The 3 Greatest Unique Selling Propositions

When most Christian businesses create a unique selling proposition they seem to use a bunch of crafty words, a slogan, that miss the mark and doesn't pack the same kind of punch as a magnetic marketing message, like a great USP.

I've found three that I think should be in the USP hall of fame if there is such a place. They were chosen because they embrace the basic principle at the foundation of creating compelling marketing messages. A benefit potent enough to move the masses to use your product

John 3:16 "For God So Loved the world he gave his only begotten son so that whosoever believe in him shall not parish but have everlasting life."

This biblical Scripture has become a USP of sorts, for Christians in the past several decades. It targets a specific audience with harnesses a powerful message to embrace salvation. It offers a strong benefit, a solution to one of man's problems and states it in a way that is both compelling and easy to remember.

The Greatest Unique Selling Propositions Of All Time


USP - "The nighttime, coughing, achy, sniffling, stuffy head, fever, so you can rest medicine."

USP- "Wonder Bread builds strong bodies 8 ways

USP- "You get fresh, hot pizza delivered to your door in 30 minutes or less -- or it's free."

Even without the names of the companies you should easily recognize the products and most of you have probably purchased them because of the benefits and features stated in the compelling messages.

How Magnetic Marketing Works


Most and all good USP's are designed to appeal to a narrow segment of a vast market. The gulf between the upscale clients and the bargain seekers is huge and few products can satisfy both groups. The creators of these USP's clearly identify their niche and boldly state how they differ from their competitors.

In other words, their stated mission is to strive to meet their respective market’s expectations, to provide a healthier bread, faster pizza delivery and relief from the common cold. Did they do anything different to their products, not hardly.

What they've done is, identify a problem in the marketplace and draw in customers who want their product to solve their problem. It's pretty simple yet, difficult to do if you don't do some research to get a grip on what your target market needs and expects from your product.

Creating Your Own USP

Your organization won't be able to offer the kind of benefits believers get from having a relationship with Jesus, the son of God. But creating a magnetic marketing message is essential for every Christian business

If you want your company's marketing message to rise above the mosaic of competitive noise you need to evaluate your USP. Make sure that first and foremost that your company is able to deliver on what it promises.

Christian businesses should try to avoid using jargon, instead use everyday language, if they want their message to be easily understood and able to be retained. Finally take your great USP and integrate it into your marketing material. Your letterhead, business cards flyers and everywhere your company name appears it should be there too, compelling, attracting and drawing customers like a picnic draws ants.

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How A Christian Home-based Business Can Attract More Customers

To help your Christian home-based business attract more customers and become welcomed as a marketer instead of viewed as an annoying salesman to your prospects, I've got few things you need to make sure are included in your marketing message. It doesn't matter if you're a selling consulting services, a retailer or handle religious oriented-products. What does matter is that your mission is articulated as part of your unique selling proposition.

It begins with you being clear about why you want to own a Christian company. Then to be successful in your marketplace, you've got to let your customers know up front what to expect from you. Here is an example from the Holy Bible of what I'm trying to describe to you.

Marketing Lessons From The Bible

In Luke 4:18-23 Jesus kicks off his ministry by telling the residents his hometown his mission. To preach the gospel to the poor; to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, and to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. Then he set out to do it and did accomplish just that.

Having that same kind of clarity of mission and delivering on your promise is what it takes to make a home-based business excel in the marketplace. Let's take a look at another more recent example of how a concise USP containing a mission statement can supercharge the sales for a business.

If you ask anyone in the U.S. where to get "Fresh, hot pizza delivered in 30 minutes or less, guaranteed?" You'll here one name 90 percent of the time, Dominoes. The company used a USP to dominate the pizza delivery business, by addressing a need that was truly important to the buyer. Getting their food hot and fast.

Why Christian Home-based Businesses Need A USP

Once you have a clear and concise USP, it'll improve the performance of your marketing message. Let me start by stating that there are two main benefits of developing a USP.

First, it helps your business stand out in the eyes of your current and potential customers or clients.
Second, it helps to focus you and/or your team on fulfilling the promise of the USP.

