USP0717

How to Write A Million Dollar USP, Upword Your Marketing Message, and then sell, Sell, SELL in RECORD
Time!
How to Write A Million Dollar USP

Find Your USP Marketing Niche Specialty and Superior Positioning in Less Than 95 Minutes, Significantly Upword Your Marketing Message, Craft A Killer Elevator Speech, Signature File and Personal Image, Use Your USP to Align Your Business Image and Establish Operational Coherence, And then sell, Sell, SELL in RECORD time Without Doing Hardly Anything At All!
William Bodri
The USP Marketing Specialist for Small Business
718-539-2811
Top Shape Publishing, LLC
How to Write A Million Dollar USP, Upword Your Marketing Message, and then sell, Sell, SELL in RECORD Time!
Copyright
2004 William Bodri, ISBN 0-9721907-6-7 All Rights Reserved Worldwide in All Media. Top Shape Publishing, LLC 1135 Terminal Way Suite 209 Reno, Nevada 89502 No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, including but not limited to electronic, mechanical, digital copying, printing, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the author. -o0oTop Shape Publishing products have a very distinctive style. They are oriented to the practical and pragmatic and stress the proof of experience over fine sounding theories. They question any blind reference to the standard way of looking at things when traditional explanations are inadequate and ineffective. They stress what works. Top Shape Publishing products are always content heavy and a tremendous bargain of value compared to other options. They are consistently packed with so much useful or hard to find information that one Top Shape product is usually equivalent to buying dozens of similar courses, tapes or titles. Top Shape Publishing titles are widely known for their integrative style of bringing together information from a variety of different fields and welding it into one seamless, coherent whole. They emphasize the most effective broad spectrum, wisdom-based solutions that promise the biggest bang for the buck, and which will simultaneously solve a multitude of related problems rather than just a single microscopic issue of focus. They promote the common theme that you can always change a situation for the better, and teach you how to take current situations and transform them into more auspicious circumstances. Top Shape Publishing products are upbeat, inspirational and motivational in their style, and encourage people to work towards improving themselves and their communities by cultivating a top shape condition in their physical, mental, spiritual, cultural, political and business areas.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents................................................................ 3 What is a USP Unique Selling Proposition? ................. 5 The 10 Essential Characteristics of a Powerful USP ..... 19
1. Your USP Must Scream of a Big Benefit, Overt Benefit, Ultimate Benefit for the Customer........................................................................................................................ 21 2. Your USP Must Set You Up as Being Unique and Dramatically Different From Your Competitors ................................................................................................................... 29 3. Your USP Must be Focused; Dont Try to Appeal to Everyone ............................... 46 4. Relevancy, Relevancy, Relevancy is the Name of the Game ................................... 51 5. Short and Simple is Best, Memorable and Easy to Understand is What Matters...... 52 6. Your USP Must Grab Attention ................................................................................ 57 7. Your USP Must Be Perfumed with Credibility......................................................... 59 8. Your USP Must Be Compelling Enough to Get People to Act ................................. 69 9. Your USP Should Penetrate All Aspects of Your Business...................................... 71 10. If Your USP Isnt Economically Feasible, Then Look Again................................. 75
The USP Workshop: 10 Easy Ways to Create a Million Dollar USP Packed With Emotional Voltage................... 79
METHOD 1: Roy Williams Competitive Comparisons .............................................. 84 METHOD 2: The Gary Halbert Index Card Shuffle ..................................................... 86 METHOD 3: Whats Your Greatest Frustration? ...................................................... 89 METHOD 4: Barney Zicks You Know How ...................................................... 93 METHOD 5: Your Reason for Being ........................................................................ 97 METHOD 6: Doug Halls Dramatic Difference........................................................ 99 METHOD 7: Dan Kennedys Famous Question......................................................... 101 METHOD 8: Ask Your Customers Why They Buy to Uncover Your Hidden USP .. 103 METHOD 9: Rewrite Your USP For the Performance Gap.................................... 108 METHOD 10: Preemptive Marketing ......................................................................... 109 Once Youve Got It, Flaunt It Use It Everywhere.................................................. 112
Superstar Examples of USPs That Knock em Dead ... 126 Branding Yourself With a Personal USP and Crafting an Elevator Speech That Wins You Fame and Clients ..... 154
Upwording Your Marketing Message With USP Punch Power and Using It to Align Your Business ............... 169
What is a USP Unique Selling Proposition?

In 1961, a book was published that, quite literally, revolutionized the marketing industry. Reality in Advertising was so influential it became a college text book for marketing, was translated into twenty-eight languages and its concepts were studied and absorbed by the industrys best and brightest. In that book was a the idea that every business, product and service absolutely MUST have a USP a Unique Selling Proposition. Advertising executive Rosser Reeves, the genius behind Reality in Advertising, maintained that focusing on the USP in every advertising and marketing effort was the key to creating super successful products and services. This wasnt just business school theory; Rosser Reeves knew from real world experience how to market super-successful, i.e. super-profitable, products and services. He created MULTI-MILLION DOLLAR EMPIRES for his clients by taking little known products and services, crafting appealing unique selling propositions for them, and relentlessly focusing on those USPs throughout multiple marketing efforts and advertisements. Those advertising campaigns made their owners filthy, stinking rich. Well get to the nuts and bolts of the precise components of the USP, and how you can use them to start your own empire, in a moment. First lets clarify the marketing landscape thats facing you and your business today. Bear with me; this will make the importance of crafting a USP undeniable. This is the best way I know to impress upon you why you need it its raison dtre and why absolutely, positively, without question if you love your business, you must create a USP for your business, for your products, for your services. Not should. Must. Plus if youre ambitious and currently working for someone else, you should know that you can even create a personal USP for yourself. If you dont do this, consciously or unconsciously, the top rungs of the corporate ladder are going to stay out of reach. A personal USP thats part of a personal brand image for yourself can help you get promoted or hired into a new position. At the very minimum, it will help you build stronger self-esteem. I kid-you-not if you can craft a powerful USP that hits a home run in the mind of your customers, youve found the one thing that can bring you out of obscurity into the spotlight of fame. Its pure marketing gold. 5
A good USP can take an unknown nobody and miraculously turn him into a famous somebody. Its the difference that can take a product or service from good to a marketing great. A great USP will not make the cash register ring, but it will make that sucker sing. Without a doubt, it is one of the core marketing vehicles through which great financial fortunes are made. Together we are going to craft a powerful USP for your business that can do all those things and take your financial fortunes to the highest possible levels. Were going to do that by increasing sales. Were going to increase your sales by crafting a compelling, memorable introduction for your product or service that will having everyone aching to try you. Unlike other books on USP, were even going to go into highly guarded copywriting and marketing tricks you an use to make sure your message reflects your USP and is as effective as possible with your targeted audience. As it now stands, the problem that you are probably facing which is one of the reasons you need to craft a USP unique selling proposition is fierce competition for your product or services and not being heard. Competition is stealing away your sales, so you need every advantage to win back customers and gain new ones. Every business also faces the problem of how to get noticed how to get your marketing message in front of potential customers, how to get them to listen to you, believe you, and then act on your offers. Thats the problem, of course, if you have a marketing message to give. Every single day your average prospect is inundated with more than 3,000 commercial messages and thousands of choices. Did you know that the average supermarket alone is stocked with over 40,000 brand items on the shelves? Do you remember the days when we had 60-second TV commercials, and then 30second commercials and now 15-second commercials that quadruple the number of messages we see in one minute? Because we are swamped with so many messages to buy this or do that, we tune out most of them by developing preferences. Want proof? The average family satisfies 80-85% of its needs from about 150 products (SKUs), so it ignores 39,850 of the other items in that supermarket!
Your prospects are literally bombarded with marketing messages that ask them to buy this or that, and your message is just another one among the chatter. So why should potential customers listen to you? How are you going to attract them? Human minds are lazy, so they have developed a way they ignore things. To deal with this onslaught, our minds have developed a self-defense mechanism wherein we automatically filter out most of these propositions that dont have anything to do with us. We edit out the sounds and messages so that they dont affect our conscious mind. If we didnt do this wed probably go crazy. Weve got a special section in our brain called the reticular activating system that lets us ignore what isnt of particular interest or importance to us amongst this chatter. Thats how we can focus in or tune in on just those things that interest us. This wonderful ability to be selective saves our sanity, but unfortunately that ability to tune out what isnt relevant or important doesnt make your marketing job easier. It just makes it harder In fact, advertising research studies have shown that 80% of ads are forgotten in less than 24 hours! On top of that, most ads that are even remembered influence no more than 20% of the people who do remember them influence mind you, not convince. That means that for every 1,000 people who see your message only 200 will remember it tomorrow, and of those only 20 people will be influenced by it! The same advertising studies show that messages that communicate relevant benefits are remembered and influenced at dramatically increased rates. Due to this information overload, your marketing prospects will tend to ignore most of your marketing messages which means you are wasting the majority of your advertising dollars and efforts -- unless those messages somehow stand out and strike people as being particularly interesting, exciting, important, relevant, appealing or compelling. Thats what we want to do we want to motivate or compel new sales. The job of any copywriter, marketing or advertising guru you might use is to craft a memorable and compelling message that can stand out and be heard amidst
this fray. But for you to be heard, you must create a marketing message with very special characteristics. Thats easier said than done. Not just that, but theres another factor to consider along these lines: the human mind likes simplicity. The human mind has a tendency to be attracted to simple ideas rather than complicated ones. Your marketing message should be reduced to its utmost simplicity to appeal to people, and yet still be presented in an appealing way that grabs a prospects interest and motivates them to buy. Simplicity is usually best, but at the same time you want a simple message that is compelling and motivating and persuades people to buy from you. So what have we learned so far? That crafting a marketing message with simple but appealing characteristics is crucial to your business success. This will be important to crafting your USP. Rosser Reeves said that consumers will usually remember only one strong claim or concept from any advertisement you show them. Therefore you must make sure you promote the right claim, which is the one that will bring the greatest success to your business. You also need to build your advertising based on the foundation of an easily understood, common perspective. If you try to be too witty or entertaining or high brow, some people wont understand your claim. You want to promote your product or service from an angle thats universally appealing. Customers want to believe that your product will solve their problems and deliver benefits to them. This hope is what causes you to stand out and become interesting in the first place, but you have to say this in a simple, believable, convincing way that appeals to a customers interests. Nothing beats repetition, so you must also repeat your simple marketing message over and over again until its been deeply impressed into the mind of the consumer. Basically, thats how you cut through marketing chatter. You must repeat your message continuously, and then wait patiently for your prospect to be in the market for your service or product winning your customers heart long before they need your product or service. If youve ever studied sales before, you might have been told that it takes up to eight or nine rejections before a customer will be convinced to buy from you, so it
can take just as many repetitions (if not more) for your marketing message to penetrate into someones subconscious. One more thing To cut through the chatter of thousands of competing sales advertisements entails winning a special permanent place in the customers mind. You have to stand for something that prospects can reduce to a simple concept and store somewhere in their minds corner, saying, Thats you. You will bring me these benefits. You will solve these problems for me without these frustrations. Customers dont want to remember a thousand things about you. They just want to remember something simple and important what you will do for them. Something problem solving, something benefit producing, something relevant to their interests. You must therefore advertise some benefits or characteristics that will peg you in their top-of-the-mind awareness. Theres yet a final marketing hurdle to take note of, which is that our minds are sticky and hate to change. People hate to change habits, and they hate to change their opinions. Human beings dont like to do a lot of mental calculations or comparisons or reality checks. When we are beset with a bunch of competing messages, we therefore tend to focus only on the simple ones that we can believe in. What did you say? A U.S. President would risk his office by sexually fooling around in the Oval Office with a overweight young female intern during the middle of the day? I dont believe it. See what I mean? That was the response for well over 70% of Americans until all the facts came out. People dont want to believe in something too complicated, out of the ordinary or against expectations. When a message is credible we tend to believe it, and once we believe in something we tend to lock into those beliefs because we just hate expending energy to change opinions. We also dont like to admit we were wrong. Since it takes too much energy to change beliefs, marketingwise its best to position yourself in the customers mind as being first or foremost for some special product or service characteristic. To drive sales, you should position yourself by promising the biggest benefit they most want and desire. When you focus your product, service or business around the ultimate benefit you will deliver to the customer, youll have crafted a simple but memorable message.
Brain science teaches us that first impressions easily become permanent beliefs in our minds, and once a permanent belief or conviction is formed, it becomes very difficult to change it. Human beings tend to hold onto mental beliefs with a furious grip until theyre actually forced into changing them. In your advertising, you must therefore try to get into your customers mind as being first and foremost. You want to become the biggest or best at something. You want to become known as number one for providing some benefit they desire. This is a key marketing principle. If you are seeking to dominate a market in a competitive environment, one of the best things you can do is to be first in your customers mind. Thats the easiest way to get incorporated into someones memory as the mind can remember some other categories after first and other, but those categories quickly get fuzzy. If you can claim a customers appropriate mental territory first for some special feature, promise or benefit before everyone else claims it, then in their minds you can own that marketing promise. You can be the person, the product or the business that satisfies that particular claim after which youll have landed yourself in marketing heaven. All you have to then do is live up to your reputation and maintain your products quality or your services as you promised -- so that this belief manifests in fact and is continually supported. Just imagine what would have happened if M&M candies melted in your hand! Your reputation is your word of mouth marketing effort that can guarantee or break your business success. Live up to your reputation and youll quickly own a secure spot in a customers mind that will be hard to displace. Now comes the part about tactics and strategy. To become first and foremost in your customers mind you must paint a simple, succinct, memorable, consistent and appealing picture of who you are, what you stand for, and what youre going to do thats attractive and compelling to them. You must make an outrageously exciting promise of service or benefit to the customer. Furthermore, you must make it abundantly clear how you are unique and dramatically different from everyone else in delivering on those overt benefits, and everything you say must be entirely believable. Thats the key to marketing and the background information you must know to understand the USP.
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You must boldly proclaim any benefits you produce for customers so that they hear your promises loud and clear. You want your message to cut through all the other marketing chatter theyre hearing, so you want it to trumpet itself like a foghorn in the mist. You must also show you are distinctly different from your competitors. You must monopolize a piece of a prospects mental landscape where youre perceived as being different from everyone else. You must be perceived as being unique in some special way. You must also phrase your promises of customer benefits or service in a highly attractive and appealing way that excites your customers and arouses their interest. It must be said in such a way thats appealing and there must be a credible guarantee that you will deliver on your promises. Your message will interest them when it addresses their needs, their wants, their frustrations and when it shouts out the very benefits they want delivered. Your promises will please them when its exactly what they want to hear but your claims must be believable, otherwise customers will dismiss everything you have to say. That compelling marketing message, which dramatically sets you apart from your competitors and boldly broadcasts the unique benefits your product or service provides, is your USP. Its your unique selling proposition. Simply put, a USP is a (1) unique claim or promise of benefits about your product or service, (2) thats distinctly different from your competitors, and (3) is so strong and attractive that it motivates them to do business with you rather than all the other alternatives available. Basically, your USP is a distinct, compelling difference that separates you from all your competitors and answers the question, Why should I do business with you rather than your competitors or rather than doing nothing at all? Rosser Reeves, who originally formulated the concept of the USP when the philosophical basis behind advertising wasnt as clearly defined as it is today, said that an advertising USP has three distinct parts: 1. Each advertisement must make a proposition to the consumer. Not just words, not just product puffery, not just show-window advertising. Each advertisement must say to each reader: Buy this product, and you will get this specific benefit.
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2. The proposition must be one that the competitor either cannot, or does not offer. It must be uniqueeither a uniqueness of the brand or a claim not otherwise made in that particular field of advertising. 3. The proposition must be so strong that it can move the mass millions, i.e. pull over new customers to your product. Does this idea of a USP now make sense? Basically the USP telegraphs loud and clear -- to everyone who makes contact with it -- whatever it is that your product or service offers and how it stands apart from the competition. If you can artfully construct an attractive USP and then plaster it everywhere in your advertising, marketing, office premises and company culture, and if you slowly, diligently and consistently keep hammering away at presenting your USP over and over again to the consumers mind, in time you can gain the majority of market-share for your product or service. It takes patience, but its been done time and time again. Like planting a seed, you cannot expect immediate results but must wait while it germinates and then bursts through the soil with all its wondrous results. When you continually pound away at broadcasting a powerful USP over and over again to the public, experience shows that this approach can eventually give you superiority in your marketplace. You just have to craft an effective USP and then keep promoting it every chance you get. By relying just on the practice of building powerful USPs and then advertising them everywhere until they penetrate deep into the psyche of the consumer, the Bates agency that employed Rosser Reeves became the fifth largest advertising agency in the world! Thats how powerful this concept is. Once again, a USP or unique selling proposition is basically offering (1) a big benefit or promise to the customer (2) thats different from the competitors and (3) which can motivate the customer into action. The USP is like a simplified but powerful 30-second elevator speech that you use to win business. You are probably familiar with a few of the famous USPs that Rosser Reeves created, and if you recognize any of these famous USPs, thats personal proof of the incredible power of this marketing concept: M&M candies melt in your mouth, not in your hands.
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Anacin, the pain reliever that doctors recommend most. Wonder Bread helps build bodies in eight ways. How do you spell relief? R-O-L-A-I-D-S. Certs breath mints, with a magic drop of retsyn. Colgate cleans your breath while it cleans your teeth. Only Viceroy gives you 20,000 filter traps in every filter.
These simple slogans are actually powerful USPs that distinctly differentiate each of these products from its competitors. Each promises a specific benefit but theres something else of importance, too. Each of these USPs is constructed in such a way that the information is a bit exciting and actually self-validating. In other words, there is natural credibility to the claims. Each of these brands M&M candies, Anacin, Certs, Colgate, etc. grew into international juggernauts because of the power of their USPs. They didnt grow into international giants because they were any better than their rivals, but because their marketing and advertising was smarter. The ability to grow into an global octopus is the dream of many entrepreneurs and executives, so in crafting your USP thats exactly what were going to help you do. Copywriting, marketing professionals and advertising execs will be the first ones to point out the importance of developing your USP, which is not an outdated marketing idea. Its one of the first things they check on when you come to them for marketing consulting. Whats your product all about, they ask? What benefits does it offer? How do you differ from your competition? What are the reasons customers believe your claims? Answer those questions and youve got the basis of an effective USP. Fashioning a powerful USP is common practice for the worlds most successful marketers, so lots of businesses have them but many dont. When thats the case for your service, product or region, it gives you an incredible opportunity. All businesses are known for certain things, so the big worry is how to make your USP uniquely different from your competitors but in a highly attractive way. In the best possible case, your competitors dont even know what a USP is and you can be the first to claim the most appealing and profitable segment of the market. Human minds not only like simple, believable, appealing and interesting messages but people want to be able to distinguish one message from another.
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They want to be able to simply distinguish how one competitor is different from another and its your job to invent the most profitable USP claim for doing so. History shows that whoever can craft a compelling USP and then work with that USP by weaving it into all their marketing and sales communications and interactions even into their companys structure and corporate culture that firm can slowly but surely become the most dominant player in its market. As copywriter Joe Robson said, Your USP is without any doubt whatsoever the most valuable business asset you will ever possess! If you need proof, consider the story behind the USPs of the following two contemporary giants: Federal Express and Dominos Pizza. When Fred Smith founded Federal Express, there was no such thing as an economical and reliable airfreight package delivery service that could consistently deliver packages overnight. Even the idea of this type of service, and its rudimentary business design, was so radical that a university professor who saw Freds business plan gave it low marks. He wrote on the thesis, The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a C, the idea must be feasible. FedEx grew into the international, multibillion dollar giant it is today because of both its business design and a simple USP that it trumpeted over and over again in all its initial advertising: When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight. Lets say it again: When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight. Anyone can readily recognize that this USP promises the benefit of overnight delivery for customers. But the real genius of this USP escapes most people, which is the fact that it subtly offers a real credibility for that promise through the words, positively, absolutely. Without those words, Federal Expresss service promise would lose a great degree of its punch and believability. Those two words telegraph that this company means what it says it means business you WILL get your package delivered tomorrow. Dominos Pizza, which also grew into a super successful national franchise -despite having literally thousands of local competitors all across the country largely succeeded because of a simple business model and a simple USP that differentiated it from all its competitors.
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Dominos promised the pizza customer an experience that was rare in the home delivery marketplace. Its USP was Hot, fresh pizza delivered in 30 minutes or less, guaranteed. Lets say that one again, too: Hot, fresh pizza delivered in 30 minutes or less, guaranteed. Before Dominos Pizza, your chances of receiving a fresh and hot pizza through home delivery were slim to none since it usually arrived cold, it arrived late, and you often found your pizza stuck to the top of a soggy box. Definitely there was room for better pizza service. Any local pizza guy who did this would soon clean up on the market. Dominos knew this so they came out with their famous USP claim, and they slowly went national by sticking to their word. If you didnt get your hot pizza on time, you didnt pay! The company organized itself for fast delivery. Because most people already knew what pizza tasted like, Dominos didnt promise a tasty pizza or lots of tomato sauce or extra toppings. Dominos stuck to impressing you with one major promise fast, reliable delivery of a hot pizza. What was the believability factor to get over the pizza credibility hump? To make its USP believable and entice customers to give them a try, Dominos offered a guarantee. They promised that if your pizza didnt arrive at your door within 30 minutes, youd get it for free. That one factor differentiated it from everyone else and enabled it to cream all its local competitors. Speaking of Pizza, Little Caesar took the route of differentiating itself from Dominos by promising youd get two pizzas for the price of one. It used to advertise Pizza, Pizza to get the message across. Papa Johns Pizza took on Dominos and Pizza hut by touting its unique, notfrom-concentrate tomato sauce: Better ingredients. Better pizza. Papa Johns. Think about it for a second he took the same product as his competitors and simply promised better ingredients. Sales took off for Papa Johns! The famous Prego spaghetti sauce brand challenged and beat Ragu spaghetti sauce by focusing on one word in its USP thick. Heres the point you need a USP for your products or services and you might even need one for yourself if youre a professional within a large firm.
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People want a simple way to remember you as a whole package, which is your USP or branding statement. People can indeed create USPs for themselves as a personal branding statement, and Ill teach you how to come up with a personal USP or elevator speech that helps you do this. A personal USP the brand thats you -- can definitely help you get promoted or hired. This book will tell you how to create a powerful USP that can lead to new horizons in sales if you consistently apply it everywhere. If you align your company with an effective USP and appropriately upword your marketing message as well, the right sort of USP can perform miracles. In fact, your whole business and all your operations can be even be built around a USP once youve discovered whats the best one for your market. It can become the core reason for your very existence. You as a person, or your firm as an entity, can become the embodiment of your USP, and everything you do can be viewed as an extension of your service promise so that you get better and better at delivering benefits to customers. For instance, Domino pizza found what people wanted, turned that into a USP of promising fast delivery in 30 minutes or less, and then created a business structure that could make good on that promise. The structure of its company focused around the core of delivering on that USP. In taking its business nationwide, once it had its USP Dominos looked at every operation it performed. Just as with McDonalds, efficiency experts optimized each and every one so that Dominos could more easily meet its USP claims as time went on. That push for greater efficiency is the continual march for higher productivity and business progress that every firm faces. With that progress came greater sales and a stronger national reputation for meeting its claims that reinforced the power of that USP to attract sales for its pizza business. The same story can be told for Federal Express. FedEx so organized its business structure, strategies, hiring, training, uniforms, corporate communications and facilities around the single promise of making overnight deliveries without fail. The prices they charged, service they offered, their management oversight, package tracking, and operations efficiency were all focused on delivering that USP which they had determined was the most attractive one for the package delivery market. Delivering on that USP is what Federal Express is devoted to, and so FedEx is organized around that promised benefit. You need to do this for your firm as well.
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After we craft your USP you must advertise it everywhere. You need to put it on your business cards, on your brochures, on your website, in your advertising, everywhere. This is called upwording your marketing message. In upwording your marketing message, youre elevating all your marketing communications with the power of your USP to bring in more sales and customers. You are impressing all your marketing documents with the very essence of what will increase sales and grow your business. You are upgrading all your marketing materials by imbedding them with the unique selling proposition that will cause them to increase the number of prospects who come to you, increase the conversion rate of those prospects to customers, and get them to come back time and again to re-experience what you have to offer. You can and should go even further beyond simply upwording your sales literature and marketing documents. In creating company alignment with your USP and image coherence, you make sure your company uniforms, delivery trucks, dcor, the way people answer the phone, customer service, and packaging all support your USP. Your USP offers a reason to buy, but that confluence of many different elements that create an overall perception of your business is sometimes called the UMP, or unique marketing perception. When you redesign or reengineer the core of your business around your USP -so that over time you can deliver on your promised benefits with greater excellence and perfection and renown I call that type of USP-based remodeling business alignment. Those are the ways to make your firm even more noticeable and promote its USP delivery excellence to higher and higher heights. Your USP advertises what you do better than everybody else whether its about your products quality or service or packaging or guarantee or whatever. Finding it, differentiating yourself by it and promoting it is the key to any successful advertising campaign. Discovering your USP can be your true golden passport to success because it allows you to build upon your strengths, which is the surest strategy to the top. Consider this.
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Those superstars in all fields such sports, arts, music, politics, business who become well known to the public are most often remembered for what they are great at rather than for their deficiencies. To become great, the best strategy is to build on your strengths. A business most often goes from good to great not necessarily by fixing whats wrong, but by elevating what it is good at into something great. Yes, you have to fix whats wrong, but you capture the hearts and minds of the customer by satisfying their most ardent desires while your other characteristics are at least of passing grade. Your USP tells customers what you excel at, so its giving you that basis you can use to grow your business into greatness. Marketing experts will charge you hundreds or even thousands of dollars to help you create a USP, but only have one or two ways to do so. Nowhere else, except in this very book, will you find 10 different ways to create your own multi-million dollar, killer USP that will enable you to sell and sell and grow you business into a behemoth. Not only that, but throughout this workbook youll even be taught secret copywriting and marketing techniques I use to help clients impress upon others the value of their USPs to win business. These little known techniques are themselves worth thousands of dollars far more than the price of the book again. Once you get this book and have worked through the exercises, you will have developed the perfect means to win business from your competitors, put a stop to all the negotiations with clients about your prices, and build a brand image that can rocket you to stardom. Its all about building a USP. Welcome aboard.
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The 10 Essential Characteristics of a Powerful USP

