This question is one of the four fundamentals of direct marketing.

Obviously, this question vanishes if you are the only supplier of a particular product. And your focus will be on the remaining three basic principles, having a product the customer wants at a price they’ll pay, grabbing attention and the question ‘Why should I buy this?’

However if you are one of many, or even one of two, companies selling the same thing, you need to answer the, fourth, very specific question ‘Why should I buy from you?’
Now imagine your product is something a lot of other people sell, i.e. Office furniture. You know other firms are selling similar products at similar prices, so how can you answer the ‘Why should I buy from you?’ question.

Most companies will answer this question with the following answers…
a) We are very friendly
b) We are the cheapest
c) We deliver fast
d) We supply quality goods.

Each of these has their own merits and different people will always rate these differently. We rate friendliness first; a company who is always happy to help with guidance and advice should sit way above the cheapness of a company. Sometimes the cheapest products are likely to be the poorest quality.
To put it another way, cheapness largely comes at a price. However this is just our opinion. We also like a fast turnaround, but again different people will have different preferences.

The problems set in when you realize there are tens, hundreds maybe even thousands of companies all claiming the same thing. These four ‘unique’ selling points evidently stop being unique when they are all answering with friendly, cheap, fast delivery and family run.

So if you have a product or service where the answers to the question “Why should I buy this from you?” are identical to many other firms, what do you do?

Here’s an example of a different approach. A couple of days ago I was walking through a busy shopping centre and passed a guy selling the big issue. Rather than the usual sales patter of mumbling ‘big issue’ under his breath, mainly due to being fed up with saying it for the 500th time today. I heard this guy take a different tack. He said “The Big issue is that I am Bored, Bored, Bored, of of standing here – I just want to sell a couple of these so I can go and get an cup of tea and have a sit down”. This different approach brought a smile to the faces of the other passers by and it was enough so for me to buy a copy from him.

The answer is quite simple, it’s easy to implement, it doesn’t cost much and it works. Most of the companies that are stuck with the four ‘unique’ selling points will not employ this approach – so there will be no competition worries!

And what is this approach I hear you scream? It’s simple. If you cannot find a unique answer to ‘Why should I buy this from you?’ find a unique way to advertise your product.

We know these sorts of topics don’t make unique selling points. But they do offer a different answer to ‘Why should I buy this from you?’ Now when asked people can say, ‘They are helpful, they do have quick delivery and they have funny questions on their website”

To sum up, if you are not able to offer a unique product or service – use unique advertising. Try to add personality to it, you can make it unique – even if the product isn’t. You could approach your advertising advert with “Best prices, friendliest staff, fastest delivery, yet unique marketing” and (I nearly said ‘Boom’ then, but remembered I am a 44 years old not 14) …Wow, you’re company now has an answer to why should I buy this from you?’

Dean Williams

Dean Williams is a design and marketing blogger working for Print-Print Limited, promoting business and building brands through quality print marketing. If you’re interested in small business promotion then please get in touch hello@print-print.co.uk