How To Create A Unique Selling Proposition

A USP is not just a slogan or a cute phrase about your business. It has to provide an answer to to your customers most important question. It has to clearly answer, "Why should I do business with you instead of your competitors?"

It should compel people to do business with you like a light attracts moth on a summer night. It also has to contain the right marketing message. One that draws customers to you, one that can't be ignored.

Use meaningful specifics instead broad generalities. It should narrowly define your specialization in the marketplace, because you'll have a lot of wasted energy if you try to be all things to all people.

If at all possible identify a weakness or a shortcoming in your industry that is annoying consumers the most and fix it. Then you can exploit the fact that your business can deliver a level of service that your competitors can't through your USP.

Another valuable feature of a your USP should be some kind of guarantee if at all possible.These are not the only things, but a few of the important things that can improve your marketing message.

Successful Christian Businesses

When you have the right unique selling proposition for your Christian home-based business, you'll take a quantum leap in income, sales and new customers.

It turned a small corner pizza store in Ypsilanti, Mich into a nationwide chain in with over 7,000 stores, and a wake littered with failed competitors. Since that time, Dominoes owner Tom Monaghan a Christian businessman, cashed out of Domino's in 1999 for a reported $1 billion to focus on religious and philanthropic work.

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How To Find Free Classified Advertising That Works

Image courtsey Viddler/Mgillogly

To find free classified advertising that works to drive traffic to your site, you have to know a few key things about the sites where you place your free ads. First and foremost you have to make sure that the audience you are trying to reach is present in large enough numbers on the site. Another factor that can affect the performance of the ad is the amount of information that you are able to present.

If you think of theses free ad website as a boat, that takes you closer to the fish, then it's easy to see that you need a sturdy reliable boat. More importantly you need to launch your boat where there are fish. Your ad is the bait and you have to go where there are plenty of fish, potential customers, in order to catch them.

Benefits Of Free Advertising

A lot of small and Christian businesses use having little or no money as a reason for not using advertising. So, if you're one of these businesses free advertising can be a Godsend to help you get the word out about your products and or services.

Cash is often a scarce commodity, to Christian |home-based businesses. As a business owner, you can trade your time for money. If you're willing to do some basic research and fact checking to make sure that your free ad is placed on a site where your product can get viewed.

It's always good to know that there are some fish under the boat before you spend all day trying to catch one. If there are only one or two fish in a big pond, you'll have a hard time trying to catch them. Your chances improve when there are lots of fish around.



Guidelines For Free Advertising On The Internet

These tips on finding good free classified advertising sites are a bare bones guideline for everyone who does business on the web and are seeking frugal ways to get a leg up on the competition.

Even if the site turns out to be a place that attracts tire kickers instead of customers, you haven't wasted any money.

If you do get a steady stream of customers from an online classified service, you'll know that purchasing a bigger ad will be money well spent. You can check out the ratings on a few of the sites in "Where To Find Free Advertising For Christian| Small businesses."

5 Features Of Good Classified Ad Site

When you looking for ads on the cheap you still have to be concerned with the quality of the website for your free online ad. You should apply similar metrics, on click through rates and conversions, as you would on any site. Even though you only invested your time, you want to receive fair value for the time you spent setting up the account and placing the advertisement.

You wouldn't go fishing without checking your boat for leaks and free ads need a checklist too. Here's mine. These are some of the things that help me identify quality free advertising sites:

• Multiple Currency Options
• Profiles For Business or Personal
• Newest Ads Displayed on Front Page
• Upgradeable Features
• Site Statistics

In my opinion good sites should provide most if not all of these features.

All Free Classified Ads Are Not Created Equal

Some free classified advertising have restrictions against placing ads containing affiliate links. A few of them won't let you use photos or place a link to your website. Instead you'll have to use a phone number or email address in order for people to contact you.

Sites that only allow you to post ads for short runs under 14 days aren't as desirable as places that offer 30 days or more.