Lets start with a summary. Rosser Reeves stated that a unique selling proposition has three characteristics: It promises a big benefit to the consumer. It boldly broadcasts: Buy this product and you will get this specific benefit. The proposition is unique or dramatically different than what competitors are claiming or offering. It must be one that the competitor either cannot, or does not offer. The proposition must be so strong, so appealing, so exciting, so motivating that it can pull over new customers to your product.
Ever since Rosser Reeves first defined the concept of the USP in the late 60s, the succeeding generations of marketing and advertising greats have honed, refined and embellished the concept to polish it and increase its usefulness. Rosser Reeves original concept has therefore widened in scope over time. Having been used in more products and services than anyone can possibly remember, most people now generally recognize that a great USP has the following list of ten very important characteristics: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. It Boldly Telegraphs the Promise of Big Benefits for the Customer It Claims You are Unique and Dramatically Different Being Focused, It Doesnt Try to Appeal to Everyone It Addresses the Important, Relevant Customer Concerns It is Short and Simple, Concise, Memorable and Easy to Communicate Interesting or Exciting, it Grabs Attention It has the Seal of Credibility since its Believability is Self-Evident Persuasive, Motivating and Compelling, It Prompts Customers to Act It Penetrates All Aspects of Your Business, Which Totally Support It It Must be Economically Feasible so that it can Support a Business
Before we craft a powerful USP for your business, we need to understand each of these characteristics in detail. Thats not all. Theres another important part about turning your USP into a million dollars.
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There are special ways, techniques or methods you must use to support it in your business. Even aside from your USP, Im going to teach you a variety of special marketing tactics, strategies and tips I call the million dollar toolbox. This knowledge is the basis of most marketing consulting practices and Im going to give you as many of them as possible so that you get much more than your moneys worth. Crafting your USP should be only part of the plan for growing your business, but definitely the first step. Pay particular attention to all the copywriting and marketing hints I reveal concerned with each characteristic of the USP and when youve got your USP, start implementing those strategies and tactics into your business. Thats how youll see double and even triple your sales in less than a years time. Thats how youll so outclass your competitors that your success will be like a hot air balloon that effortlessly floats you higher and higher into the skies leaving all your competitors behind. With that type of elevation, youll never have to talk in aggressive terms again like steam rollering your competition or slaughtering your competitors. Youll so outclass them with these techniques that your business superiority will be a natural event that lets you view everyone else with the peaceful mind of generosity. Its all about rendering service delivering a big promise of benefits -- and letting others know about it in the most effective way possible. So lets get to these ten major characteristics of the Rosser Reeves USP.
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1. Your USP Must Scream of a Big Benefit, Overt Benefit, Ultimate Benefit for the Customer
I received a letter in the mail from Geico Insurance today. Both the envelope and the letter were plastered with the sentence, Buy Direct From GEICO over the Phone and you could save 15% or more on car insurance. Is that interesting or not? Is it motivating? Is it promising me a big benefit for picking up the phone? You bet it does! Big, bold, overt benefits are the cornerstone of a good USP. All USPs promise a big benefit to the customer, and they are bold about those claims. They advertise a big promise or overriding benefit. They promise something extremely attractive and appealing that the customer can hope to get from you. In short, successful USPs loudly trumpet, Buy this and you will get this benefit. You dont really have a USP unless youre advertising a benefit, so dont be shy about making benefit claims. Thats what business is about. Its about servicing customers. Its about satisfying their desires. What you must do is find the biggest and most appealing desire you can satisfy and fulfill it through your USP claims. Without a big promise in your USP, you are dead. Furthermore, since you need to be brash and bold to break through the marketing clutter out there, your USP which is the definitive advertisement for your business, product or service -- is no place to be shy. You have to word your promised benefits in an captivating, riveting, appealing and overt way to excite customers and get them interested in dealing with you. To attract the most customers, the best thing you can do is to take your biggest, most attractive and most compelling benefit and center it as the core of your USP. Think about what Dr. Jeffrey Lant calls the ULTIMATE BENEFIT that you offer through your business, product or service. The old adage in marketing goes, Fire your biggest gun first! so it should be the most unique and profitable advantage that your customers can get from you, and it should directly address the typical customers perennial question, Whats in it for me?
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This promised advantage must really be important because if you focus on something that doesnt matter to customers, it just wont have enough oomph to motivate them to buy. Furthermore, you should formulate a superior promise that beats your competition a stronger promise that evokes more desire, a wider promise that brings in more customers, or a more believable promise that causes even skeptics to buy. People buy from you or your type of service or business because they are looking for the benefits you might offer that are different from what others offer. Thats why 24 hour service, a discounted price, cleaner teeth, fresher breath, softer cloths, longer lasting product, a guarantee can entice people to come to you rather than go to your competition. You must therefore create a compelling USP telling them exactly what they are getting which should be exactly what they want. You should promise the most important thing possible in motivating the purchase decision. Customers are overwhelmed with marketing messages today, so you have to create a message that answers the question, Whats in it for them? when they are facing the purchase decision for your type of product or service. What can you promise them that will alleviate their biggest fears and frustrations for dealing with your type of business. Find that promise of benefits. That promise of benefits is so important that some people dont like the term unique selling proposition. Instead, they flip it around and call it the Unique Buying Advantage or UBA, which is the advantage the consumer, buyer, client or prospect gets when they buy your product or service. Most often the benefits you promise should be something that solves their problems and takes away their pain or frustrations for dealing with your type of product or service. Coming up with the major benefit to trumpet is a difficult task that will take some brainstorming and creativity, but well introduce ten ways to do so. The first thing now is to recognize that promise -- BIG ATTRACTIVE PROMISE is the core of your USP. You really want your USP to tap into your prospects emotional desires because emotions offer the potential of a powerful connecting experience. Emotions can help you connect and bond with potential customers. They can help you gain rapport, and rapport is the first stage to any selling process. When you can paint
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a picture with the words of your USP, thats the power of being able to connect with emotions. Victor Schwab, who wrote How to Write a Good Advertisement, found that people want various things in life which can serve as powerful motivators for ads and USPs: Health Time Money Popularity Improved appearance Security in Old Age Praise Comfort Leisure Proof of Accomplishment Status or Social Advancement Self-Confidence Increased Enjoyment
Those are things people want to gain (time, money, energy, etc.), but he also he found that people want to save money, time, worry, doubt, embarrassment, work, discomfort, risks. Working in the area of psychology and influence, Professor Steven Reiss from Ohio State University, found through his research that there are 16 basic desires that motivate our actions and which can become the core of an attractive USP: Power - desire to influence others and impose ones will Independence - desire for self-reliance and to feel free Curiosity - desire for knowledge, to learn for learnings sake Acceptance - desire for inclusion Order - desire for organization Saving - desire for collecting things Honor - desire to be loyal to one's parents, heritage, ethnic group, culture, moral code, religion, city, nation, etc. Idealism - desire for social justice or fairness Social Contact - desire for companionship, to spend time with others Family - desire to raise and love your own children Status - desire for prestige and social standing Vengeance - desire to get even Romance - desire for sex and beauty Eating - desire to consume food Physical Activity - desire to exercise and movement Tranquility - desire for mental peace and emotional calm 23
We can go into lists and list of such things but the important point is to recognize what your customers want. Translated into practical terms, all these factors add up to say that when you craft USPs and advertisements that tap into basic human emotional desires, and say things like you get, you earn, you keep, youll find, youll make, youll achieve and so forth, you can create powerfully enticing unique selling propositions. By the way always try to use those words in your marketing copy! When you can unearth a unique appealing benefit for your product or service that others cannot match, then that promised benefit should become the core of your marketing and advertising campaigns. Itll be the core of your USP. How do you come up with the promise you should promote? Well go through 10 ways to come up with a killer USP promise, but here are some initial joggers: Why you were motivated to start your business in the first place what problem did you set out to address with your business? Are you famous with your customers for an special ability? Finish this sentence, I am most proud of our ability to What would your most loyal customers boast about you? Whats the first thing customers think of when they hear your business? Finish these sentence: Were the best/first/only company to offer and Unlike our competition, we offer our customers Our company enhances peoples lives by What frustrations in dealing with your type of business, do you take away from customers so that they dont have that hassle, headache, fear or worry when they deal with you as compared to others?
To come up with your USP promise, you have to figure out what benefits you will offer to customers. Most products or services are benefit rich, but most companies advertise the features of their products and services rather than the benefits. Heres the rule for turning features into benefits: Dont tell them what you do. Tell them what you do for them. For instance, telling people that your brand of computer has 300 megabytes of memory is speaking about product features. Features are what something is whereas benefits are what something does for people. Features are the facts, figures, technology and details of your product or service whereas benefits are what they do for you.
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Benefits are what your customers will receive, experience or enjoy in return for their money, energy, effort, time, or trust in you and your offering. When you say that theres enough memory in your computer to hold hundreds of programs and operate dozens simultaneously without fear of slowing down the machine so that youre never frustrated with the speed of your machine and dont have the hassles of having to load, unload and reload programs, youve translated those features into benefits. When you mention that a pencil has an eraser, thats a feature. The advantage of having an eraser is that you can get rid of any traces of mistakes. When you say that having an eraser lets you get rid of occasional writing mistakes without leaving an ugly permanent mark on your paper that will annoy you and take away from the beauty of your writing, thats a benefit. When you mention that your flashlight is made of waterproof, high tensile aluminum, thats a feature. When your point out that itll never break when your drop it and will keep working even if it gets wet by falling into a puddle, thats a benefit. When you mention that the car you manufacture has gyroscopic stabilization control, thats a feature. When you mention that your stabilization control system will reduce the risks of the car rolling over during a sharp turn and pinning you down inside, thats a benefit. A benefit is what a customer can intimately gain from a product feature how it will impact their life. Customers are more interested in where a product or vehicle will take them than the vehicle that gets them there. They want a destination, a key result, a single most important consideration to be delivered upon and often dont care about the actual product or service. People are focused on gaining benefits, especially emotional benefits. The saying runs in marketing, People buy based on emotion and justify their decisions based on logic. Furthermore, logic leads to reason while emotions lead to action. Heres a gigantic marketing hint: strive to explain the benefits of your product or service in ways that tap into strong emotions ... emotions that motivate buying behavior. Craft a message with emotional voltage. When you mention that a refrigerator uses 30% less electricity and cuts down on your electric bill, thats pretty good. But when you add in that cutting down on your bill leaves you more money to spend on the things you really want that the household budget prevents you from enjoying, thats really turning plain features
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into emotional benefits. You only have to word it nicely, but thats how you translate a feature into a personal benefit. Answer yourself this question: What are your customers really buying? Look at it from their point of view. Are they coming to you for pencils, refrigerators, real estate? What are they looking for beyond pencils, refrigerators, and real estate and youll have your customer benefits. Youve got to be customer focused or youre gonna die. Customer focus is all about delivering benefits, intimate benefits! Benefits, not features, are what customers want to hear. Selling benefits appeals to the emotions, and people buy on emotions and only later justify their buying with logic. So always try to put some sort of emotional connotation into your USP. Pack your USP with emotional voltage! Federal Express, for instance, is not so much in the delivery business as it is in the business of delivering peace of mind. FedExs customers fear late delivery, so FedEx is focused on delivering the customer benefit of peace of mind that the package will get there on time. Customers want to know what your product or service does for them in terms of daily life, and focusing on benefits makes your claims real enough to come alive. For the strongest type of USP, try to impregnate your USP promises with benefits that have emotional connotations. Remember, you want emotional voltage what will happen if that package doesnt get there overnight, and how much excitement will you feel when you open that box of pizza and find it cold and sticking everywhere? Turning your product features into benefits takes practice, so heres one way to get into the habit of doing it. Simply add the words which means after every product/service feature you offer and then fill in the blanks. Tell what that feature means for the customer and you will naturally turn features into benefits. Always talk about the customers ultimate benefit by answering the questions from the consumers side, So what? Who cares? Whats in it for me? When you speak of features, translate them into benefits using which means. In fact, if you employ salesmen, use this trick to train them to always translate features into benefits, which are the specific motives to which those features cater. By doing so, your salesmen will start having genuine helpful conversations with customers who will, in turn, feel like they are getting great customer service
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someone is actually talking to them, explaining things, and telling them how they will benefit. That type of rapport is why theyll choose to buy from you rather than from someone else. Its all about talking of the benefits of your products and what it means for the customer. Its all about being customer-centric. Remember, if you want to speak of features, always end your sentence with and what this means for you is that Perhaps the best way to think about it is to simply ask yourself the following question, What are we really selling? For instance, you are not selling baseball tickets but entertainment, memories and family togetherness. You are not selling aspirin but fast relief from pain. You are not selling clothes but style and image, status and looks. You are not selling grass seed but a greener lawn. These are all customer benefits! So while you may not be able to compete with a competitors product, you can compete with what they are selling simply by marketing or advertising the experience youre offering. That beneficial experience is what you put in your USP. Marlboro cigarettes do not sell a better tasting tobacco, but the image of being cool, macho, independent and rugged. The cosmetics company Revlon doesnt actually sell cosmetics. Company founder Charles Revson said, In the factory, we make cosmetics. In the store, we sell hope. Revlon sells hope in a jar. Want to hear a great USP simply exuding customer benefits and transmitted in an interesting, appealing fashion? Turn on your computer speakers, and click on this internet link to hear a 1-minute radio spot: http://tinyurl.com/2vjje Promising big benefits in this way is what your customers want to hear. Customers will be willing to risk their money, energy and time on your only if you promise them the advantages of some big benefits which no one else offers. When your customers see that your product or service is in some way superior to that of your competitors, thats when you gain a competitive advantage. Thats the way to naturally eliminate your competition without even trying. You want to imply that you are the only solution needed to solve your customers problems, and you do that by focusing on the benefits youll create for them. Thats what they want to hear. 27
Finding those benefits and then being brash-in-your-face about promoting them ... is the first step towards crafting your superstar USP. You have to offer a benefit big enough, important enough, attractive enough, ultimate enough to influence your customers decision to buy.
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2. Your USP Must Set You Up as Being Unique and Dramatically Different From Your Competitors
Your USP must dramatically differentiate you from your competitors in a big way. It has to say something about you thats unique, thats revolutionary, thats a bold WOW! This guy is different! Tiny differences dont count only big differences matter. Thats how you separate yourself from the crowd. You cannot say the same thing as everybody else if you want to separate yourself from the pack. If you did, how would you truly be any different from all the rest? And if you arent any different, why should customers bother to buy from you? Think about the following. If you are the same as your competitor, then one of you is already redundant. Ill say it again if you are the same as your competitor, then one of you is redundant. If you sound or look like everyone else, you cannot expect to be more successful than they are. You must differentiate yourself. You have to exhibit clear-cut distinction at something! You have to somehow become different, but in a relevant important sort of way. It has to be a way important enough to generate business. It should be something thats breakthrough. Something revolutionary. Something special, unique, one of a kind, dramatically different. Something that distinguishes you from everyone else. Just surf the internet a tiny bit today and youll find all sorts of competing firms with similar-looking websites. Theres absolutely no way for customers to differentiate one website offering from another unless they are presented with a BIG difference. Thats the purpose of differentiation. Its to give customers a reason to buy from YOU rather than from somebody else. For instance, if there are 23 different contact lens manufacturers, why should anyone buy from you? To make the sale, naturally you must somehow show youre different. Youve got to entice potential customers away from the other 22 29
contact lens manufacturers because you are somehow unique or special. The difference in terms of what you offer must be dramatically different to really and truly set you apart from the others, Customers dont want just another same old, same old competitor in your business arena. They want something novel, unusual, and exciting to the senses. They want a revolutionary dramatic difference. They notice the bold Wow! They want to see a difference in claims thats noticeable. They want to see something in your USP that makes you orders of magnitude unique so you can truly claim an exclusive, peerless difference thats your own. That difference, however, needs first and foremost to be relevant to their wants and needs. Just to be different for differences sake is no way to win a marketing battle. Your difference has to be relevant, but unexpected. People want simplicity, so that dramatic difference you decide to deliver is how theyll chose to remember you by. You want customers to think, You are the first to In effect, when you craft your USP you want to be saying, We do this quite differently from others You want to say, Here are all the great benefits youll receive from us alone. Nobody else does this. We excel at this (while others dont). You cant find this elsewhere. Be careful, however, for your uniqueness has to be something that benefits your customers. Your specialness has to be something a prospective audience wants. Think about amazon.com. Everyone sells books online but Amazon became the best known bookstore on the internet through their USP as The worlds largest bookstore, which was the unique promise of the widest possible selection. Thats something that benefits customers. Now that amazon has diversified into selling other things, they now call themselves Earths Biggest Selection. If you cant come up with a USP that differentiates you by benefiting your customers, youre probably just another nondescript business thats existing solely due to the momentum of the marketplace. Thats not an enviable position to be in. You have to search for your monopolistic perfection, your exceptional distinguishment, your principal reason for being set apart, your noteworthy or uncommon excellence,.
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To create a killer USP that sells and sells, youve got to search for a big or revolutionary difference that separates you from everyone else and then advertise it to the max. That might be your promise, or what you package with it. It might be how you deliver on your promise, such as 24 hour service. A USP promises customers that you can help them in a way no other company can. It doesnt really matter that you are not unique, for what matters is that your customers perceive you as being different. Thats a big difference. Its all a game of perceptions. You have to create the perception of being unique and different. Without the perception of uniqueness it will be very hard to avoid commodity pricing pressures. Youre in a fantastic position when you can truly offer something that your competitors cannot. Thats the same as a natural monopoly, but few have this luxury. Those folks in a commodity sort of business really face the challenge of discovering a uniqueness, but in a moment Ill reveal several secret million dollar tips on how to do so. Telling someone to become unique is therefore at times easier said than done, but it can be done. The easier situation is actually working with a product or service that is truly unique. The greater a products or services uniqueness, the more time and effort that usually has been required to develop it. However, that time, energy or money commitment is actually a competitive advantage because if you can develop something quickly, your competitors can usually copy it quickly, too. When you end up putting a lot of energy into your business, thats often whats required to make a sustainable difference and create a competitive advantage. That time is usually translated into somehow making your business unique, so you might turn that end results of that extra effort into the story of your uniqueness. Unfortunately, creating dramatic differences in products or services also usually causes internal chaos for companies because employees typically balk at new ideas. Its human nature to throw up resistance to change, innovations and deviating from the status quo. Most employees are on continuous active duty as conformists who dont want to take any chances, and who will oppose revolutionary changes in the way things are done. Change scars the hell out of these people but the problem is, to go forward you always have to be trying new things.
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For instance, many years ago I was hired as the head of research for a cuttingedge Wall Street investment firm, and several years into the position I was shown the executive memo the partners passed around recommending my hire. It simply said, This guy will shake things up, which is why I got the position. To stay ahead, thats what most firms need. Revolutionary ideas go against history. They go against the comfort zone of the status quo, so engineering a dramatic difference in your business requires lots of courage and lots of effort to go against opposition. But thats how youre going to engineer a brilliant competitive advantage. Youve got to take some chances. You have to go for it. The bright side to this is that really new things that cause a disruption in the marketplace are usually ignored by your competitors for awhile. Your competitors will tend to initially ignore any unique innovation you make as irrelevant to their well being. Thats a promising behavioral pattern that can help you experience tremendous growth. The best business model (or the most defensible business) is always a monopoly since it cannot be easily duplicated by others. Monopolies are the very definition of being unique because a monopoly means only one. Monopolies thereby avoid commodity pricing pressures because people cannot get the product or service from anyone lese. A special point of difference a uniqueness -- is what separates a commodity from a monopoly, so search for your points of difference and bring them to the center of your USP to create some sort of monopoly. Starbucks competes in what is essentially a commodity business, so their worldwide success shows that its possible to do this and come out a winner. Maybe that searched for difference is your guarantee. Maybe you can bundle all sorts of products together into one package and price no one can beat. Maybe its your response time that can serve as your monopolistic difference. Whatever it is, think monopoly and bring your unique beneficial differences to the forefront of your USP. Thats what you are going to champion in all your advertising. If you are in a situation where everyone offers the same basic product, services or qualities that you can, and if truly cannot find anything unique about your company and its offerings, one popular USP strategy is simply to be the first to claim you offer a benefit that every one else offers! Then youll be seen as the
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pioneer or innovator, and competitors who try to claim the same advantages will only end up advertising YOU! Of course an even better strategy, when you have absolutely no unique features or benefits, is to go back to the drawing board until you can come up with something that is unique and special. Go back to review and restructure your business model until you can find something that truly adds value. If you cannot do this, you still have the option of preemptive marketing. Claiming something first is called the marketing strategy of going after a preemptive advantage. It works because the human mind likes to anchor itself on simple concepts, and being first for something is one of the easiest ways to be remembered. Try not to create a USP based on the lowest price, however, because someone with a yet lower price always comes along in time, and low-priced businesses face the constant difficulty or challenge of selling very large volumes to stay profitable. Can you always do that for sure? Plenty of discount stores have gone bankrupt over time. Unless you are really large and have incredible volume, price is rarely a secure idea for establishing differentiation between you and a competitor. It often causes more headaches than you want to live with whereas its often more profitable and satisfying to develop a higher end product or service that is differentiated on qualities other than price. Only one firm can compete in the category of offering the lowest price. Anyway, the point is to come up with something unique without exaggerating minor differences that are irrelevant to customers. As The Harvard Business Review reports, there is a 370% greater chance of profitable success for new product or service offerings that are extremely unique versus just being copycat offerings. Uniqueness is the name of the game. Uniqueness is what separates you from your competitors. Uniqueness adds to your chances of success. In fact, Dr. Robert Cooper has found that offering a dramatic difference to the market is more important to your success than having a large or growing market itself! If there is nothing truly unique about your offering, there are two options available. You can go back to the drawing board to try to create something dramatically different or simply use the strategy of preemptive marketing.
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This idea of claiming a benefit before anyone else is called preemptive marketing, and its purpose is to steal the thunder away from some competitor who does the same thing you do. You simply want to make your claims first, and then competitors will seem like copycats following a market leader if they claim, We do this, too. Its a general rule that if you are the first to claim a special heritage or process or benefit or feature belonging to your product or service, competitors are usually loathe to say, me too for fear of looking like copycats. For instance, when M&M candies said We melt in your mouth, not in your hands, did other competitors run ads saying, We also melt in your mouth and not in your hands? No. They didnt want to look like copycats because that would imply an inferior product. The job of your USP is always to make yourself become first in the customers mind, so by claiming shared benefits first you can still make yourself out to be a leader. Thats what preemptive marketing is all about, and advertising legend Claude Hopkins is the one who first introduced this technique in his autobiography, My Life in Advertising: This is a situation which occurs in most advertising problems. The product is not unique. It embodies no great advantages. Perhaps countless people can make similar products. But tell the pains you take to excel. Tell factors and features which others deem too commonplace to claim. Your product will come to typify those excellencies. If others claim them afterward, it will only serve to advertise you. There are few advertised products which cannot be imitated. Few who dominate a field have any exclusive advantage. They were simply the first to tell certain convincing facts. Claude Hopkins actually used this strategy for Schlitz beer. Years ago, Hopkins was called in to help Schlitz beer increase its market-share. At that time, every beer manufacturer was screaming Pure Beer in their ads, but nobody knew what pure beer was. Hopkins took on his assignment and visited the Schlitz manufacturing plant where he was shown the complete manufacturing process. This production process was no different than that used by the other beer manufacturers. For instance, rooms were filled with filtered air so that the beer could be cooled without impurities. Filters took out all the impurities. Glass bottles were steam
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cleaned four times before being used Washed with live steam was a phrase that Hopkins would later put to good use. Hopkins was amazed at the whole process and when he asked the Schlitz executives why they didnt tell this to the people, they said they didnt think it was important because every beer manufacturer made beer in the same way. Hopkins replied, But, others have never told this story, and went off to create a memorable advertising campaign that explained every step Schlitz took to make their beer pure. Not a single competitor touted the same processes because no one wanted to look like a copycat. As a result of educating his market in this way, Schlitz beer rose from a position of fifth place to a tie for first place in market-share. If you want to find out more, visit www.ClaudeHopkinsAdvertising.com to grab the only known collection of this legends rare ads along with a marketing and advertising manual updated for today. Always avoid the Me too, but better trap as it paints you as a follower rather than leader. You want to be perceived for your own unique strengths and talents and if you dont have any, try to capture that perception by claiming a preemptive advantage. In its advertising, Folgers claims that its coffee is mountain grown. Every coffee is actually mountain grown but because Folgers said this first, it owns the mountain grown territory in the customer mind. Think about what other coffee company wants to say, Were mountain grown, too ? Through its preemptive USP, Folgers has captured the idea of fresh, natural coffee growing in exotic mountain locations. Thats a powerful image to capture in the minds of customers. Yet another example is a bread I saw in the supermarket that was labeled, Vegetarian Friendly. There must have been two dozen different bread loaves on the grocery shelf that could have equally claimed the same thing, but this company got smart and decided to differentiate itself with this unique USP claim. Two dozen other competitors were also perfect for vegetarians, but this company said it first, claimed this USP and got the sale. Remember that a USP promises benefits rather than features. The company could just as easily touted the feature that its bread was, Made without any animal fats, but then it would have been promoting features rather than its unique benefits.
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The final example I wish to bring up involves Ajax cleanser. Ajax executives were examining every aspect of the cleanser to see if they could come up with something special by which they could differentiate it from competing products. In a brainstorming session, one of the advertising consultants came up with the fact that Ajax contained ammonia, like most other cleansers, but suggested that Ajax say it contained activated ammonia. That became the products new USP. Soon Ajax was advertising its activated ammonia and in short time owned the ammonia concept in the minds of consumers. When other cleansers said they had activated ammonia, too, consumers simply felt they were also-rans copying Ajax. Ajax won the day a market share -- not by being unique, but just by describing itself in a unique way. There are two other related strategies you might use to establish a preemptive advantage for yourself where there is no clear differentiating factor. First, just give yourself a unique name. It might be a name for your business, your product or even a trademark. The name, just by itself, might have even positive connotations to bring the sales to you. Second, in a sales situation where you are competing against a competitor who may even be offering a lower price, simply add yourself to the deal. Tell them, When you buy my product, you also get me. If there are any problems, you get my personal experience and attention, which no one else can offer. The point is that you want to create a USP which favorably positions you in the customers mind and captures a unique piece of their mental real estate. You want to grab and then own a piece of their mindscape that no other company claims, but a piece thats important enough to bring business to you. Your uniqueness is one of the key factors that impresses customers and it plays a big role in helping you to come up with effective advertising. Uniqueness enables you to devise a sensible advertising strategy of what, when, where and how to advertise. It helps you decide upon the image or personality you want to portray to the public such as being fussy about quality, fun to do business with, serious about the issues, or classy in how you deliver performance. Your uniqueness helps you position yourself in the marketplace. To claim the most advantageous sort of positioning, you have to present yourself as being dramatically different from everyone else. The point of difference might
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be either a perceived difference or a true difference, but you have to present yourself with a suit of uniqueness nonetheless. Advertisers will tell you that large consumer brands will live and then die as their differentiation declines, so your USP must tell why your business, product or service is special. Dont understate your difference! To create or innovate true dramatic differences usually causes troubles for companies because those difference are typically revolutionary. They are bigger packages, service innovations, or features no one can copy. If you do design your business so that you are blazing new trails, however, this is how youll be able to set yourself apart from others and establish an unassailable monopoly. If you are just starting out, this point is something to consider. Lets look at a few examples of USPs that espouse uniqueness. Nyquil is the night-time cold medicine. Ask anybody about night time cold relief and the first word that pops out of their mouth will usually be Nyquil. Go ahead, try it! In toothpastes, Crest fights cavities while other toothpastes provide whiter teeth, fresher breath, provide plaque control or fight gum disease. The unique claims for toothpastes go on and on. What about aspirins? Some aspirins are faster working, others easy on your stomach, others are the ones doctors recommend most. We have Anacin for fast pain relief. Tylenol used to claim More hospitals trust Tylenol. Bufferin combines aspirin with two antacid ingredients that open the stomach valve to get pain relief into the bloodstream faster, so its makers claimed Bufferin acts twice as fast as aspirin to relieve pain. We also have the no upset stomach pain reliever, one of ours is worth two of theirs, two out of three doctors recommend, hospitals prefer, you cant buy a more potent pain reliever without a doctors prescription. All of these are examples of how companies took the same basic product and tried to find and then amplify some feature to differentiate the product from others. By the way, the case of Tylenol is notable because when Tylenol came out it used a reposition the competition strategy for uncovering its USP. Tylenol basically said, Aspirin can irritate the stomach fortunately theres Tylenol.
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Be careful when you use the repositioning your competition strategy, however, for it may backfire in your face. In the real world, salesmen know to speak highly of their competition or say nothing at all. The smartest firms are so intent on producing a superior product and service that they dont even look at what their competitors are doing, but just keep trying to innovate to create a highly superior experience for the customer. They simply try to keep besting themselves. Repositioning your competition, positioning yourself against a competitor or category (ex. At Avis we try harder), offering better value (better warranty, price, convenient locations, etc.), focusing on being a problems solution, or emphasizing your raving fans to attract more to you are strategic ways of coming up with an effective USP. As to shampoos, Head & Shoulders promises dandruff free hair. Others end split ends, get rid of tangles, keep hair shiny and smooth, promise an orgasmic experience, are scented with wildflowers, are safe enough for babies, are organic, and so on. Frankly, most shampoos do the very same thing, but to market them, each shampoo manufacturer champions a different sort of USP to capture a different segment of the total shampoo market. Each USP tries to appeal to a different segment of the market for its sales, and does this through unique claims that differentiate itself from other shampoos. Can you craft a USP like that which dramatically differentiates you from the crowd, even if everyone is basically doing the same thing? Do you offer a value ratio of what your customers can get to what they pay that can produce spontaneous excitement and ignite a sales frenzy? Remember that customers always like to think they are getting a good deal, so your asking price for your product or service should always lie in direct proportion to the value you are perceived as giving. If the price you ask somehow doesnt feel right to the customers in proportion to the value they are getting, they will not buy from you at all. (Let me stand aside and tell you that the amount of money you earn will always lie in direct proportion to the value you offer your customer. To increase your income you should therefore find a way to offer superior service and deliver more value.) Here are some of the things you might play around with that can serve as your unique differentiating factor for your USP. This master list is priceless.
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Its what a marketing professional would go over with you in order to figure out how to increase product and service sales. Go through this master list and brainstorm ideas to try to come up with some sort of business differentiation that separates you from your competitors: Do you offer a guarantee? Is yours the longest or best? Guarantees are probably the most powerful USPs possible. Do you offer discounts for volume, frequency, or first time purchase? Are your discounts the biggest? Is your selection the broadest? Do you serve a certain size company best, or a certain segment or customer type? Are you the preferred provider of choice for a particular group of any type? What about your service is it customized, speedy, great? How can you parameterize it? Are you closest to the customer in terms of customer intimacy? Do you give personal attention? Are you flexible and do you respond immediately? Do you offer free, expedited, or various shipping options? Free shipping is a powerful incentive. How about bonuses or premiums ... do you offer more than your competitors (and are they valuable)? Do you offer anything for free? Free is one of the most powerful USPs. Do you offer deals, such as buy two for the price of one? Do you offer better credit terms or easy, long-term payment options? For large ticket items, some marketers say this is the second most powerful USP. Do you have in-house buying cards or club memberships? Do you offer special prices to seniors or out of season prices? Is after the sale help, advice of consultation available? Are you proactive about it or passive (letting them call you)? Do you have 24-hour assistance, or live-person assistance instead of just e-mail? Working hours are you open nights, weekends, holidays, 24 hours? Are you endorsed by an authority or celebrity? Do you have success stories and testimonials? All your copy should list testimonials. Do you carry more stock or inventory is a wide product selection instantly available? Are you the preferred brand or vendor for a unique group of customers? Are you the highest quality provider? Do you offer the best quality/price ratio or value/cost ratio? Are you the newest, latest, most innovative, or up-to-date? Are you the marketplaces product leader? Do you have the most documentation? The most proof, evidence or highest credibility factor?
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What about fashion or styling is yours the best, high class, or newest? Do you have a long track record, history or heritage of business? Have you worked with the customer or client before? (A personal history with the client is a unique advantage.) Do you have the cleanest, neatest or most impressive premises ? (As a competitive strategy, McDonalds tries to have the cleanest restrooms in the fast food business.) Is your image the most attractive? Were you referred by others? Do you have clients you can refer to? In other words, can you help customers with their business in other ways, such as by referring people to them once they become your client? Do you have clearer labeling or packaging that is more attractive or easier to use? Do you have installation options? Do you have the most locations, a convenient location, or global offices? Are you using breakthrough equipment? Are your product /service characteristics more enjoyable, easier, exciting? Do you offer the best operational excellence? Do you have favorable publicity are you famous in some way? Do you give your customers more than what they need or expect? (This is the best way to establish a reputation.) Is the way you make your product (or perform your service) different than others? Do you best fulfill legal requirements, standards or constraints?
In Differentiate or Die, Jack Trout and Steve Rifkin surveyed the field and stated there were several types of extremely effective differentiating ideas for unique selling propositions that worked effectively in building businesses or brands. I actually reference this list whenever Im doing copywriting because to make sure I dont miss any important hot points that might be important for potential customers. The Trout and Rifkin master differentiating ideas are: 1. Being first or number one at something 2. Focusing on a particular market specialty; market specialization 3. Owning a particular discernable product attribute or quality in the customers mind 4. Showing an impressive company history or heritage 5. Showing that your product or service is the preferred solution for special groups (the preference of particular consumer groups) 6. Demonstrating product leadership; product or service innovation 7. Being the latest arrival or new generation of products; the most advanced 8. Being popular or hot; trendsetters get noticed 9. How its made; a magic ingredient 40
The two authors, as differentiation experts, even explained five ways you could create a USP to differentiate commodities. Think of Chiquita bananas as an example or Sunkist oranges. They wrote, Even the world of meats and produce has found ways to differentiate itself and thus create that unique selling proposition. Their successful strategies can be summed up in five ways: 1. Identify -- Ordinary bananas became better bananas by adding a small Chiquita label to the fruit. Dole did the same for pineapple with the Dole label, as did the lettuce people by putting each head into a clear Foxy lettuce package. Of course, you then have to communicate why people should look at these labels. 2. Personify -- The Green Giant character became the difference in a family of vegetables in many forms. Frank Perdue became the tough man behind the tender chicken. 3. Create a new Generic -- The cantaloupe people wanted to differentiate a special, big cantaloupe. But rather than call them just plain "big," they introduced a new category called Crenshaw melons. Tyson wanted to sell miniature chickens, which doesn't sound very appetizing. So they introduced Cornish game hens. 4. Change the name -- Sometimes your original name doesn't sound like it would be something you would want to put in your mouth. Like a Chinese gooseberry. By changing it to kiwifruit, the world suddenly had a new favorite fruit it wanted to put in its mouth. 5. Reposition the category -- Pork was just pig for many years. All that did was conjure up mental pictures of little animals wallowing in the mud. Then they jumped on the chicken bandwagon and became, "the other white meat." A very good move when red meat became a perceptual problem. Where there's a will, there's a way to differentiate. If youre still having trouble coming up with the gist of a differentiating USP, I want you to try these verbs on for size. Fill in the blanks after each of these verbs, or something else which may be more appropriate in telling you what your product or services does, and then turn those features into benefits. Those will be your USP possibilities:
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Reduces ___ Expands ___ Increases ___ Saves ___ Bigger ___ Smaller ___ Faster ___ Slower ___ More ___ Cheaper ___ More careful ___ Exclusive ___ New ___
Whatever you do, avoid words such as best, we care, honest, quality, friendly service, premium, leading, reliable, premier, cost-effective, etcetera. Those superlatives never sell anyone and are usually dismissed as meaningless trifle, so dont use them. They are overused words. They are not unique, ownable or defensible. Vague and unspecific, they dont tell what you will do for someone. They are empty words and meaningless claims that actually take away from your credibility because they arent dimensionalized with facts, figures or numbers. Everyone claims them! Make your USP measurable. Remember that your advertising is going to cost you the same whether its effective or not, so convince people using a USP that has specific dimensions. Instead of we care, you can say free help and advice for as long as you have our product. Instead of saying best, try offering some form of money-back or service guarantee. Instead of quality, tell specifically how yours is the highest quality. 99 and 44/100 percent pure, which is the tagline Ivory Soap used for years, beats highest quality any day. In summary, consumers make decisions between multiple options based on differences ... real or imaginary. You have to give them a reason to choose you over the other alternatives available, including the alternative of doing nothing at all, by telling how you are different than your competitors.
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Just giving your customers more than they need or expect is a way to differentiate yourself from your competitors. Its easy to do this by offering extra services or support that wont cost you too much. The same goes for offering a guarantee. Service above and beyond all that is expected is a powerful USP, just as is offering premiums and bonuses above what everyone else offers, too. To make a purchasing decision, consumers want cues that your products or services are the ones best meeting their needs. They are looking for what you do differently than all your competitors. That difference can translate into customer excitement if it hits the right emotional hot button. That difference can even translate into purpose and meaning for your company and its employees. To have the biggest impact, there are two things to remember: that difference must be relevant (it has meaning, purpose or customer applicability) and unexpected (novel, unique, new, a blazing trail, different). In either case, to succeed you dont need to be the best, you just need to be unique. Its not the person with the best product but with the best marketing who will win. Think about elevators for the moment. The question is not whos the best, but whether you want to do business with Otis, Schindler, Kone or a Japanese elevator manufacturer. Its all about branding a perception of difference for the minds of the customer. Me, too copycat businesses tend not to survive, or have a hard time making a go of it. Open up the Yellow Pages and see how many service providers compete in the same category without differentiating themselves from one another. Because these competitors are the same, business is tough for everyone. Remember, if you are the same as your competitor then one of you is irrelevant. If you are indistinguishable from everyone else, your ordinariness will make you invisible in the marketplace. If everyone is going after the same thing, each company will block one another leading to the demise of most of the pack. You should recognize you are in trouble if you ever find yourself saying, So and so is doing the same thing I am, or customers cannot differentiate you from your competition or tell what your business stands for.
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Me, too businesses tend to hold price wars with their competitors where everyone gets hurt because they all lack perceived uniqueness. If you dont establish the perception of being a unique value in the customers mind, then the only thing left by which to compete is price. Whenever you compete by price, youve landed in the commodity business. This is dangerous, because if you dont have a price advantage over competitors, you will lose over time. A lowest price USP can always be undermined, and is subject to attack by a well capitalized competitor. Only the characteristic of uniqueness avoids commodity pricing pressure. Its the very best way to deflect clients or customers away from being able to negotiate for lower prices as well. Therefore, find some way to tout your uniqueness but dont become unique just to be unique; your uniqueness must benefit your customer. Copywriter Bob Bly recently called my attention to a pump manufacturer named Blackmer which recognized that its pumps were not very different than those made by competitors. To differentiate itself, it took the gutsy step of calling attention to this fact to gain credibility for its subsequent claims, and then inserted a differentiator into its advertising copy. The Blackmer pump ad, written by Jim Alexander, went as follows: In many applications, Blackmer performs no better nor worse than any pumps, and so we are not a particularly advantageous choice. But for certain applications, (viscous fluids, fluids containing abrasives, slurries, and a few other situations) Blackmer was proven to outperform all other pumps, and were the logical brand of choice. When pharmaceutical manufacturer Merck was trying to promote its calcium channel blocker into the market, there were already thirteen other competitors in the market. So Merck did something similar by asking doctors, Are you confused about calcium channel blockers? It then emphasized that its product, Plendil, was the only one to promise vascular selectivity. Human beings, by nature, are creatures of habit that dont like to change. They prefer the status quo. They want simple ideas and simple differentiations. If you want to change a customers buying habits and direct them away from a competitor, you have to offer them an exciting, meaningful perceptual difference that can jar them out of their buying habits.
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We can trace sales back to psychological perceptions rather than true differences between products and services, so you want to craft a USP that no other competitor can psychologically claim in your customers mind. You want to carve out a territory, a feature claim, a benefit in the customers mind that positions you as being different from everyone else. Marketing strategist Doug Hall reports that in a study of 901 marketing messages for new products, those brands whose messages stated their products or services unique point of difference were 52% more likely to survive for five years or more than those who were less overt. Stating your difference makes a difference! You want your USP to position you, your product, your service, or your business as a specialist who excels at doing something better, faster, safer, more inexpensive or whatever than everyone else. You want to make your USP telegraph a claim that you are unique and dramatically different, and that no one else does what you do or does it like you. Thats how you will differentiate yourself from your competitors. Thats how you will separate yourself from the pack. Start searching for this differentiating factor, or even consider revamping your business to instill one into your offerings if you dont have any. As I said before, if you dont have anything, go back to the drawing board until you do. That unique difference you come up with is a way to claim your monopoly position in the marketplace by making it harder for competitors to compete. Incidentally, it will elevate the marketplace for consumers as well, which is what its all about.
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3. Your USP Must be Focused; Dont Try to Appeal to Everyone

