Bikky Khosla | 27 Oct, 2009
It is usually seen that we try to do what others are profiting from. Particularly small and medium enterprises (SMEs) try to copy marketing strategies of their competitors instead of preparing strategies based on what their competitors are doing.

In a bid to gain a competitive edge over the competitor, one tries one's hand at too many things which are sometimes not one's forte or area of expertise. This is actually a dangerous approach. With no genuine fallback plan, one stands to lose if the competitor incurs losses due to a faulty marketing approach.

SMEs thus need to be very careful not to fall prey to such desires such as implementing their competitors' strategies solely in their marketing plans. It's a fact that one can't survive on somebody else's food. I sincerely feel that if you are copying someone, you will always remain in the second slot.

I have my reasons to believe that an SME or any other enterprise needs to create its own USP. We need to define our benefits keeping our customers in mind. We need to look into a couple of things about our product or service that can or should be important to our customers.

Secondly, we need to define our competitors' benefits or, in short, know how our competitors are positioned in the market. How are they different from us? What is their USP? Based on these findings, we need to separate ourselves from them and find our own product USP in order to be unique in our position in the market.

Thirdly, an organization needs to identify the market deficiencies. It needs to first find areas in the market where there is a void vis-a-vis the products it is selling or the services it is offering. Once it finds a suitable answer to this, there will be no dearth of customers/ buyers.

In addition, it is very important for an organization to identify and understand its customers' needs. The USP of one's products is not about the company producing it, rather, it is, or should be about its customers and how they (the products) will make them feel or help. We need to concentrate more on the benefits of our products or services and not on the features.

I feel the need of the hour is to differentiate ourselves from rest. Unless we know what we are good at, we will never able to give our customers a good reason to come to us.