Being resourceful is always a necessity for start-ups and home-based businesses to accomplish their marketing objectives. Using free online advertising can give you access to another source for getting customers or sales.

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Where To Find Free Advertising For Small |Christian Businesses

A hot forum topic in cyberbia these days is where to find free advertising for small|Christian businesses and home-based businesses. I'd like to offer a few solutions to this important question here, instead of in a forum, so that more people can benefit, and know how to connect with advertising exchanges, trade and bartering promotions and other in expensive forms of marketing to rev-up sales.

The information I'll cover can be used by small and Christian businesses, profit and non-profit businesses for services and products. I'll tell you about my experiences with these services and give you an idea of how these free ad services work and whether it's effective to use them.

Classified Ad Sites That Don't Charge

I know with the recent changes on the webs best known free advertising site, Craig's List, it's getting more challenging to use their free classified ads to sell products. Let me start by saying just because the first contact doesn't immediately lead to a sale, you can still mine the traffic from this site for your newsletter and E-zine list with the hopes of getting a sale down the road.

Some free ad sites allow you to post a picture of your items and others don't. What I found frustrating about some of them were character limits smaller than (under than 140 characters) Twitter, and no links to your website.

If you're going to advertise under those constraints you might as well go over to Twitter where you have a more potential customers.

Who Visits Free Ad Sites

I wanted to get products on about 50 sites so I targeted half that many, at first , to get a feel for the market. A few of the places that I used are E-Page classified, Walmart classified, Free adlist. What I quickly discovered is that for the most part many of the site weren't getting very much traffic or page views and their demographics didn't really fit the bill for my ideal customer.
I did a simple chart containing some of the key stats from a couple of the free ad sites, using data supplied on Alexa.

	Craig's List	Walmart. oddle.com	Epage	Freeaddlist. com	Classified ads.com

Traffic rank	24	2,741	40,527	14,530,538	8,513
Page Views per user	16	3.6	3.4	1	7.3
Avg Time on site	12	3.6	4.6	no data	3.5
Demog	25-34 males	35-54 FEMALES	NO DATA	NO DATA	25-44 MALES

I crafted a well designed ad with a huge promise and in the title and as much benefit laden text as the site would allow. Thus far Google analytic hasn't shown a single visitor from these sites, other than Craig's List.

Advertising Exchanges

I tried only one ad exchange listing,Superclix, they let me design my own plain single column black and white ad. They placed 3 single column ads on my site that look terrible and I'm planning to take it down soon. The main reason I've stuck with this advertising exchange site was to generate a backlink to my site from the product until I write an article, on the product, then I'll promptly discontinue my affiliation with the site.

Trade and Barter Techniques

My search for barter advertising was limited to a few SERP's, then I realized that I hadn't seen any barter ads on any of the dozens of sites I visit each week. I was able to find one site U-exchange, that looked promising, because they don't charge an upfront fee to use their bartering network. Some of the other sites I visited wanted several hundred dollars to become a member. I thought that was a little steep considering that the quality of the goods and services that I might receive may not suit my individual taste and I'll be stuck with something I don't care to use.

Ideas That Generate Real Profits

The cost of getting new customers is 6x more than selling to your existing pool of clients. Smart entrepreneurs are better off spending their time to organizing a system with to follow-up with their customers after each sale.

The father of Guerrilla marketing Jay Conrad Levinson put it this way, follow up or fall flat on your face. Every guerrilla knows that you have to maintain a constant contact with your clients, because it takes about 30 exposures to your message before you can make a sale to most people.

Mash that with the fact that the average person gets exposed to nearly 76 offline advertisements a day, and it's easy to understand why every marketer should contact people after the sale through regular follow ups at 30, 60 and 90-day intervals.

Give It Forward Marketing

Asking for referrals is another undervalued strategy that every small, home-based and Christian businesses can use to reach more customers. Giving your clients exceptional service and follow-up support motivates your best customers to tell others about your business. When you give willingly to your customers, they will return the favor. Many times when you contact a referral they have been pre-sold on doing business with you or at least are aware of your company.