Dont try to be all things to all people. Dont try to please everyone. Just try to appeal to the people you want as customers, which are the right type of people for your product, service or business. Advertising gurus will often tell you that a big mistake in advertising is trying to appeal to everyone. That sort of approach will waste your marketing dollars. If you try to reach everyone, then its quite possible that youll go broke without convincing anyone. Instead of trying to appeal to everyone, its almost always better to focus on conquering a niche. Niche marketing is key in todays world because if you try to appeal to everyone and everybody, you run the risk of so diluting your marketing message that you end up appealing to nobody. Thats why trying to appeal to everybody is usually the road to ruin because in trying to be all things to all people, you arent anything to anybody. Trying to appeal to everyone is like that old phrase, Jack of all trades but master of none. Plain and sweet, your USP should target a certain group of people or market that wants a very special service or benefit. Target marketing is the name of the game. You want to go to that market, tell them what you stand for and do best, and then utterly dominate it. By its very nature, a USP cannot appeal to everyone. Nor should it, as there are probably some customers you dont want and its a waste of your money trying to deliver a message to them or appeal to them. Rule of thumb: Let a customer say no because what you have to offer doesnt apply to them, and concentrate your time, energy and monies on those remaining who do qualify. As the saying goes, Not all money is good money. Turning down the wrong type of customer (bad money) has all sorts of tangible and intangible benefits. In fact, when you are building a professional practice and carving out a niche, its often a very good idea to turn down business (by referring it away) because it is the wrong type of business for your firm. Keeping to your niche will underscore your intentionality of purpose and solidify your market image. When you establish
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a reputation for special services for a niche, your name will travel fast. Customers will then know what to expect from you and how to distinguish you from competitors. Bargain seekers and upscale clients probably represent different degrees of profit to you, so its often the case with certain types of business that you must choose which of these sectors you want to pursue. The profit might be made in the discount niche or in the premium branding, but you have to choose which to follow. You must know which market segment is your perfect prospect and craft your USP accordingly. As books like The Profit Zone and Profit Patterns have pointed out, profit usually migrates to business model extremes over time as customers start polarizing and focusing on the extremes of price, service, and benefit companies can offer. Businesses who typically end up targeting the upper end or lower end of a market usually make out the most whereas those me, too nondescript businesses stuck in the middle, without any special USP or unique differential advantage, usually lose out. Therefore, lets say it again. There are certain customers you probably dont want because they are not very profitable to you. The rule is to let a customer say No to what you have to offer if it doesnt apply to them, but never let them go simply because they dont understand your offer. Since you cannot afford to try to market to everybody, the best strategy is to get focused and you get focused by deciding who you are going to pursue and what you are going to promise them. You have to make the offer simple, pleasant (appealing) and understandable. Pitching your USP to a focused niche is the quickest way to become an established player in a market. Famous positioning consultants Al Ries and Jack Trout, authors of Marketing Warfare, said Launch the attack on as narrow a front as possible, and then go on to expand from there. Chinese strategists like Sun Tzu, Kuan Tzu and Sun Bin will say the same. Customers, Ries said, want brands (product images) that are narrow in scope and are distinguishable by a few words, the shorter the better. Dominos offers fresh, hot pizza quickly but it doesnt promise good tasting pizza. Other pizza companies promise discounts while others promise the freshest ingredients or thickest crust. Everyone has claimed a different little corner of the pizza arena. Everyone is making a claim to appeal to a certain niche desire.
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Of course all these pizzas taste good, but no firm says they are best tasting because the claim is meaningless. Its like promising you offer the best service or that you care. People discard those claims in an instant. They are the first ones they pass over. Everyone cares! Everyone promises good service! Saying that you care or offer the best service isnt being focused. Were the best or Were unbeaten usually means, Were the same as everyone else we couldnt think of anything to say about us thats different. Thats no differentiation. Thats not being focused on a niche. When you try to make your USP appeal to everyone in this fashion, thats a sure way to water down its impact. Now if a pizza company didnt make tasty pizzas, then of course no one would reorder from them in the future. Therefore, no one differentiates themselves on taste. To differentiate itself from all the other pizza competitors, each company chooses to appeal to a specific niche market. Thats how they each go about trying to build their market-share. Abandon all initial hopes of world domination. The first step is to focus. You must calmly consider all sorts of factors and then decide upon a specific focus for your company and pursue it. That niche focus needs to be reflected in your USP. One of the best forms of differential advantage is to position yourself as a specialist for a niche group of customers -- a certain market segment that is actually in search of special services or benefits catered to them. People always prefer specialists over generalists because theyre looking for someone who can understand them. Your USP should target those folks rather than everyone. Take the motorcycle industry. You could easily segment the motorcycle market into all sorts of micro-segments such as Harley Davidsons, Japanese or European custom bikes, street racers, rough terrain bikes, commuter bikes and so on. Even Coca Cola has started to niche market Coke! We have Classic Coke, Diet Coke, caffeine-free Coke, sodium-free Coke and just plain Coke. You can try to sell to one particular segment of the market with a new product, or you can develop a slightly different USP for each market segment using the same product or service but just presenting it in a slightly different fashion. Thats actually what McDonalds does when it crafts slightly different USPs for the same product. This niche focusing is why FedEx says when you want it there overnight. FedEx doesnt try to sell its services to everyone who wants to send a package,
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or even to people who want airmail delivery in a week or so, or just a safe delivery. Their USP is targeted at speedy delivery -- the customer who wants their package there tomorrow. Thats targeting. By focusing on a target market, by claiming to be the best in one specific category, by claiming to specifically serve a particular niches needs, its easy to become identified as the preferred solution provider. After all, you are identifying with the needs of that niche which no one has addressed before and if you are focused on touching their hot buttons, youll naturally achieve their top of the mind awareness. By narrowing your focus, you develop a niche and decrease your competition! People with focused interests are the prospects you can readily turn into repeat buyers. For instance I know of a chiropractor who was a sports addict and athlete himself, so his office furnishings, decor and marketing pieces were all about athletes. There were signed pictures of sports legends on the wall, photographs of trophies, helmets and sports equipment hanging here and there as decorations. This chiropractor built up a very successful practice not necessarily by creating the image and perception that he knew what athletes went through and could treat them better than other chiropractors. He picked out a market niche and specialized in treating athletes. Dont waste your energy (and advertising dollars) trying to appeal to everyone. If you do, your message will become too broad and diluted. Rather, tailor your USP to a particular market that can power your business forward. You cannot stand for something if you chase after everything, so narrow your focus. Studies actually show that when your USP is focused on one benefit you are 60% more likely to succeed than if you are unfocused and try to appeal in every possible way. Other research shows that while the average sales presentation consists of 6-8 benefits, the average prospect only remembers one of these and 39% of prospects remember that one benefit wrong. Finally, in 49% of the cases, they even remembered something that wasn't mentioned at all. The moral is: focus on a market and focus on a single, powerful, simple particular benefit. Whatever you do, dont worry about customers who fall through the cracks. Just get focused. Theres a chain reaction of brilliance you can expect when you concentrate on delivering certain particular customer benefits. Your product development
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becomes more focused, your packaging becomes clearer and all your advertising becomes more meaningful. Laserlike focus gives you the ability to eventually dominate a marketplace. On the other hand, when you are unfocused and try to represent too many things to too many people, that same laser will become diffused and lose power. One of the major principles of competitive strategy is that niche marketing, because of a narrow focus, allows you to get yourself established in the marketplace. Once youve got your foot in the door, you can then use the foothold of your niche profits to quietly encroach upon established marketplace players and slowly eat away at their market-share. Its all done in a very clean manner. You simply promise and deliver on better benefits. Those are the benefits of a focused USP. To dominate a market, the first task is always to initially get into the game by firmly establishing yourself and developing a loyal customer base. Finding an economical USP that will support you, and then focusing on satisfying the needs of that group of customers, is a way to play the game. The benefit of using a USP is that it naturally forces you to focus and give up something so that you are not all things to all people. People want to hear that you are a specialist and their particular problem will be solved. They want their fears, worries and troubles solved and hearing that you can do so is the benefit they want to get from you. So you must craft the best possible USP that is in tune with your core concepts, the marketplace, that has room for profits and growth, but which uniquely separates you from others because it positions you as being the exemplification of some specialty. If you deliver on your promises, your business will soon grow and you will become naturally known as the solution provider for your niche, the one to come to because of your focus. Naturally you can still service everyone, but if you want top-of-the-mind awareness and secure customer mind-share, your best bet is to become focused. Position yourself as an expert in a specific area, and youll convert a higher percentage of those coming to you out of interest. Thats what results in bigger and better sales.
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4. Relevancy, Relevancy, Relevancy is The Name of the Game

