distribution channel.

A common analogy used in describing marketing mix is relating the mix in marketing mix as being the ingredients in a recipe: you need to get the quantities of each element right or the result will not be what you need or expect.

Consider the following questions carefully when you build your marketing plan:

When developing your marketing tactics for the product, you must consider the features, advantages and benefits of the product. Define all the characteristics of your product. Define and rank which are most valuable to your target market Why are they valuable to your market Define what is unique about your product and why it has a competitive advantage something that is not easily duplicated. Consider conducting a marketing research survey to test your assumptions. You may be surprised to find out that what you thought was important to your market is not. Make sure you can address all these questions in your marketing plan.

Pricing your product sounds like a straightforward process but the reality is that it is a very complex process. At what stage in the life cycle is the product Product life cycle stages will influence price. Are you the high cost, high value provider Or the low cost, high volume provider Does your product have unique attributes that can not be easily duplicated Does your product have a competitive advantage not easily overcome Are you trying to buy your way into the market Be very careful with this buy-in strategy --it is often very challenging to move a low price up. Is this product a loss leader for your sales of another, more profitable product There are still more questions to consider when developing your price and you must analyze each answer carefully before determining the price for your product. Typically it is a good idea to plot your price attributes on a grid - you can visually see where you are on a grid and better assess if that is the right place to be.

Promotion includes a number of marketing communications tactics. Should you build a direct mail program is your product conducive to a printed description; do you have a good targeted mail list Can you market your product online Are traditional advertising methods print, radio, television the most appropriate What kind of budget do you have Does your product have a strong enough brand If not focus on building a stronger identity and brand. How can public relations efforts help you promote your product Can you successfully participate in trade shows and industry events to sell your product How will you craft your sales story: from sales letters to sales pitches Have you build measurements into each of your promotional vehicles Do you truly understand your market and your audience Recognize that you will need to use more than one of these tactics to launch a successful marketing campaign.

Place is how your product moves to market. What distribution channel will you use Will it be a business-to-business channel or a business-to-consumer channel Will you sell using your own sales staff, or will you outsource sales and use distributors or sales agents Can you sell your product online or must it be offline and in-person Is your market geography wide or narrow What are the implications of the answers to these questions on your marketing mix

When building and creating your marketing plan you must consider these elements of your marketing mix because they will have a significant impact positive if well planned and managed; negative if poorly planned and not managed on your products success or failure.

All small business owners go into business expecting success; not all plan for success. Ensure that your small business enjoys success by developing a strong strategic marketing plan that includes a comprehensive marketing mix.


About the Author

Kris Bovay owns Voice Marketing Inc, the business and marketing services company. Kris has worked for, and with, a range of small, medium and large businesses and has been able to help business owners focus on their challenges and improve their business results. Kris has a masters degree in business administration, with a specialty in marketing, operations, planning and strategy. For more business advice, visit

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