One last tip, take that stack of business cards that's been collecting dust over the years and start calling some of those people up and renewing those relationship, by asking them how you can help their business. Give them an update on your email address and/or a cell phone number so they can reciprocate and you can begin regular follow ups with them.

Using Classified Ad Services That Don't Charge


If you place ads for your business on ad sites that don't charge, choose a site that matches the market intel of your ideal customers. There is always a chance that someone might view your ad.

There are techniques that work a lot better than cold calling and beat the return on investment of manually placing free advertising for small|Christian businesses all over cyberspace, make sure you're using them too.

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Christian Businesses Play Vital Roles In Thier Community

A Christian business should be a source of strength in the community it serves. More awareness needs to be focused on the important roles that they play in the community and marketplace. Christian businessmen, standing at the junction of faith and business need to achieve more than just interjecting faith into the workplace, we can show Christian love and servant leadership by taking the lead to resolve social problems.

Many faith-based businesses get lumped together with social entrepreneurs, businesses that channel some or all of their profits into programs to help the homeless, relief organizations in third world countries and other philanthropic causes.

Social Entrepreneurs

The idea of being a socially responsible business is on the upswing, but learning to live right and helping those in need, is a concept that Christian-owned businesses have followed for a long time. A recent report in Business Week estimated the revenues of purpose driven companies has skyrocketed to about $40 billion.

Nutriset, a private company in France was founded by former African aid worker Michel Lescanne, his company has been selling food products to combat hunger and malnutrition since 1986.

Kirsten Tobey, and Kristin Richmond of Revolution Foods, talked to teachers, principals, parents, and students in public schools across the Bay Area, and discovered that they were concerned with better quality meals in schools. So the pair devised a concept to deliver nutritious and healthy lunches.

Christian Businesses That Are Making A Profit And A Difference

Chocolate manufacturer Milton S. Hershey and his wife, Catherine, staunch Christians started the Milton Hershey School in 1909 and donated his fortune for the ''maintenance, support and education'' of poor orphan boys.

Christian businessman Julius Walls Jr. is a minister and CEO of Greystone bakery a $5-million-a year-business that makes gourmet cakes which are served at the some of the finest restaurants in New York city.

Greystone bakery has become a role model for companies that want to mix social action into their business model. The bakery plows its profits into the Greyston Foundation, a non-profit arm that runs programs for needy families in it's surrounding neighborhood, whether or not they work for the bakery.

The foundation is funded through the bakery, grants, other business ventures, and private donations. It provides jobs, offers a computer class for school-age kids, and a clinic for people who are HIV positive.

Your Christian Business Can Make A Difference In Your Community

"The followers of Jesus will begin to demonstrate a new set of horizons for human life to their neighbors and even to their enemies—the horizons of shalom, the horizons of true humanity living in dependence on God. " Andy Crouch-Culture Making

If you want your Christian business to make a difference in your community, follow the lead of these successful businessmen that are changing lives and the way businesses use their profits.

Mohammd Yanus Nobel Peace Prize winner and founder of Garmeen Bank. The bank that pioneered micro-loans.

Bill Strickland's, Manchester Bidwell Corporation has changed the lives of thousands of disadvantaged urban teens and welfare mothers with his world-class arts centers and career training centers.

Jordan Kassalow, the founder of VisionSpring. A foundation that helps women create businesses to sell eye glasses to those who can rarely afford them, but need them the most.

In the 21st Century Christian businesses are poised to grow in size, influence and the ability to make positive impact in local communities. They can't shrink away from the true mission of every Christian, to do good, (Isaiah), and make this world a better place.

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5 Tips On Christian Marketing

Marketing To Christians

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How Christian Businesses Can Leverage Their Marketing Systems For Success

Christian businesses can leverage their marketing system to reach new markets and obtain new business by making sure they put excellence into everything they do. It should be reflected in every aspect of your company, from your humble business card to your level of service.

The Holy Bible gives the same kind of advice to Christians in Colossians 3:23 . It reminds us to do all things as if we were doing it for the Lord. You definitely would put use your best effort for the Lord and your customers deserve that same kind of treatment.