To create your USP, never amplify some insignificant feature or benefit that your customer couldnt give a hoot or holler about. When you advertise a dramatic difference, it must be important enough to a customer to move them. Youve got to promise features, claims, or benefits that are actually important to them. Things that matter, things that will cause them to buy. In other words, a USP must focus on what matters most to your customers, otherwise it wont be compelling enough to drive sales. You must target your customers greatest problems and frustrations so that what you are offering seems clearly relevant to their situation. It has to be valuable to them because its what they want. Simply put, dont bother customers with trivial differences. Dont emphasize colors, sizes, facts or other features that dont matter. As Roger Fisher explained in the famous negotiating primer, Getting to Yes, the key to successful negotiation is knowing what is important to the other party. The truth is, customers dont care anything about you. They dont have half or even a quarter of the passion you have for your product, service or business. You are simply fulfilling their need and in a moment theyre off to get some other problem handled. Customers just want to know whats in it for them. What you advertise as your point of difference that separates you from competitors must therefore be something unique but deeply relevant to your customer. Something important, something that matters, something big enough that will cause them to buy. Stick to whats relevant rather than trivial. Stick to whats major on their minds, and youll have no problems at all in generating customer demand. Offer a fit between what you are selling and what they want and you will always be catering to market demand. You can make a difference in the lives of others based on the degree of rapport you develop with them, so focus on issues important to customers in order to make sure you connect for the sale.
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5. Short and Simple is Best, Memorable and Easy to Understand is What Matters
No doubt about it USPs are usually short and simple. They dont have to be, but simple is best and yet you should not mistake a USP for a slogan. Your USP should be as long as it needs to be to strike home, and yet simple and concise enough to prompt action. The USP is like a good tagline or book title in that it is usually one or two or three sentences, but those one, two or three sentences tell everything the consumer needs to know. Of course, not all USPs are just one or two sentences. Guerilla marketing expert Jay Conrad Levinson even suggests you create a limited version thats only seven words. As a general rule, brevity is always best because people like to simplify things. They have short attention spans, want simple decisions and more readily believe in simple messages than complicated ones. Those are the most powerful types of USPs to craft for your business. Nikes marketing slogan of Just Do it illustrates a short USP that does wonders. It embodies emotion, it conjures up images of an active lifestyle (escaping from your own lack of initiative), and the concept of just do it is a command to buy the product as well. Just do it three simple words and a powerful USP. When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight nine words and a billion dollar worldwide business. Marketers will readily tell you that even one word can make a big difference in your sales, so craft your short USP carefully. A single word can make all the difference so look for powerful pulls in your phrasing. Maxwell Sackheim once crafted a headline for an ad which ran, Do you make these mistakes in English? That ad was so pulling that they continued running it for 40 years. Do you think it would have worked so well had he written, Do you make mistakes in English? or, Are You Afraid of Making mistakes in English? The difference, in fact, is due to the single word, these which played on peoples insecurities to get them to read the ad and then buy the product.
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Famous ad man David Ogilvy said that a one word difference in an advertisement headline could increase sales as much as 21 times, and Ive seen responses increase in multiples of seven, eight and twelve times as well. So the phrasing you use for your USP can have a powerful impact on sales. This is the realm where beauty, art and psychology all intersect. Perhaps your USP should include action words that are motivating and compelling. Rhyming something, like Ronald McDonald, is a very powerful strategy for making a USP memorable. Alliteration, which is the repetition of a sound in two or more words of a phrase (ex. Coca Cola, biggest bookstore), is also powerful as well. Famous marketers like Drew Kaplan and Joseph Sugarman have found that describing things in threes (This blanket can be used at the home, in the car, on the beach) also has some strange power of influence over human beings. Dont think that the words you use to present yourself just arent that important. For years, Hanover Fire & Casualty Insurance called its product Fire Insurance or Contents Insurance but when they finally started using the term Renter's Insurance in acquisition mailings, which is the term customers used, their response rate shot up dramatically. All they did was change the name of their product. The most successful infomercial of all time was for the NordicTrac, which sold 360,000 units in the first month alone. To prove that a few words can make all the difference in sales, one version of the commercial used the line, Operators are waiting, call now. When this line was replaced with, If operators are busy, please call again, sales shot through the roof because it implied that the operators were so busy because the machine is so popular. Im also a big proponent of sales scripting, which is the task of recording what your very best sales people say to book appointments, sell the customer or close deals. The words you use do matter, so when you record those super effective words and turn them into sales talks that the other members of the sales force must memorize and use, sales often go through the roof. This is why people often use the words investment rather than cost, buy is replaced with own, appointment becomes visit, contract becomes agreement. Even your use of adjectives must be judicious as slender is much better than skinny and economical is better than inexpensive. When you are dealing with various professionals such as doctors, lawyers, entrepreneurs, CEOs, accountants, or engineers the words you select should change also because an individual from a different profession has a different type of psychology. For instance, cash is more motivating than profit to an
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entrepreneur because he understands cash which is more tangible than profit. To find the words that work best with certain types of occupations, go to my website www.thewordsthatsell.com. Different words mean different things to different people, so your success is all in how you say it. Instead of saying We care, you can say We focus on making sure that you get exactly what you want, how and when you want it every time, or its free. Dont say, Were the most experienced, but say something like Weve been servicing customers for over 50 years and will give you exactly what you want without trying to sell you more than you need. The moral of the story is, try to come up with a short, succinct, clear and striking USP. Work on your phrasing to polish you message ... your words are the difference between success and failure. The more you can reduce a USP to its simplicity, and embellish it with emotion, the more motivating and compelling it will be for sales. When it positively, absolutely has to be there overnight does exactly that it promises the benefit and it taps into all sorts of powerful emotions such as fear and worry. It eliminates those fears. It provides a solution to those emotional issues. Itll take some work after weve got the basics down, but your goal is to craft that sort of USP. In a USP you have to be direct, clear and overt with your claims. Long sentences may bore your customers, so keep chipping away at your claims, eliminating all the dead wood, until youre left with a message thats short and crisp. That will make your USP highly communicable and easy to remember. Speaking of memory, when its simple and clear, nearly everyone can understand your USP and remember it. When it isnt simple and clear, youre sure to be losing customers. If you are the only one who can understand or remember your USP, you definitely have a problem so heres a test. Once youve gotten your USP, try to recite it in 60 seconds or less. Twenty to thirty seconds is even better. If you cannot explain your USP in less than a minute, then its probably ineffective. If everyone else in your firm cannot recite your USP on a moments notice either, then that confusion will be passed on through to your customers! Consider that if even your employees dont know the message, how can you expect your customers to know it?
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Fix that situation immediately! School everyone in your USP. If the employees of your business cannot quickly recite your USP, start educating them on it. Make sure everyone is fluent with what you stand for and your big promises. Make sure everyone can articulate the pains and troubles you go into to create a memorable customer experience, and make sure employees start telling your customers. Make their income dependent on it. If the members of your staff are not willing to get in line with your USP, then replace them. Listening to them talk, you should be hearing a natural continuation of your marketing and advertising message. If not, you have to train them but if afterwards your message and their words still remain in separate realms, get rid of them. You see, your USP is the very heart of your business and the nucleus around which you will achieve wealth and success. It is the source not only of your initial business but your repeat business and ultimate business success. Its too valuable to have employees ignore or think its something to trifle with. Drill, drill, drill your staff on your USP whatever your business stands for and make sure your firm is organized to deliver on those promises. Rehearse them on it because you dont ever want them to wing it on this most valuable piece of business real estate. Figure out how each member of your staff is going to project your USP into the world. Your company must also do whatever it takes to adhere to and deliver your USP promise, and your staff should know that their jobs are on the line based on how well they fulfill that USP. In short, you must establish some form of companywide alignment with your marketing message, otherwise its just fakery. Customers can smell fakery a mile away. Once youve gotten the core of your USP, the goal is to refine it to phrase it as simply but as attractively as possible. You want to create a highly communicable selling proposition that everyone can understand and repeat without effort. Find it, say it well and say it constantly is the rule. Repetition is what burns an idea into the minds of the masses especially an idea with emotional voltage -- so after youve got one, strive to make your USP as memorable, emotional, clear and succinct as possible so that you can turn over its effectiveness to the principle of repetition.
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Decide what you want to promise in your USP, say it convincingly with proof, and then say it over and over and over again in all sorts of mediums. Thats a key to marketing success. The first step, of course, is deciding what to say and trying 100 different ways of saying it until you discover what and how to say the right thing that strikes the hot buttons in the minds of the consumers. Usually thats a short but effective USP. Theres an old saying that if you cannot explain an idea you have in less than a minute, then you dont have a clear idea. With that in mind, polish your USP until you can deliver it clearly within a minute. Polish it until you can tell it to someone and the next day they can repeat it back to you. If you can do that and have an attractive enough proposition, then you might even be able to take that message and go national. All things considered, you want a USP short and simple, clear, concise, memorable and easy to communicate. Whether your message is clear or not can be the difference between having lunch and being lunch. Maximum communicability means keeping your USP simple but as long as it needs to be to get your message across. Nevertheless, simple is best, brevity is tops. Once youve gotten the idea for your USP, work on the phrasing until your USP is catchy in an attractive sort of way, and clearly defined.
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6. Your USP Must Grab Attention

