Hi Everyone,

Last month we talked about how the best selling point of your property can put you ahead of the competition, attract buyers’ attention and help you sell faster and for more.

Actually it all comes down to finding and publicizing your USP.

What is an USP (Unique Selling Proposition or Unique Selling Point) in marketing anyway?

According to Wikipedia: "A unique selling proposition (USP) refers to the unique benefit exhibited by a company, service, product or brand that enables it to stand out from competitors. The unique selling proposition must be a feature that highlights product benefits that are meaningful to consumers."

Here are classic samples of the USPs of some successful companies selling goods and services:

DeBeers: A diamond is forever

FedEx Corporation: When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight

Dropbox: Dropbox keeps your files safe, synced, and easy to share. Bring your photos, docs, and videos anywhere and never lose a file again

Avis: We're number two. We try harder

Southwest Airlines: We are THE low-fare airline

Dollar Shave Club: Everything you need in the bathroom - from razor blades to grooming products - automatically delivered to your door. It doesn't get any simpler than that

You see how clear and concise are their marketing messages to the consumers showing the benefits that the consumers get from these companies and their goods and services?

Good for them, their sales and getting ahead of the competition! Now let's go and see the samples from the real estate business. Hmmm… Not easy to find at all… There are articles online with advice for realtors how to create USPs for their services, but when it comes to property USPs, we are really short on USPs to see or advice on creating ones.

As we aim at the Russian buyers, let's go to one of the popular Russian real estate portals listing commercial properties in Europe and the USA for sale, and look at the situation with the property Unique Selling Points there.

Well, out of 2,5k of properties listed I've looked at the first several pages, and found only ONE headline that says: “"Investment project redevelopment of the apartment building with yield of 10 %". The rest are just "Package of apartments", "Hotel", "Apartment building", "Office building", "Supermarket", "Lot of land", "Shop", "Shopping center", etc.

Can you imagine that - the sellers/realtors are being offered a specific well-defined-top space for their best marketing message and NOBODY uses it to their advantage? WHY???

The advertisers have paid for the listings, but these top spaces for "showing off the best of their properties for sale" are merely wasted!

Well, I can tell you how it had happened actually: the advertisers never thought of any headline (USP) for their listing, didn't provide any along with their description, and the portal guys just picked the type of the property to serve as such, end of the opportunity.

How do I know that? When I receive from my clients a property description in English for translating and publishing in Russian, it almost NEVER includes any headline (although often there are many unnecessary details like the exact size of all the rooms, etc.)

Your property Unique Selling Point is your best marketing tool! Use it and beat your competitors!

To your best business success,

Sincerely,