So what I'm saying doesn't come off as a generalized broad statement, let me explain and give you a few pointers that hopefully will prevent you from making marketing mistakes and help your business rise above the noise.

Designing Written Communications For Your Marketing System

An important part of your marketing system involves written communications. It's important that anything you send or give to customers looks professional and conveys a unified image and message. If your system comes with pre-ordered stationary make sure that it projects the right image, or get some that does. This include any of these marketing tools.

Business cards
Flyers
Postcards
E-mails
Snail mail
Letterhead
Sales letters

Case in point. If you have some old faded cards or letterhead don't waste them, use them for scratch paper, but by no means should you give them to customers.

Marketing Using Business Cards

Let's take a look at the things that will make your business cards stand out from the crowd.

If you plan to add wow to your business cards enhance the quality of card stock that you use, use a graphic that's tasteful, but be careful you don't turn the WOW into a Whoa!

The best design strategy is to make your card useful to clients. This can be achieved by including a ticket for a freebie, a coupon or other pertinent information on the flip side of your card.

One highly useful format is the tri-fold card, you can place a menu or list of services on the back. This adds value to your cards and make them worth holding on to.

Designing Postcards For Your Marketing System

Another important part of Christian businesses marketing systems are your postcards. You may call them referral cards, contact cards, but if they are the standard 4X6 inch cards, that you send in the mail, they're considered postcards.

When designed and used properly, they are one of your marketing systems most effective tools. They're ideal to geo-target an area or buy a list of your ideal customers to mail them to.

Tips To Create Effective Postcards For Christian Businesses

Using stamps rather than a postage machine increases the effectiveness of your mailing.

Keep it simple, make it look like a postcard from a friend instead of a commercial advertisement.

State your biggest benefit. Then briefly add a few other advantages or features you provide.

Finish up with a compelling call to action, a reason for prospects to contact you.


Mike at Guerrilla Freelancing has few good tips on his list of 10 guerrilla marketing tactics for designers that you can review to give you a few more ideas on designing your postcards.


If you're still with me then you probably need more information about postcard design than I have room for in the remainder of this post. So, I'll have to continue how Christians can leverage marketing systems, next time I'll start with a few pointers on using graphics on postcard designs.

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Why Christian Businesses Need A Marketing System

If you’ve ever wondered why Christian businesses need a marketing system to build their business stick around and I’ll give you some insight into the pros and cons of them.

Let me interject a biblical principle that I’ll discuss later on. If one prevail against him two shall withstand him and a three fold cord is not quickly broken.

Since everyone reading this may or may not be familiar with marketing systems. Lets start at square one. with what are marketing systems.

(textbook description)
A system create a synergy between your target market, the product, and marketing channels. It unites the interacting elements, the processes, the various steps and strategies, that a business uses consistently to obtain maximum result from every marketing effort.

Simply put, it’s having specific steps that you will follow for each level of your marketing campaigns. This will keep you from feeling like you’re chasing your tail and keep the phone ringing or the clicks, clicking in your business.

Do I Need A System

You need to earn some extra money so you come up with a good idea for a product and you open a Christian home-based business to sell it to the world. Now all that’s missing is a steady stream of customers for your business? You can hire a sales force to knock on doors and do the social marketing or do it yourself. Either way without the benefit of having sales/marketing experience and coordinated steps and processes to follow, you’ll get flattened by the competition and end up with a garage filled with boxes of your product.

How Does A System Work

Let’s rewind the above scenario and you still lack the sales and marketing experience, but you have a marketing system to follow. You become proactive and implement the easy to follow steps for half a dozen of the 20+ inexpensive marketing ideas.

Once you start getting a trickle of customers you add about another half a dozen of the easy and inexpensive marketing ideas to enhance the flow of customers to your business. Once you have a a few satisfied customers under your belt you implement more of the strategies in your sales/marketing system.

You try another of the easy tips and testimonials from your customers start rolling in. Things really begin to pick up then, because you have just tapped into the greatest source of customers for any business, word of mouth, now many of your customers start referring their friends and family and become evangelist for your business.