A big bold promise is the heart and soul of every USP. What part of that equation grabs the customers attention? The part about being BIG and BOLD. Interesting or exciting, a USP must possess enough Oomph! or sparkle to grab a potential customers attention. It has to speak to the intended audience and grab its attention. To break through the marketing clutter out there, your USP should be as bold and assertive as possible. You want it written in such a way that it grabs attention saying, Hey, look at me over here. Im different than the others because I promise you the following ( and the others dont). Heres a hint: use action verbs. Eventually youre going to use your USP in all your advertising, but you also want your USP to be an advertisement itself in being as bold and daring as possible. Thats what will help it attract attention to your product or service. First, however, you must come up with the substance of your USP. Only afterwards can you work on shaping it into a simple, memorable message thats fluent and attention getting. The best ways for your USP to attract attention are to make it exciting, give it some shock value, or have it tap into emotional connections. In the field of copywriting, there are all sorts of tricks you can use to help craft a sentence or two that will attract attention. When Anacin was advertising its abilities to relieve pain on television, for instance, the announcer would always raise his voice with the tagline, for fast, Fast, FAST relief to impress upon people the true strength of the product and grab attention. That fast, Fast, FAST pain relief message was the means for getting attention. Your USP is like a headline for your business and the purpose of headlines are to capture the attention of your target audience. The purpose of a headline is to get you started on reading an ad just as the purpose of a USP is to get a customer to initially come to you. But to generate that interest, you have the task of attracting sufficient attention.
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Repetition, repetition, repetition is one way to attract that attention. Bold promises in your USP are another way to excite interest and attract attention. Dramatic differences are also another way to make heads turn. How do you grab attention with your USP if it isnt particularly attention getting? Just keep promoting it. Tell your customers why you adopted it. Explain to them why it puts you on their side. Educate them as to its importance. Above all else use repetition, repetition, repetition to get your message across. Thats why you want a short and memorable USP, as you want customers to remember one short, succinct and consistent message about your product or service. Even after a customer has purchased from you, send them a follow-up letter or telephone call to reassure them and eliminate any sort of post purchase reluctance. Thats the best way to establish your sincerity, your credibility and to grab attention by separating you from the crowd. It shows you are willing to render service and that sort of effort in the details will be passed word of mouth from potential customer to customer. Thats how to generate attention and customer interest.
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7. Your USP Must Be Perfumed with Credibility

