All those who have been in the marketing industry will know what USPs or Unique Selling Proposition means. This term was coined by Tosser Reeves in 1950s. Unique Selling Proposition market the core concepts or features of a business with the intention of creating a superior brand in the minds of the consumers.

This has received various levels of reception from different industries and tested in all possible ways. However, today the idea of marketing your USP does not seem to work in all situations. The term “Unique” does not seem to hold water because it means that your real estate consumers use your services for singular reasons but in reality people choose to use your real estate service for primary as well as secondary reasons.

The idea of USPs tries to drive home the core selling features repeatedly in an effort to make your prospective customers choose your real estate services. Marketing ones services in the real estate industry is much more complex than what it might look like through any USP. However, it does not mean that it will not work completely. Today we have plenty of options unfolding right before us and there are more than one format through which we can market our services and more than one channel to reach our customers. Our customers are equally complex and they decide to choose your services or not to choose your services for more than one reason, which ranges from the emotional reasons to practical reasons. To complicate the situation further, each customer is unique irrespective of the fact whether our services are or not.

If you are going to approach your prospective real estate customers with your USP, then you are expecting them to adapt their needs to your message. What if your USP does not match their needs? To avoid such risks today the real estate industry uses diversified selling propositions.

Further Issues

There are a number of other issues relating to the original idea of using USPs as a branding vehicle. The main issue identified here is that such an approach will work only as a long-term concept of building relationships with customers. This may not work to well for the real estate industry because here consumers make their decisions on a number of factors and a many of them are issues of the moment. There is a compelling need to strike the chord at once and you don’t have that kind of time to establish long term relationship with your real estate customers because most of them approach real estate services just a handful of times during their lifetime. Therefore, what we need here is more of a diversified message. However, this should not push you to the risk diluting the overall message. You need to ask few pertinent questions to stay focused and coherent with your message.

You must ask what makes your customers choose your real estate services.

1.Quality and professionalism of your services?
2.Cost of the services that you provide?
3.Top-notch customer service you offer?
4.The impact of your references that directed your customers?
5.Additional features or advantages that come with your services?
6.Some kind of emotional factor?

You will realize that you have more than a single reason from the above list. There are other factors that come into play such as the location, age group, income group, personal preferences etc. All these further diversify the decision-making patterns. This simply indicates how difficult it is to use your Unique Selling Proposition to convince your real estate customers. Many companies have rightly identified these difficulties and that is why you see various types of advertisements from the same real estate agency. By doing this you will not only be able to capture various emotions of the customers but it will also make sure that your services match to a wider group of consumers.

Handle With Care

At the same time, you should set boundaries for your diversified selling propositions so you don’t end up making unrealistic promises. Such efforts will only water down the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns and make people lose confidence in your services.

Tags: Marketing, USPs