Proven Ideas To Grow Your Business

Think about it. You can rack your brain to come up with marketing ideas each time your sales cycle slows, that may and may not work or follow the proven ideas that are already working for others.

Now that I’ve given you a couple of reasons why you need a marketing system, I want to give you a few more just in case you’re still unsure that a marketing system will help you grow your Christian business.

You’ll learn:

Keys to getting more out of networking
Ways to market your business using business cards.
Tips on getting website traffic

Whether you’re a seasoned marketer or if you have little or no sales experience you can position your Christian business as a competitive company in any arena by using just a few of the ideas for marketing that are a part of any good marketing system.

Beware Of These Pitfalls

There are a few drawbacks about marketing systems that you should be aware of, most importantly is that you do have to follow the steps to make them work.

If you get stuck and things are still not going as well as you want them some marketing systems don‘t have anyone to assist you in getting on the right track.

Making any business grow requires a time commitment from you to continue doing these steps over and over again.

There is no system that you can set up and leave on automatic pilot and never have to do anything to again. That’s not a system that’s a miracle.

Divine Principles For Business Success

When you align your business with Godly principles you are adding another cord that will strengthen your potential for success. It’s a win-win situation for your customers and yourself.

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Marketing Systems For Christian Businesses 101

If you want a way to improve you Christan business so that you're not always worrying about new customers and slow sales cycles then you need to develop a marketing system. If you're just starting a business and don't know a lot about attracting the ideal customer and identifying your niche, you may need a pre-packaged marketing system to shorten your learning curve.

You've heard it said that there is nothing new under the sun! Well, you can get a winning edge by following in the footsteps of other successful businesses if you had a copy of their pattern.

I know...we are all taught that being a copy cat isn't cool, but when it comes to business that's just not the case. You see it all the time, franchises are merely copies of a proven business model, some companies become successful imitating other peoples products. We call them knock offs.

I'm not suggesting you resort to that kind of cheap trick at all. Christian's can use successful business patterns or concepts that work in any market. The best one's give you a process to follow and actionable steps to implement.

The Bible tells us in Hebrews, "That ye be not slothful, but followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises".

Using the example of others is another sound biblical principle that you can apply to your business to overcome the obstacles every entrepreneur will face.

I've searched the high end solutions and low end stuff and found that Success Stream products are affordable and written in a easy to follow format. More importantly they offer solutions to many of the biggest challenges facing Christian businessmen owners.

Take a look at a few of the things that you'll learn.

Putting Your Business on the Road to Success: The Secret to Writing a Simple Marketing Plan that Works


Turbo Charge Your Marketing Materials in 4 Simple Steps

The advantages of having a marketing systems can be the difference between boom and bust. Small business marketing expert Stacy Karacosta has documented her years of experience solving problems for businesses and created these helpful workbooks, CD's and handouts that lets you follow the same simple process and strategies she uses, to build your own business.

This systematic approach takes the guess work out what to do next, it becomes your roadmap to success. There are plenty of other benefits to following a pattern in your marketing process.

You'll gain more confidence knowing that you're following tried and tested methods.

Running your Christian enterprise will become easier as you implement the best practices that have been streamlined into an orderly arrangement of specific steps.

Each step triggers a positive change in the future of your company.

You'll go from haphazard plans to a predictable destiny.


It doesn't matter whether you're just starting your own business are a seasoned-pro using these concepts will give you:

More time for your core business

Less time worrying about avoiding marketing mistakes

The ability to schedule more free time for yourself.


Stacy put's it this way,

"Every small business needs a simple marketing plan that details where they are today, where they want to go, and how they intend to get there. Because, much like planning a road trip, if you don't know where you want to go and how you're going to get there there's no telling where you might end up! It could be somewhere wonderful, or you could end up broke and broken down in the middle of nowhere"

It's better than owning a small business franchise, because event though you're using the same steps you'll still be able to let your personality shine through to your customers. Getting a marketing system for your Christian business will eliminate the guess work to your sales and marketing solutions.

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