Why should I believe you? Thats what every customer thinks when they read your advertisement or hear your marketing pitch. In fact, why should they believe you since theyve been disappointed by so many others in the past ... how are you going to prove what you say? You have to provide customers with a real reason to believe any of your claims. In this jaded world, you have to offer what marketing strategist Doug Hall calls a real reason they should ever believe you. How can your prospect know you are as good as you say you are, or will do what you say youre going to do? Whats the real reason to believe? People readily dismiss incredulous claims because advertising is filled with them. People hear or see between 1,000 and 7,000 advertising messages a day and theyre just looking for reasons to deflect another one into the waste bin. The chances are therefore quite high that your own USP will be ignored unless its perfumed with the fine air of respectability. Your toughest task will be to instill some sort of believability factor into the big bold promises that make up your USP but remember that the bigger your promises are, the more proof you will need to back them up! Proof and lots of it -- is essential because people are always looking for reasons to support the why-to-buy message. Big benefits require more credibility than little benefits, so make sure youve got some way to prove what you say thats almost concurrent with your USP. Its great if customers can see that proof at the same time they see your USP, and the best way to do that is to somehow work your proof into the fabric of your USP itself. In a moment Ill teach you how. Researchers have actually done studies on the benefits promised in USPs and found that the more you promise, the less likely your chances of being believed.
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One to two promised benefits for a product or service has historically resulted in a 44% chance of sales success whereas having three or more benefits produces only a 37% chance of product success. The moral is: do one thing exceptionally well even GREAT! -- and then advertise the heck out of it! Sometimes you can package two benefits together, as Miller Lite did with its less filling, tastes great advertising campaign, but the majority of USPs focus on one outstanding benefit to the exclusion of all others. That doesnt mean a USP should not offer multiple benefits, but that you should offer enough non-conflicting and non-confusing benefits to entice your potential customer, and not too many so as to lose credibility. Since a USP is your promise of the benefits youll deliver, it must be a promise that people believe you can fulfill. The less you promise the more youll be believed but small promises dont bring in large numbers of customers. The promise must be big enough and also credible enough to bridge the customers confidence gap. James Webb Young, author of Diary of an Ad Man once noted, Every type of advertiser has the same problem to be believed. Therefore try never to offer unsubstantiated claims, but instead double or triple your USPs effectiveness by packaging it together with some type of validating evidence. This especially holds for web marketing. In a study by Applied Research and Consulting, 550 internet users were polled by phone about online brands and online purchasing. The results? Five factors were extremely important to surfers: they wanted a website to be secure, trustworthy, convenient, private, fast. Did you notice that two of those factors had to do with credibility? Buyers are nervous and apprehensive. They are always worried about being cheated or ripped off. They want assurance that your products and services will live up to your promised specifications. If your USP therefore doesnt shine through with a reasonable degree of believability, keep working on it until that credibility naturally shines through. If you are not credible, you wont sell anything. To sell, you have to impregnate your USP with natural believability. For instance, when you hear the DeBeers famous USP creation that Diamonds are forever, not only does this USP has connotations of love everlasting, but the fact that diamonds are the hardest known natural substance on earth is psychologically hijacked to generate credibility for those emotional yearnings.
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When Federal Express uses the words absolutely, positively for next-day package delivery, those words suggest credibility, too. Absolutely, positively suggests a degree of certainty that what they promise will indeed happen, and that Federal Express isnt cheating you. You hear that and you think, They mean business! When Dominos says itll get you your hot pizza in 30 minutes or less, guaranteed or your money-back, that guarantee is enough to make their claims believable. Who would doubt a guarantee made on national TV? the law would have to enforce it. Successful companies are the ones people trust. Are there any proven ways to get customers to believe that you will deliver on the promises you make in your USP? Are there any secrets we can reveal on this matter? In fact there are all sorts of strategies that top copywriters and marketing strategists have developed for establishing the trustworthiness, credibility and believability of a USP. The field of direct marketing has developed dozens of ways to establish your credibility in a sales letter, so we will borrow from this field. Heres the situation in brief you have a product or service that you want your prospect to buy. They have a certain belief about your product or service perhaps its too expensive, not right for them, etc. that you want to change or you simply want to PROVE that what you are saying is true. You want to prove that what you have, beyond the shadow of a doubt, is a honest, effective, cost worthy solution to their problem but you need evidence. What evidence do you give them? Heres my highly guarded checklist of just a few of the many things you can use in your marketing to demolish sales reluctance, demolish the customer confidence gap and offer a real reason to believe in your marketing claims. See if you can apply any of these killer strategies to your business and remember that the more you usethe more you can elegantly stack upon one another -- the more convincing your case and the more sales youll generate: Testimonials and lots of them (the more you have and the more impressive they are the more credible your offer)
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Endorsements from a celebrity, recognized expert in the field, or connected professionals known to be sophisticated or discriminating Social proof from associating with celebrities or experts in the field (you borrow from their credibility through association) Customer success stories Word of mouth or third party recommendations Referrals from satisfied customers Sworn statements Notarized statements Awards, certificates, honors and seals of approval Copies of checks, bank statements, brokerage account balances, purchase orders, income tax forms or any type of document that shows your success or volume of business Lists of satisfied customers (customer lists) Warrantees and guarantees Free samples or trials Product demonstrations Polling results Asking customers to take self-tests so they prove to themselves the need for your product or service Explanations of your technology or describing how things work along with the mechanism Pictures (of customers or your product in use) such as before-and-after photos Professional looks or appearance (image) Logical and commonsense (kitchen top) explanations Exact measurements and statistics Advertisements that look like editorials (advertorials) Your longevity (being in business for 35 years, for instance, establishes a degree of credibility) Your address (Park Avenue, Fifth Avenue, etc. may conjure up favorable images you want associated with your business) A professional looking website, package, etc a professional design Your 800 number (since that implies longevity and finances to afford it) Articles about you (put the reprints in your advertising or packages) Favorable press or publicity News releases Brand loyalty and customer history - the fact that a customer has used you before successfully, which is a personal history with the customer that nobody else can claim Image congruence and company alignment your packaging, office and furnishings, employee uniforms, your carpet and wallpaper, the way you answer the phone or the cleanliness of your delivery trucks and offices should match the image of your promises since small acts/details
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add up or subtract from the overall perception of your credibility and trustworthiness your UMP or unique marketing perception Sincerity and honesty (truthfulness = trustworthiness)
But what if you provide perfect, irrefutable proof and the prospect still doesnt believe you? Let me tell you something changing beliefs is an uphill battle that might not be worth your efforts. Beliefs are so in-grained, run so deep and are so defended that logic rarely helps. Facts and logic cannot banish beliefs and the only way to change a belief is usually to use other beliefs to unseed the first one. So changing beliefs may be an uphill battle and there are always certain customers you may not be able to sell. As to providing proof for those who are not locked into certain beliefs, citing specific facts and figures (statistics) in your ads is probably one of the easiest ways to gain credibility for your USP. Thats why you hear television commercials saying, four out of five dentists recommend, or the one doctors recommend most. Statistic exact statistics and figures SELL! As Claude Hopkins once wrote, When we make specific and definite claims, when we state actual figures or facts, we indicate weighed and measured expressions. We are telling either a truth or a lie. People do not expect big concerns to lie. They know that we cannot lie in the best mediums. So we get full credit for those claims. In My Life in Advertising, he also wrote, Claims are always discounted. Say, Lowest prices in existence and people ignore you. Many make like claims. But say that you sell at 3 per cent net profit, and most people believe you. They do not expect you to lie in regard to definite figures. Using numbers, facts and statistics in your USP is therefore one of the best ways to gain credibility. Make your USP measurable whenever you can. Even when you schedule meetings with other people, its more impressive when you set a meeting for an unusual time such as 10:17 or 10:08 rather than 10:15 or 10:30. By the way, Mark McCormick, author of What They Dont Teach You at Harvard Business School and other best selling books, said that specifying an unusual time to start a meeting gets better on-time commencement results. Try it!
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The point is that you are a lot more believable when you say, Our advanced lubricant doesnt break down even in 750 degree heat, Well print your job for 25-50% less than any other quote with 24 hour service, or Computer screens with 15% more color resolution and 24% less radiation. Specificity suggests a reliable, factual, trustworthy claim. How about this for a USP? Most stores offer only 2 or 3 widgets but we have over 34 to choose from in 5 styles, 8 colors and 12 brand names. If its applicable, try to dimensionalize your claims with numbers and statistics. Dont say something like we are the most experienced in the business but rather, say Weve been providing customer service for 23 years, so were the oldest and most experienced in this business. We know exactly what you need and arent about to overcharge you or sell you something you dont want. When you tell people the reason why you are doing something or the story of how its done, thats another way to add credibility, too. In fact, educating your prospect on your USP in total is telling them the reason they should buy from you rather than someone else. John Kennedy, who wrote Reason Why Advertising, was the first marketer to introduce this technique and well soon go over a variety of because reasons that will help you increase your sales. Doug Hall, in Jump Start Your Business Brain, wrote that giving customers a real reason to believe you would double your ability to close a sale. Your probability of closing a sale would jump from 18% with a low real reason to believe to 42% with a high real reason to believe. Anytime you can prove something is the best form of credibility of all. Thats the best real reason to believe you can give. People dont have faith in advertising messages anymore and consumer trust is at such an all time low that people always want to you to prove you will do or perform as promised. So you must think of how you can prove what you are saying through copies of documents, customer lists, endorsements or whatever. Doug Hall, in Jump Start Your Business Brain, studied various ways by which companies tried to prove the credibility of their marketing claims and found that simple, honest truth was the strongest claim of all. When you can explain what, how, when or why in a simple, clear, honest manner, people will tend to believe you. But if you try to use sales hype and gogo sentences, the warning flags go up and credibility drops out the window. This is why marketing great Jay Abraham often tells people to admit some minor flaw in a product or service deal, because appearing 100% truthful in admitting
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some irrelevant small flaw (such as there being only one color available etc.) adds incredible credibility to a special offer or deal. People are always wondering, whats the catch? so your being honest gives you credibility and inspires people to take advantage of your deal. Of the various other ways to establish your credibility, offering a guarantee of some sort (which famous marketer Jay Abraham calls a risk reversal) has the strongest convincing effect of all. Since you cannot go wrong with a money-back guarantee, thats what a risk reversal is all about. The famous retailer, L.L. Bean, grew its company into a $1.2 billion megamonster (2003 fiscal sales) by offering a lifetime guarantee for all its products and services. From kayaks to slippers, fly rods to sweaters, everything sold at L.L. Bean is backed by the following guarantee that was started in 1912: Our products are guaranteed to give 100% satisfaction in every way. Return anything purchased from us at any time if it proves otherwise. We do not want you to have anything from L.L. Bean that is not completely satisfactory. People buy from L.L. Bean because they have completely taken away the customers risks of dissatisfaction since you can return any product for any reason at any time whatsoever. With nothing to worry about, L.L. Bean has totally eliminated any purchase reluctance. Nordstroms, for instance, is also famous for taking back any item customers might return even without a receipt. Thats a powerful incentive for shopping at this retailer and is instrumental to its business. Everyone else is going out of business but because of Nordstroms USP Service above and beyond all that is expected it has raving fans and healthy profit margins. If you want the strongest possible credibility which will increase your sales in a dramatic fashion, the best thing you can do is offer some type of money-back or performance guarantee. Brainstorm with your team on what type of guarantee you can offer, put it in print, and advertise it everywhere to start gobbling up market share like there was no tomorrow. The next most powerful means to establish credibility for advertising claims is any type of personal demonstration for how the product or service works (a sample, demonstration or some type of personal sensory experience). Thats why you often see juicer salesmen performing product demonstrations at fairs. Only by showing the juicer in action can people gain an appreciation for its capabilities.
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The kitchen logic of providing commonsense explanations was next in the line of credibility-generating factors, and including testimonials about your business or recounting the heritage or pedigree of your product / service were the least convincing ways of establishing believability. Nevertheless, you will never find a direct response writer who wont tell you to plaster your sales pieces with testimonials. Plain and simple, testimonials sell! Use them on your websites, in your sales literature, everywhere. Get as many as possible and load up your website or sales literature with as many possible testimonials as possible. Strategically place them at certain places in your copy, and work them into your text. When youre writing ads and letters to establish credibility in your product or service claims, try peppering your sales materials with terms like Take this test, Your money-back if , Seal of approval, Proven in laboratory tests, Over ___ sold, Established 19___, You risk nothing. All these phrases can work to build confidence in your claims as well. Even when you are holding a sale, customers have a tendency to shy away from biting unless you give them a reason why you are now discounting your materials and holding a sale. Try it out and youll find that whenever you add a reason why to a sales notice or announcement, youll get a far better response than from just announcing the sale by itself. Psychology researcher Ellen Langer discovered the interesting reason for this, and its important enough to go into because of the implications. As a test, she conspired with a university librarian to shut down all the library photocopy machines except for one, and then asked volunteers to try to cut in line to use that remaining photocopy machine. Whenever the person wanted to cut in line they had to phrase their request in one of three different ways. People who simply asked, Excuse me, can I use the Xerox machine received a 60% compliance rate with their polite request, but people who asked, Excuse me, but may I use the Xerox machine because Im late for class? experienced a 94% compliance rate! Adding a simple reason why had increased the positive response! Even using a bogus reason such as, Excuse me, but may I use the Xerox machine because I want to make some copies, which is a ridiculous reason, produced a 93% compliance rate because that bogus request matched the pattern of a legitimate request.
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The psychological principle they discovered is that a request plus a reason always results in a greater response. Thats why you need to offer a believable reason for holding a sale or special offer. Heres a list of some sample reasons you can use for ideas on why you are holding a sale: The factory gave us a special price which were passing on to you Our warehouse is overstocked and we need to clear out the space for the new incoming Fall merchandise Were phasing out a number of products and this is a chance to do it in one fell sweep We found some damaged inventory in the warehouse and so were going to unload it at slightly less-than-cost Our accountant is out of town and doesnt know were making this offer We have a great deal we want to take advantage of but we have to free up some cash in order to take advantage of it, and this is the best way to do it This is our slowest month and wed rather offer an exceptional value to you rather than lay off employees Weve just changed distributors / suppliers / providers / manufacturers and as a result we I found a new secret low priced source and Im passing the savings onto you This is only being offered to our best customers as This is only being offer to first time customers as Were eager to show you our new ___ and thought this exceptional value would be a good way to entice you into our store Honestly, we dont make money on this deal but we know that if we establish a positive relationship with you, theres more of a chance that youll come back to us again and stay with us as a long term customer The goods are slightly damaged in an insignificant way, or are an eyesore to the bosss wife
Whenever you offer reasons like this, you should also create a sense of urgency. For instance, you can explain that you are clearing your inventory of cassette tape decks and thats why you are discounting them, but you only have 12 left in stock. Establishing credibility for your USP or business is, in general, a challenge every marketer faces, but credibility is your most prized resource. Never destroy it, but always try to keep your customers satisfied. Examine every aspect of your business, your marketing, your offer, your persona. Ask yourself, Do you exude trust? Do you seem not 99% but 101%
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trustworthy? If theres something that causes clients or customers to worry, fix it and youll have plugged a drain on your business. Hopefully you now have enough new ideas for how you can generate credibility in a very effective manner not only in your USP, but inside your advertising copy and in the running of your business. Establish a plan to create trustworthiness in your business and I guarantee it will win you more customers. One last thing a gigantic SECRET that persuasion experts will charge you thousands of dollars to learn. When you are trying to persuade someone to buy your product, many companies use case studies or testimonials to the effect of This person is exactly like you, and it worked for them so it will work for you. Heres the better strategy for gaining credibility from the field of NLP, or neurolinguistic programming: You have your prospect, through your copy or sales talk or whatever, imagine performing the behavior you need them to perform and experiencing it in some way. Then your sales will increase. Why? When people imagine something, the brain cannot differentiate between a real experience or an imaginary experience. Therefore people open themselves up to the possibilities youve presented to them which theyve already experienced in their minds. Since this is a sort of self-proof, self-validating experience that falls under the category of credibility, Ive included it in this section. Dont be fooled this is such a powerful technique that you must never use it for immoral or unethical ends, nevertheless you can find lots of sales letters for travel packages, sports equipment and so forth that use it quite effectively.
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8. Your USP Must be Compelling Enough to Get People to Act

What good would the major premise behind all your advertising efforts be if it didnt motivate people to take action? Buy, buy, buy is the purpose of your USP or should we say sell, sell, sell. If your USP is ineffective then it wont generate enough interest in your products or services to generate sales. You must tap into what the customer wants, rather than something thats irrelevant or inconsequential, in order to generate sales but thats not all. A USP has to be persuasive. Making a USP more attractive is about the only way to make it compelling whereas in copywriting there are all sorts of methods to create a sense of urgency that motivates people to buy. Procrastination kills desire, so copywriters create scarcity with limited orders or order deadlines to compel people to take action NOW. Anytime they do that, however, they always provide a good reason why in order to have credibility for their claims. What you should focus on in your USP is making sure it offers an important, compelling reason for people to buy from you rather than anyone else. If you cannot come up with a compelling reason that motivates potential buyers, at best you will end up in sales limboland. Urgency is hard to craft into a USP, so the task of becoming compelling or motivating is not necessarily creating demand or stirring up demand on the spot, but also the task of becoming attractive as a set-up for the time when the urgency of want, demand, need or wish strikes the customer hard. To do that, you must seed the thought that you are not out there to sell to the customer, but are dedicated to solving their problems. All your advertising has to be geared to making the prospect want to buy from you. David Ogilvy once said, When I write an advertisement, I dont want you to tell me you find it creative. I want you to find it so interesting that you buy the product. Rosser Reeves also wrote, Now, what do you want out of me? Fine writing? ... Do you want masterpieces? Or do you want to see the goddamned sales curve stop moving down and start moving up?
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Eugene Schwartz wrote, The surest way to know something is failing as copy is to have someone come in and say, God that was great copy! Oh, I love the ring of that sentence! And that phrase you put in there moved me! Uh, uh! What happens is that you want them to come in and say, Jesus Christ, am I in that much danger? Or, is there really a way that I can have sexual congress five times a day? Thats what you want. These guys were very pragmatic. They wanted USPs that touched hot spots and got customers to buy. They didnt care about beauty. They just wanted USPs and advertising copy that worked. Beautiful grammar or aesthetics have nothing to do with a compelling, sales generating USP. You simply want it to suck in sales like a vacuum cleaner. The better it does that, the prettier it is. Heres a secret about some of the most successful USPs ever created: they psychologically tap into emotions. Tap into the emotions of satisfying a customer desire or relieving a customer pain and you have a pretty compelling, motivating USP. USPs can tap into either pleasure or pain, and you must determine which one of these two approaches will motivate customers to become more interested in your product or services, and buy more of your product/service or just faster. Pain is usually superior to pleasure as a form of motivation because our need to survive and feel safe rule over all other needs. If your USP targets how people feel deprived in wealth, health, love, happiness, whatever thats usually a strong motivator. Nevertheless, you must test everything, including this approach, even though its a good idea to let your customers know that you understand their problems and can solve their pain or fear of loss. There are all sorts of powerful emotions or psychological influencers and triggers you can play with for your USP, and whether you tap into fear, pleasure, pain or greed, tapping into satisfying emotions is one powerful way to create a motivating message.
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9. Your USP Should Penetrate All Aspects of Your Business

Once you have a USP, not only should your USP be upworded into all your marketing documents but even your office design and dcor should reflect your USP. Your USP unique selling proposition should penetrate into your business design and business model so that all facets of your business present a picture of image coherence with your USP. Your USP offers customers a reason to buy, but that UMP confluence of many different factors that creates an overall perception of your business reflects the very essence of your company. That coordination is how you further establish your credibility and believability. This is something Im particularly keen on emphasizing because most firms fail in this area and most marketing consultants fail to talk about it. People craft a USP and then sit back thinking it will do wonders for them without fixing those things which are out of place and create doubts. They dont focus on making their business look like it will perform on that USP. Did you ever walk into a restaurant that had a wonderful outer dcor and sign, but when you found out it was dirty inside you decided to leave because of what you feared they might serve you? Did you ever see a real estate agent drive up in an old beat-up car and think to yourself, They must not be successful if they drive this maybe I should go with someone else. Perhaps you might have, like I have, walked into a doctors office in some strange location and then immediately walked out again upon seeing that it was so unsanitary. When you are confronted with a health care practitioners office that is unkempt, you wonder if they really practice medicine. Customers run through that same set of thought processes whenever they hear your USP and happen to see some other aspect of your business. They start mentally inspecting it and comparing things to see if anything is out of kilter. Theres actually a term for this in marketing. Its called the UPA, or unconscious parallel assumption. I once worked with a nutritional supplement manufacturer who was producing a high quality liquid product frequently associated with low quality. What did I do? I immediately upgraded his labeling and packaging to a more expensive version
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that suggested just by virtue of their higher quality that his product was truly a higher quality product, which it was. Your packaging can play a great role in demonstrating the truth of your USP. It can be an advertisement itself. But thats not all. If you have truly found a USP that seduces the markets sweet-spot in a big way, you should organize your business around delivering on that USP so that over time your firm delivers upon that USP in even higher and better ways. Over time, you want to become the very embodiment of that USP. You want to be branded by that UPS. You want to establish a reputation! Striving to deliver upon your USP in even greater degrees of excellence will not only establish your business reputation, but it will put pressure on you to elevate yourself and innovate greater degrees of efficiency and customer service. Wow is that a benefit to the customers that will help you win even more marketshare! Nothing stays constant in the world, and other business competitors will eventually catch up to you in time especially when money is a motivator -unless you are constantly engaged in product and process improvements. So putting pressure on yourself to you continually deliver to your clients higher degrees of service is a wonderful way to help you maintain a competitive advantage. Crafting your USP is the first step for coming to be known for something. The next step is to become the full embodiment of delivering on that USP. The USP can even become the basis of your corporate mission. It can be the exhibition of your soul of service. Working on developing your USP will help you crystallize your own vision of what you want to do. It supplies you with the rudder for your ship of business. Most businesses are actually too busy to think about how they want to grow and what they want to stand for, but the task of working on crafting a USP gives you the opportunity to consider this weighty issue, and it will certainly define your future. It gives you an all-important chance to work on your companys strategy and its vision. The task of crafting your USP is a chance to start thinking about these
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hard questions. Without these things, a business is like a rudderless ship, for as Proverbs 29:18 states, Where there is no vision, the people perish. Take a look at the Federal Express USP once again. In order to absolutely, positively get a package to its destination overnight, all the companys operations had to be designed around supporting and executing on that USP. That USP provided identity for the firm, a rallying point around which to design its business processes if FedEx wanted to make good on its service promise. The better FedEx started to do its job of overnight delivery, the more readily the public started to believe in and trust its USP promises of reliable overnight service, and the more market-share it started to claim. Magazines will start writing articles about you, just as they did about Federal Express, when you start to perform on a big service benefit just as you advertise. These are relevant factors behind increasing your market-share, creating business success, and the principles for going from good to great. A well designed USP not only pulls in customers, but draws focus to the need for operational improvements necessary to deliver on that USP. Therefore, heres a viable game plan. First, find a USP that matters and can support your business for years. Once you craft your USP, your next job is to plaster it everywhere in your business cards, on your brochures, in articles, presentations, the phone message, in the name of your company, on your website, on your letterhead, in every e-mail that goes out (as a tagline or header), in body copy and headlines, EVERYWHERE. Even the packaging of your product can be changed to reinforce the idea of your USP. Now that things are somewhat aligned, grab that USP and keep pressing it in the customers face, always marketing, marketing, marketing with that USP. Make frequent promotions to your customers based on your USP. For instance, if your USP is service based, offer customers some free assistance or service not usually offered. Go overboard in delivering even more than your USP promised. At the same time, design your business (or execute business improvements) around your new USP so that you gradually deliver on your promise by ever increasing levels of excellence and perfection. That will create an even bigger gap between you and your competitors and further increase your competitive advantage.
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Dont just remain stagnant with your USP but always look for ways to improve your story, and then execute those plans. Presumably youre after a USP to create more business, and this overall strategy is the approach that wins further business.
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10. If Your USP Isnt Economically Feasible, Then Look Again

Any USP you craft should be a big idea thats economically feasible. It has to be big enough to support and power your business for several years. If that market youre intending to serve cannot generate enough profits, then why even bother considering it? Few people who help craft USPs ever talk about this aspect, but a USP has to represent (appeal to) a big enough market so that theres enough volume, profit and growth to support a business that trumpets it. Thats why you must investigate the market potential of various USP positions before you choose one for your company, product or service. Soon were going to craft some potential USPs for your business, but a word of warning first: you must perform some marketing analyses in your head before you select your final selling proposition because you dont want to choose one that cant support you. For instance, does the market segment youre trying to appeal to offer enough sales and future potential? Would you have to develop new products for it all the time, would you need to constantly be trolling for new customers with that USP, or could you expect to depend on repeat business? Can your customers understand your proposed USP? Does it make sense to them and is it relevant? Is it something that will have customers fighting to get through your door and make the cash register ring? Will it be difficult for your competitors to imitate you and your USP? The practicalities of it are important -- these are all important questions to consider. If you cannot deliver on your USP, or if it is economically unsupportive, scrap it for something that is. Furthermore, heres another lesson: a USP may not last forever because products change and the needs of the marketplace change. When the marketplace starts changing and the need for your products and services declines, maybe youll have to change your USP. Perhaps this means altering your USP just slightly by morphing it a bit this way or that. Maybe it means creating an entirely new USP to go with a new market.
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Maybe it means taking radical steps such as reengineering or reinventing your business. In short, you will have to adapt to survive in the business world, and that might mean changing your USP as time goes on. Competitors tend to catch up to you after awhile, and when that happens it becomes harder for customers to distinguish you from others. Thats why the physical aspects of your product or service or business such as packaging, office, location, dcor, etc. -- will also play an important part in communicating your USP. When you check what people have done with toothpaste or shampoo advertising over the decades, youll see cases where powerful USPs were altered over the decades to address new issues of consumer interest as the old hot button issues faded away. Product and services undergo evolution just like everything else, so sometimes an earlier USP success will start to fail simply because the market has switched. Dont just sit there and insist you are right when youre losing your market. Stubbornly insisting I am right holding long positions during a bear market may massage your ego, but it doesnt do anything for your bank balance. Be willing to face up to reality, change tactics and move on. Both products and USPs may have to change as consumers change, and this is as much a business issue as a USP issue. Over time, you may even have to create an entirely new product. That might even be the reason why youre looking for a new USP now. However, the one thing not to do is change your USP because you are bored with it. If a USP advertising campaign is working and you are gaining sales and marketshare, dont you dare change your message because youre bored. Mister Whipple kept squeezing Charmin bathroom tissue for years because that simple brand image kept sales going. The same for the Maytag repairman. You have to run campaigns with your USP and keep impressing the customers mind. As Claude Hopkins said, You cannot chop a tree in two by hitting it every time in a different place. Try to stay with it a USP as long as it keeps working, and look at Crest toothpaste for inspiration. It was introduced in 1958, and its still among the top brands from sporting a USP that is associated with cavity fighting! In some commercials, Crest even said they were fighting to make tooth decay a thing of the past. The problem is that this future actually started materializing! Unfortunately for Crest, cavities are fast disappearing for a variety of reasons so now other brands have gained ground by promoting fresher breath, whiter teeth,
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and other benefits that consumers now want. Crest has the option of slightly morphing its USP to emphasize tartar control, but so far hasnt yet seized upon that advantage. FedEx, too, started out with when it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight, and now they use The world, On time as their USP. Because they went to a larger worldwide market where overnight delivery cannot be guaranteed, their USP had to evolve to capture a new type of delivery promise. That promise is to imply being on time. Heres the case of a company that was able to evolve or upgrade its image and USP. Tag Heuer was always considered a sports watch, but when the company decided to upgrade its image, it started using a new USP in its advertising, Dont crack under pressure, and slowly morphed that campaign into Success is a mind game to change the prestige perception of the brand. Thats one role model to follow in how to successively change things over time, but at the same time Tag Heuer did a face-lift on its products so that there was a perceived difference along with the advertising. Before youre start out composing your USP, which well do in the next section, you should know that as a general rule of thumb, most businesses should look for a USP that can support at least five years of business life. In other words, a good USP has grow power. A good USP identifies a hard-tocopy or easy-to-survive marketing strategy that will be profitable for a long time. You want your business to be commercially viable! Five years is usually long enough to get a business up and run and into profits that will recover the development costs. With todays rapidly shrinking product cycles, however, a product USP in high tech can last as little as 6 months! Needless to say, just as it is fruitless to create a product no one needs or spend years writing a book that no one wants to buy, you also dont want to craft a USP for a market that cannot support you. The USP you select or create should be based on goals for growth as a company. When you are creating your USP, give some thought to its potential longevity. When the market significantly changes, when you want to introduce another revolutionary breakthrough or just improve your business offerings, thats a great time to alter your business design and USP, too. Creating a USP is a continuous process, or a process subject to constant review, because you always have to make sure you dont become obsolete.
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Be careful about creating a new USP every time theres a sales dip because you dont want to carelessly discard a brand image you worked years to cultivate. There might be other options available such as creating a second or even third product or service. Or, since different markets might call for a different look and feel for the same product or service, one option is to simply dress it up differently and change your USP slightly for each micro-market segment. A final word of warning is in order. Before you finalize your unique selling proposition, consider testing it. If you have two competing USP ideas, test one against the other. See which USP rings best with your customers. The only rule we know of for getting better at selling is to experiment, so test your story on different groups of people before you finalize it. Test using classified ads or other vehicles to judge the demand of one sort of USP over another. Find out which ones bring in the most customers and profits, and then determine which one you want to go with. The true test of a USP is whether it sells for you in the marketplace. If one USP sells more than another and offers a brighter future, then all other things being equal, go with that one. Analyze the situation in terms of the short term and long term picture concerning volume, profits and repeat business and only then make your final decision. How do you know which USP you formulate will be best? Test it through some direct mail campaigns or advertisements, and see which one attracts the greatest response. Theres an old saying in advertising that measurement ends argument, so floating two or three USP test ideas in the marketplace, and then counting the response will tell you which way to turn with your decisions. As Claude Hopkins wrote, Almost any question can be answered cheaply, quickly and finally by a test campaign. This is the only way to answer them, not by arguments around a table. Go to the court of last resort The buyers of your product. With those ten short lessons now behind you, its time to go into the top ten mind methods for composing your killer million dollar maker USP.
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The USP Workshop: 10 Easy Ways to Create a Million Dollar USP Packed With Emotional Voltage
McGraw-Hill publications ran a memorable ad many years ago which was so good that I still remember it nearly two decades later. If youre interested, a copy can be found in David Ogilvys famous book, Ogilvy on Advertising, which everyone should pick up for their marketing library. The advertisement pictures a balding old man, in bow-tie and glasses, sitting in a swivel chair staring at you with a stern countenance. The grumpy old man is looking at you squarely in the face, saying, I dont know who you are. I dont know your company. I dont know your companys product. I dont know what your company stands for. I dont know your companys customers. I dont know your companys record. I dont know your companys reputation. Nowwhat was it you wanted to sell me? Priceless! Lets face it. Customers do not care about you or your company. They dont care how long youve been in business or how great you are. All they care about is themselves and the all important question, Whats in it for me? How do I benefit? What is the ultimate advantage I get from interacting with you. You must therefore give prospects a compelling reason to buy from you rather than from someone else. Thats why you have to come up with a unique selling proposition. So how do you do it? What is your unique selling proposition? With the basics behind us, here now are ten easy but powerful ways to come up with your own knock out, drop em dead USP. I want you to take out a pen and notepad, close the door, turn off the TV and radio, and get ready to write down the answers to these ten exercises
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and then youll have it. Youll have the basics of a USP that you can then hone and shine until it sparkles like a diamond and attracts all sorts of customers and business. Most advertising today is slick or creative without being persuasive, but youve just taken the opposite route of being persuasive and now trying to say it in the most effective way possible. Thats why crafting your USP is one of the most powerful things you can do for your business. Dont do these exercises in your head! Its imperative that you get a pen and paper and write them down! Go now go get them. This book will still be waiting. I dont want you to be afraid to take your time going through these ten methods, or even to ask others to help you with the process. The USP is so important for your business that help from any and all quarters should be warmly welcomed and appreciated. You never know where that million dollar idea will come from, and Ive had executives, CEOs, managing directors and entrepreneurs tell me stories of how they got some of their best ideas from the doorman, the taxi cab driver, the stock boy or the secretary. Age, sex, job, education or appearance has nothing to do with it, so if you can assemble a team to help work on generating ideas then gather your brain trust together and work through these exercises in a group. Get as many brains as you can to help you craft your USP because your very survival may depend on it. You never know where the insight lies, and having a team work on this together can produce surprising results. By the time you are finished going through all ten methods, I guarantee you will have your USP. If you are by yourself and someone interviews you with a tape recorder so that you dont have to stop and think but can just wax eloquent with your answers, thats a creative way to come up with a USP as well. Your USP your offer to customers is the difference between mediocrity and greatness, between failure and success. Just flip through a Yellow Pages phone directory to see how many people are listed under a random category such as carpet cleaning, chiropractor, lawyer, accountant, photographer, car repair, caterer, nursery, and restaurants.
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Pick any category you like and youll see the competition most people face. Because of that competition, you now understand the reason for your USP. How can you stand out when you have all these competitors? What bigger service claim can you make than others? How can you set yourself apart from others in a dramatically different fashion? What special appeal can you make? What special promise can you make for your product or services? Go through these following ten exercises and you will find the USP of your dreams, the future engine that will power your business. Even if the questions seem similar to one another, do the exercise anyway because what might appear to be a slightly different phrasing to you can often prompt the mental breakthrough you need to create a marvelous USP. Defining your USP is a process well worth the effort, so be willing to sit down and put some time into this. Be ready to sit down for a few hours by yourself or with colleagues, workers, friends or advisors, to get started. Then do the homework you are given and write things down. Dont do these exercises in your head write them down. Once you found the core of your USP, keep going over it to see if you can reduce it to its utmost simplicity to make it even more memorable and compelling. Keep editing it and distilling it until it uses as few sentences as possible. Remember your USP isnt a slogan but a short attractive explanation and reason why people should trust you and honor you with their business. Its a short elevator speech of why someone should buy from you rather than anyone else. Make it focused on what the customers want, and try to tap into their emotions. Once youve established the gist of your USP and then honed and refined it and tested it, then and only then should you turn to the road of expensive advertising to go all out. Advertising is the task of getting your USP into the minds of potential consumers at the lowest possible cost, but you dont dare start spending money on advertising until you know you have an effective proposition. So first draft a few USPs, chisel away at them to make your phrasing more attractive, and then inexpensively test it or them in the market. If you are satisfied with your results, know its something you can deliver on and it can economically support you, then and only then can you start to spend the big bucks on rearranging your business and promoting yourself with new advertising.
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Test everything is my mantra, so take this careful, cautious route and youll be on your way to business heaven. The best marketers test everything and test constantly to discover new marketing breakthrough, fine tune their offers and ultimately produce better results. This idea of testing and then optimizing upon the best results you find, is so important that I have to say the following: there is no elegant way to innovate and create business breakthroughs other than to test new, wild, unusual, crazy and even messy things conservatively, and then improve upon the best that you find. Thats the secret of business success. First test new things, and then set about working on how to optimize your results. There needs to be a creative tension between these two poles of testing and optimization without getting stuck in either paradigm. If you simply focus on optimizing what you already have -- which increases the predictability and reduces the variability of your results -- you wont be open to the wild, crazy and innovative ideas that will produce new products and business breakthroughs. Without new products you will, in time, die. On the other hand, if you are always in the innovative mode of brainstorming breakthrough new products and services without ever optimizing, streamlining and improving what you have so that it is cost effective, elegant and efficient, your competitors will be able to seize upon your breakthroughs, improve them and then use those improvements to kill you in the business arena. For instance, when researchers looked at Thomas Edisons list of inventions, they at first believed he was a super-creative guy. Actually, Edisons main competitor, Nikola Tesla (who invented AC power, wireless communication, microwaves, radar, vacuum tubes, remote controlled robots, and other things too numerous to list), was far more inventive than Edison, probably because of the mental meditations he used to pursue for his inventions. Edison had the same rate of success as most other inventors but simply tested more things than other people. The key to Edisons prolific success was that his team was set up in such a way that gave them a magnitudes higher ability to test all sorts of ideas. Thats why Edison could come up with so many inventions. He wasnt more creative or inventive than other people (As stated, Tesla far outshone him). Rather, he simply tested more ideas than anyone else. Simply put, if you want to succeed in marketing and grow like youve never grown before in the past, youve got to engineer breakthroughs. However, you only get breakthroughs if you try some new things conservatively.
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Thats why I like to say test so that you fail fast and inexpensively, but dont abandon your goal with the first failure Thats the key to marketing success. Be flexible, test things, keep at it. Nothing is proven until its tested. Even in creating a USP, you can craft several alternatives and then see which one is most appealing to your customers. Thats the final proof of whos right. Before its tested, an idea just an opinion rather than a truth, so test the craziest marketing ideas and then subject those ideas to optimization after they have been proven true. With that in mind, here, now, are the ten ways to forge a highly effective USP.
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METHOD 1: Roy Williams Competitive Comparisons

The fist way of generating your USP is to make a comparison audit between yourself and your competitors. In this method, youre looking to find out if you already have a USP without knowing it. You might have already been operating for years with an unstated USP that you developed in response to your competition, but without getting credit for it, so the first thing were going to do is try to unearth it if you have one. Heres the steps to follow: Step 1: Write down every possible reason a customer might currently have for buying from you every possible reason. These are the benefits you offer. Involve everyone you can in writing down every possible reason a prospect should do business with your firm. You should have dozens of reasons why they should be working with or buying from you. Step 2: Next, cross out everything on that list that is also true of your competitors. Thats how you get rid of what isnt unique. This is a way to find out how youre dramatically different from everyone else. If something is true of your competitors, eliminate it from your list. You want a list of what you do that your competitors dont do, or what you do better than your competitors. Step 3: The few listings left on your list are the core of your USP. They are your differential advantage, your uniqueness factors, your competitive advantage and the reason customers come to you. Now your job is to sift through these reasons and turn the biggest or most important one into a USP that youll publicize. Step 4: Go through the remaining list and prioritize those reasons that are the most important ones to your customers. Prioritize their importance from your customers point of view. You want to focus on why they want to deal with you from their point of view. Step 5: Decision time time to select the one or two benefits that become the core of your USP. You already know how you differ from your competitors and what you do thats most important to your customers. Now you have to determine which one to highlight as the big difference and unique promise for your USP. Only you can do this by determining where your strengths lie.
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Which of those proposed benefits, when advertised to the max, will lead to the greatest market-share and profits? Which ones are most easily communicated? Which ones would be hard for your competitors to duplicate if you started eating into their market-share? Which ones are unique? For instance, Do you offer a 100% money back, or better than money back guarantee? Do you guarantee your price will not be beaten? Do you offer better service than your competitors? Do you delivery on time, or its free?
Youve got to come up with a unique reason for customers to do business with you that makes them clearly choose you instead of your competition. Thats going to come from being customer-focused. Youve got your list of customer priorities, so consider the unique benefits you offer (not features) from the customers point of view, make your final selection and turn that into your USP. Basically, all you do is sit down to make a list of the benefits you offer to your customers and then you make a similar list for your competitors. Next you make a comparison between the two lists to uncover any advantages you offer that competitors do not. That comparison becomes the basis of your USP. Its as simple as that! Simply write down 5, 10, 15 or even 20 reasons why you should be the only logical product or service supplier of choice for any prospect you encounter, get rid of benefits that are not unique, and make whats left the basis of your USP. When it gets right down to it, why people should hire you or buy your product or service should be the centerpiece of your USP, and it should be an offer they cant refuse. Thats what its all about.
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METHOD 2: The Gary Halbert Index Card Shuffle

If the first way of generating your USP failed you, this method will go after your USP from a different sort list generation angle. This second method for crafting a killer USP is very much like the first method, only you just concentrate on inventorying the benefits of your product or service. You dont look at your competitors at all. The following method was popularized by the famous copywriter Gary Halbert who said to just get a bunch of index cards and on one side write down a product or service feature. On the other side of the card, turn that feature into a benefit. What pain is it curing, what pleasure is it causing? How do you turn features into benefits? We just use the methods I taught you previously. Every time you look at one of your product or service features, put yourself in your customers shoes and ask yourself, So what? Whats in it for me (WIIFM)? What does that do for me? Answer that question in fact, design your entire business around how you can serve your customer, around what you can do for them because thats spiritual marketing. Thats the soul of service. Thats the type of marketing and business set-up that will succeed. What you want to offer your customer are BENEFITS. Big benefits, benefits galore. When you write down the answer to that question then you will have turned a feature into a benefit, and benefits are what customers want. Another way to turn features into benefits is to write down a product or service feature followed by, which means and then fill in the rest of the sentence. For instance a computer guy may say your machine has 30 meg of RAM, but a smart copywriter would explain you can operate three programs at the same time and your machine will run faster with this much memory. As another example, if someone says their laptop computer has a battery that lasts for 8 hours, you would write down which means that youll never suffer the hassle of your computer shutting down during some important project youre working on while on the road. After you finish writing a whole stack of those cards one for each feature/benefit combination -- keep flipping through the cards and mentally 86
ranking them. You want to select the strongest, or most powerful or most unique benefit and put that card on the top of your deck. Prioritize in terms of whats most important to the marketplace, hardest for a competitor to duplicate, or what you do best. Every situation is different, so prioritize accordingly. Sort the remaining cards in descending order of importance and arrange your card deck in the appropriate order. That most powerful benefit (taking uniqueness, compellingness and other factors into account) should become the key of your USP and the headline of any ads you might run. The remaining benefits might become sub-headings throughout your advertising copy. If that method doesnt appeal to you, the following similar method is also one you can try. Here are the steps to follow: Step 1: Create a fact list of all the properties, features, attributes, characteristics of your product or service (where it came from, what it does, how its made, how it does what it does, how you do it, how many gizmos it has, and so forth, your audience, target market, etc.) You want to collect information to tell what problems you solve and what the end result of solving them will be for your customers. Step 2: Now turn those features into benefits and create two benefits lists: (1) A tangible benefits list (such as the product is light weight, using it only takes 3 minutes, etc.), which usually refers to benefits that can be measured, and (2) An intangible benefits list (you can lift it with one finger, because its faster you save time, etc.). Intangible benefits most often have to do with our desires, hopes and dreams and with feelings or emotions of success, happiness, being loved or admired, Step 3: Okay, staring time. Youre going to be juggling things in your head, waiting for a mental breakthrough. Take your time and play with the two lists you just wrote. Keep looking at them until a unique, important, believable benefit jumps out at you that you can loudly trumpet through the streets. That benefit will be the basis of your USP.
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Whether you come at it through shuffling index cards or by staring at a piece of paper, you have to go through a mental ranking procedure to see what is the most striking, important, overwhelming benefit you can offer your potential customers. Its a complicated process in making this decision because you must factor in questions such as which benefits are most easily communicated or not easily duplicated by your competitors. However you do it, focus on finding the most powerful benefit or promise offered by your product or service, and make that the center of your USP. Tell the customer how buying from you is to their ultimate advantage.
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METHOD 3: Whats Your Greatest Frustration?

This third method for creating your unique selling proposition is a method popularized by marketing guru Dan Kennedy, one of the brightest marketing minds on the planet. Basically, you ask your clients what they are dissatisfied about most with your type of product or service and what they care about most. Find out what they are dissatisfied with, and then figure out a way to dissolve those complaints through a business model that is different from your competitors. Then, place the fact that youve solved that issue squarely in the middle of your USP. After all, thats what people want fixed when they deal with your type of business and if you want to be in that type of business, fix the problems most customers have so that they beat a path to your door! In other words, find out what is less than perfect about the business you are in. Next, figure out how to get rid of those imperfections by making your business, product or service better than any other option available. Finally, start advertising this competitive advantage. If you need more help to catch this concept, heres the step-by-step plan for how you do it. You might be able to do this yourself if you have made a habit of standing in your customers shoes, but its better for you if you actually go out and ask a few of your customers the following question(s), What is your greatest frustration about dealing with ___ [your industry, type of business, product or service]? Whats your biggest worry in dealing with ___ [your industry, type of business, product or service]? Whats the thing you hate most about dealing with ___ [your industry, type of business, product or service]? Why do you really hate coming to ___ [your type of business, product or service professional]?
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Once you get your answer, now you know exactly what customers want because you now know what they want to avoid. If you can ask people whats missing in the marketplace, then do it. Dont bluesky it and just guess what people want pulling any old concept out of the blue sky. Do some homework and research instead. When I first started writing books years ago I had several messages I wanted to put in print and deliver in the world regardless of their financial returns. I wrote those books, even though I knew they would not make money, because it was part of my lifes plan and spiritual commitment, and with them out of the way I now carefully always determine if there is a want and need for my topics before I start writing. Many people are too close to their business and think they know better than their customers. Therefore they are hesitant, afraid or unwilling to ask their customers what they think. Big mistake. If you try to give your customers something they dont want -- or something you think they want without asking them or testing -- youll just be like everyone else in your business. Its like taking two or three years to write a book and then finding out that no one wants to buy it after youve wasted all that time and effort. A frustrating mistake! Its better to do market research ahead of time. Go ask your customers what they want, whats important to them, what they hate about your product or service. When you know precisely what they want since they just told you -- go out and redesign your business so that it offers the very solution to those very same customers frustrations. Thats your key to superstardom. If you make yourself the singular solution that relieves the pain, frustration or anger customers normally feel in dealing with your type of business, then customers will not hesitate to come to you rather than others. Remember the Dominos Pizza example fresh hot pizza delivered in 30 minutes or less, guaranteed. By becoming the very solution customers want which might require a business redesign or simply verbalizing loudly what youre already doing since you figured it out ages ago youve found the core of your USP. Go out now and poll your customers or clients for some answers to the following questions. Dont be hesitant about doing it because this can be some of the most important market research youll ever perform:
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What frustrates your customers the most about dealing with your type of business? What gives them heartburn thats involved with your product or service and keeps them awake at night tossing and turning? What are they most afraid of happening when they deal with your type of business? What do they hate the most about your type of business? What do they wish would be better? What do they complain about most? What bothers them, what irks them, what negative stories do they tell to their family, friends and neighbors? When it comes to your type of business, what are they angry about or who are they angry at? What do they secretly ardently desire most would happen?
Frame your USP in terms of the solution these issues and make sure you offer that solution. Basically, you must identify your prospects biggest headache, and then position your products or services as the ultimate solution to their desires. Naturally youll have to back up what you say with testimonials and proof, such as guarantees, lists of satisfied customers, or the fact that youre so busy. You also have to take away any and all risks of buying. As an example, lets take the auto repair industry, which has a reputation for dishonesty in making unnecessary repairs or charging for parts that were never replaced. Whenever people take their cars in for repairs, many are worried about being cheated. A good USP might therefore be that the auto shop wont fix anything that isnt broken, or will call you by phone with fixed prices and ask for pre-approval of any repairs, or might offer some other advantage to customers such as the loan of a car while yours is out of service. All these are possible USP angles that then have to be crafted into a simple USP statement. With this USP generation technique, youre basically searching to find what marketer David Frey calls performance gaps in the marketplace, and then your USP must articulate how you fill those gaps with your product or service. If your business requires a redesign in order to fill them, then by golly, redesign it if you truly want sales and market-share! Always make sure you can deliver on your USP promises so if a redesign is in order to make good your claims, then do so. Its all about designing a business which delivers service anyway
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Someone once asked J. Paul Getty how to get rich. Find a need and fill it, was his reply. In his autobiography, How to Be Rich, he also advised people to guarantee their product or service and give better service than the competition. When you tell the world how you will solve their problem in a way thats guaranteed and better than the competition, thats the basis of a USP.
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METHOD 4: Barney Zicks You Know How

This is a particularly clever way to generate a killer unique selling proposition. Its simple, too. You basically record yourself explaining to someone else how your business is different than others and Presto! You have your USP. Heres the procedure to follow. Try it on for size. Go get a tape recorder, turn it on, and then pretend you are talking to a customer or close friend and then finish one or the other of the following sentences: Do you know how ___ (state the pain or problem your prospect has)? You know how most ___ (use something theyre familiar with)? That done, its time to tell how you solve that problem. Finish your introduction by answering along the lines of the following: Well, what I do is ___ (state the solution your product or service does). I help ___ to do ___ I work with ___ to ___ Were the only ones who ___ Youll benefit from dealing with us because we are the only company in the ___ business that ___ Fill out the sentences and youve got the core of your USP. Its as simple as that. In answering the question, youll naturally bring out what you offer to your customers that makes you dramatically different from your competitors. These are the benefits your future customers can hope to gain from you that will make you the special one they call on with trust.
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Lets take a look at marketer Dan Kennedys early USP so that we can bring up another important point to this technique: I devise direct marketing strategies for all types and sizes of business that eliminate all the fat and waste from their advertising and increase the productivity of their sales people by at least 1000%, Guaranteed. Dan Kennedy If youre clever enough and work at it, you can phrase your answer in just the right way so that people are prompted to ask, Wow, how do you do that? Then you have the perfect lead-in for your business and the making of a million dollar business. Just the fact that you can provoke enough interest to generate that response shows youre on the right track. Lets take a look at how a computer programmer might use this technique to create a USP for his business. Example: You know how most computer programmers will charge you $100 an hour to create the software you need, and then youre stuck with it whether or not you like it because they dont guarantee anything? Well, what I do is charge only $75 an hour - thats 25% less - and I make sure youre completely satisfied with my work by checking with you every week for two months following the completion of your program, which is written exactly according to your specifications. And to make sure you get exactly what you want and need, we go through my exclusive, 5-step checklist questionnaire to make positively sure I build exactly what you need as quickly as possible. Plus, if your needs change after Im done with the program, I will come out and update your program for only $500 anytime within the first 2 years of installation. After you have your answer down, it can be turned into either a long or short USP with ease: Software development at 25% discounts completely guaranteed for 2 years of installation. Heres several other examples of this technique to give you a better idea of how to do it: Most plumbers charge extra for weekend or after hour calls, but we won't charge you anything extra. Do you know how most car dealers sell you a car and then make the sale final? Well what we do is give you 3 whole days of driving
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the car around on your own to decide if you want to keep it and if not, you can come back and trade it in for any other car on the lot. Do you know how most dating agencies take your money and help you for a limited time, if at all, during which you may not even find anyone of interest? Well for a one-time modest fee we never stop introducing people to you until you tell us to stop because you finally found the right person. You know how difficult it is for some people to get organized? Well, what I do is help people stay goal oriented and productive with time management and project training. I come in to their business twice a month for 4 months to help them organize all their files according to our 5step method so that they easily slide into the habit of organization that they can stay with for life. Answering the question of how youre uniquely different, and turning it into a USP, is how you turn your business into the ultimate vacuum cleaner that sucks in customers and sales. Once youve got your basic USP, next you have your old task of polishing it and refining it, and finally the task of cost effectively delivering it to your target market through advertisements, radio spots, brochures, circulars and all sorts of marketing vehicles. First record your USP and then boil it down, chip away at it and polish it until you arrive at the clear basics. Make it pretty and refined and then you are ready to advertise it everywhere. Heres a final hint to this technique try to paint a picture in your prospects mind. Communicate your USP by referring to some scene, some picture, some analogy that the customer can understand. Customers more often buy based on emotions rather than on Mister Spock-type logic, and the way to tap into those emotions is by painting pictures in their minds. You have to use words customers can relate to. So when you explain how most competitors do something wrong, try to use words or descriptive sentences that paint a picture and bring up emotions. Most of all, make sure that the picture you paint for yourself is the one that offers the emotional cure. Oh, yes one more thing. Now that youve got your differential advantage, try to boil it down to one short, simple, succinct sentence. That will take some work thinking about it and mulling it over in your head, and a bit of artistry to make it sing. However, the effort of
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reducing your words to a punchy, memorable sentence or two will be quite worth the effort.
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METHOD 5: Your Reason for Being

If you are in the situation of a highly competitive market, there are probably a lot of people doing what you are already doing, such as selling a product or service similar to yours. Then why did you get into that business in the first place? If there is a special reason you got into your business such as the desire to do a better job than others or make the world a better place, that might actually be the basis of a highly successful USP, so lets explore this. For instance, you might have seen a market niche that needed to be filled, an opportunity that might be exploited, a group of customers whose needs werent being met, or you might have created a business to make a difference in the world. All of these are reasons for coming into being. Ask yourself, why did you decide to develop a competitive product or enter into this market? Whats the point of doing it all for what reason are you here? How do you matter for your customers? With those issues in mind, see how you would finish any of these sentences: My product is the only one that ___ [does what?] for ___ [for whom?] by ___ [how does it deliver this benefit?] ... better than any other product in the world. Were the best in the world at Were most proud of our ability to ___ and no one else will do that for you. Youll know it was one of our customers when you hear them say ___. Why even bother to be in a highly competitive business unless you can offer a benefit to your customers that others cannot match? What is it? What are you best at, what are you most proud of, why did you create your product or service in the first place? When you got started, why did your original customers purchase from you rather than someone else? What do you do thats so special?
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Write out the answer and you have the basis for a highly effective USP.
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METHOD 6: Doug Halls Dramatic Difference

Doug Hall, author of Jump Start Your Business Brain (one of the best marketing books Ive read in years) and Meaningful Marketing, is the originator of the following method for creating your USP. I love Dougs book, Jump Start Your Business Brain, because it stresses that there are three things you must do to maximize the chances of success for your business, product or service. These three MUSTs have to do with building a USP: 1. You must always identify your products OVERT BENEFIT. Its whats in it for the customer. Its what they are getting for the money they spend. 2. You must always communicate your products DRAMATIC DIFFERENCE. Thats whatever it is about your product or service that makes it unique. 3. You must always give your customers a REASON TO BELIEVE. That might be a guarantee, warranty, statistics, test results, your reputation or even your pedigree. In one word, its PROOF. When you come up with answers that follow that checklist, youve got yourself the makings of a killer USP. The big question is how to elicit the answers to those questions. Once again, just respond to a few questions. You can have someone interview you to elicit your answers, which is what I do for my own clients, or you can take out a tape recorder and record yourself finishing out the following sentences: _____ [your business name] is the first to offer _____ [the overt benefit you provide] thats because of _____ [give them a real reason to believe its true]. What makes _____ [business name] dramatically different is that its the only company to offer [some dramatic difference] _____. _____ [company, product or service] is a ____ [definition] that provides _____ [benefit] to _____ [target audiences] in _____ [market].
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Basically, to come up with your USP youre answering the question, What makes you special? After youve got that down on paper, next you keep rewording your USP simplifying and polishing it once again --until your customer knows exactly what they can expect from you. Example: Bright Beginnings Day Care is the first day care to teach children early computer skills because were fully stocked with two dozen multimedia computers containing game software and all sorts of educational programs. That information is the core of the USP. The only thing left is to cut out the fat and turn it into music. If you are really and truly dramatically different than everyone else, and you start advertising your uniqueness in an appealing, bold and brash way, youve got what we marketers call Take-No-Prisoners USP potential. Use it, flaunt it, make millions and send me a check!
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METHOD 7: Dan Kennedys Famous Question

I must admit that I highly respect Dan Kennedys marketing prowess. Author of The Ultimate Marketing Plan, The Ultimate Sales Letter and No B.S. Sales Success, he is one of those marketing mavens who has worked with thousands of clients selling all types of products and services. He can truly say to almost marketing situation, Been there, done that. Credit for this next USP-generation technique goes to Mr. Kennedy as well. Basically, to come up with your USP, pretend there is a customer in front of you who asks you the following question, which you must answer: Why should I do business with you above any and all the other options available to me, including doing nothing or whatever I am doing now? Why should I choose your business / product / service versus any and every other competitive option available to me? When youve come up with a clear answer that differentiates you from all your competition directly or indirectly, youve got your USP. That answer which tells people why they should choose your product or service, versus doing nothing at all -- can turn things upside down in your business life. Your USP must instantly make clear why people should select and do business with you above all other choices. Other choices includes the competition, and your competition is every other place where your prospect can spend their money. Your real competition is EVERYTHING that is not you. Now in answering these questions, you have to speak from the customers point of view. You have to focus on giving them a unique buying advantage so that they favor you with their business rather than someone else. And you have to offer such a good deal that they cant pass it up, which will in turn encourage them to spend their money versus doing nothing at all. Remember that doing nothing is your competitor, too! This question, whats in it for me, is actually what runs through a customers mind when they are evaluating purchase or association decisions. Prospective customers do mentally ask themselves, which is Why should I buy from you over the next person with a similar product or service?
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Be sure you can answer that with some sort of unique, differential advantage, otherwise youll be just another me, too nondescript business thats losing sales. Youve got to create some sort of perception that you offer some advantage to the customer that they cannot get elsewhere. As just five small examples, that advantage might be: A 100% money back guarantee On time delivery The lowest price The largest selection 24-hour service or shopping availability
Answering Dan Kennedys question is a way to naturally uncover your relevant advantage over existing customer options, and the best answer you can come up will include your specific, overt claims of superiority. When youre forced to defend why a prospective customer should buy from you or deal with you rather than with someone else, frankly youre forced to come out with your USP. Answer that question and your USP drops into your lap. Want two examples? In just 10 minutes, I show people how they can increase the traffic and conversion rates for their websites so that they can make thousands if not hundreds of thousands more per year. I am a copywriter who specializes in increasing sales for nutritional products and turning those customers into ravenous repeat buyers.
When customers hear your USP and then ask, How do you do that?, you know youve started to hit the right chord.
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METHOD 8: Ask Your Customers Why They Buy to Uncover Your Hidden USP
Theres an old rule in business called the 80/20 rule. It says that 80% of your sales or profits probably come from about 20% of your customers. Interesting. To craft your USP, you should perform some research to determine the buying motivation for your target audience. So heres what you do. First, find out who those 20% best or top customers are. Because they are your best customers, they are your most important ones. They are probably the ones accounting for the most profits or volume, so they are probably the most valuable customers to your business. If you had a choice, youd probably want more of those high volume or high profit or best customers than anyone else, wouldnt you? Since thats the case, its their opinion which matters most, not the opinions of the bottom 20%! Go out and ask some of those top 20 percenters why they do business with you rather than someone else. If you uncover those reasons, you might have the basis of a USP which you can then define and begin promoting on a large scale. Heres how to gather customer feedback on your product or services. Visit your customers, call them up, ask them to fill out a response card, take them to lunch, whatever and tell them youre conducting a survey of recent buyers and are looking for candid feedback and suggestions. Tell them youre looking to improve your services and want to know if everything is all right, why they picked you and how you can do better next time. If you dont have a top 20% situation, try to poll those customers who have shown the highest loyalty and satisfaction with your services. Or, you can just do a blanket poll of all your customers. It simply depends on whether you want to attract more of one particular type of customers than others. In any case, you want to probe their minds to find out how to attract more like them.
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You must find out why your customers bought from you. In fact, you cannot become a great salesperson unless you know why your customers are buying from you! The point is to start seeing things from the customers point of view. Listen! You can always build a believable USP and then an advertising campaign based on customer experiences and perceptions. But first, you have to find them out. How do you do that? By asking and by listening! ASK them! The soul of service is listening to customers to give them what they want. Most people are too busy running tapes around inside their heads to hear outside what anybody is saying. Thats why I run a little website called www.meditationexpert.com that teaches people how to silence their inner dialogue and start listening to what others have to say. Silencing yourself and listening to customers is something you must learn to do. When you can free yourself of self-centered thoughts and ego just a little, and put your own agenda aside to concentrate on what the other party has to say, you can become an expert at consultative selling who will really and truly help your clients by servicing them AND youll end up selling more in the process, building friendships rather than just business relationships, and creating a richer life whose rewards go far past the money! In entrepreneuring the service function, which puts others ahead of yourself, you can find your highest calling. Silencing your wandering mental dialogue that stands in the way of truly listening to your client and your true self is what www.meditationexpert.com is all about. Incidentally, thats why selling is an honorable, noble profession because you help solve other peoples problems and alleviate their pains. You provide the solution they have been seeking. What you must not do is operate your business on conjecture, assuming that customers want such-and-such without ever asking them. Most people are afraid to ask their customers questions, or theyre afraid of the feedback they might get, or they are just too lazy to do it, but you have to make those calls. When youre on the phone or at lunch with a client you need to talk to in person -- this is the time to ask how you can do things better so that you can stay on top of the market:
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Ask them why they bought from you. Ask them how you can improve your products and services. Ask them what theyd like to see you do better or differently next time. Ask them what your competitors are doing that turns them off. Ask them about whats most important to them IN GENERAL about buying your product/service and how they know when they have it. In short, find out what your customers want and then give it to them! Do you want to know the secret sentence to use to find out how to get more and more market share? Simply ask your customers the following magic sentence, If I could change one thing about how we did business with you, what would it be? After they answer your question, follow it up with another, If we could have changed one other thing, what would it have been? Of course, then you have to institute those changes. Satisfied customers keep coming back, and they are a constant source of referrals to others. Thats why theres more than one reason (having to craft your USP) for performing this little audit. These top customers the important ones -- will be the ones to tell you what your real niche or core competency is. Theyll tell you why people buy from you. Careful, careful a caution is in order right now ! If you think you are best at one thing and you find out they think you are best at another you have a MAJOR problem. It might be a real problem or just a perceptual problem, but you have a problem. Readjust your USP to spotlight what theyre telling you and also, get better at it. Or, you can try to fix what you thought you were good at if thats what pulls the most market-share and profits. Whatever you do, whenever theres a conflict like this, you have to rethink your positioning. How do your customers think about you? How do they remember you? What do they really think of your business, product or services? Where do they perceive you as being the only game in town?
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Whats the one word or phrase that comes to their mind when they think of you? Is it service? Price? Quality? Convenience? What do they say you stand for? Where do you come in first with their mental perceptions? Asking customers where you or your product or service is most significant may seem too open-ended. The following sentences, answered from the customers perspective, might therefore help you uncover interesting USP possibilities as well as other potential avenues for improving your business: The main reason I choose ___ [your business, product or service] is because ___ The one word that best stands for ___ [your product or service] is ___ Everybody else does ___ while you ___ The first thing that comes to mind when I think of your business [or you personally] is ___ ___ is unique and special because ___ The one thing you do well is ___ The first time I tried ___ [you] I thought ___ I always come back to you because ___ The first time I bought from you was because ___ When I use ___ [your product or services] I feel ___ The biggest problem with ___ [your product or service] is ___ If only ___ [your company or product brand] would ___ instead of ___ I choose ___ brand because it is not ___ ___ brand is symbolized by ___ Other people buy from ___ because ___ ___ [your company] is where it is today because of ___
Why are you special? Why are customers buying from you? What pops into their minds when they hear your name? How would they describe your business, product or service to someone else? Find out by asking, and then do more of it! Be able to finish the statements, My customers tell me they buy from me because ___. My customers tell me they choose to do business with me because ___. My customers tell me they decided to work with me because ___. The reasons my customers are happy is because ___. 106
Ask your customers -- and your employees as well -- why youre special or different from the rest. Ask them what makes your business different or better than the competition. Ask them whats good about your company and the competition. Don't just use your own instincts. Ask! Customers are dying to tell you and the answers they give can even supply you with valuable testimonials and endorsements you can use in your marketing efforts. Ask them if you can share their remarks with other potential buyers. It is your customers' views that are the important ones, not yours, so get out there and ask. Most people are too close to their product or service to actually know whats unique or most important about them, so make it a rule to ASK. One more thing look for feedback from customers and from people who are QUALIFIED to give advice. Feedback from non-customers and opinion givers who are not qualified is called chatter. Chatter is meaningless and useless. You have to get chatter out of your head. Chatter is opinion from people who do not matter, or who are unqualified to offer an opinion and yet do. If you are in a situation where your customers might talk about you and they also might also separately talk about your product or service. If they give you separate answers like that, make sure you blend the two when you come up with a final USP statement. Im being honest when I tell you, one of the best ways to come up with a USP for an ongoing business if youre not going to change anything at all is to get on a phone and talk to your customers. Find out what makes you unique and different from their perspective, not yours, and then see if you can take that information and do it one better. That will help secure your competitive position. Also, in your advertising make sure you dramatize why your best customers are loyal to you and have become raving fans, and you will attract more just like them. Few people want to do this, but its a way to find out much more than just a USP for helping you improve your business. Its all part of customer service and youll further solidify your relationship with your customers when you show that you even cared enough to ask.
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METHOD 9: Rewrite Your USP for the Performance Gap

By now you have worked through eight ways to craft a killer USP. Most marketers teach just one method, but youve just worked through eight. I promise you that you now have more ways to generate a million dollar USP than youll ever find in any single seminar or marketing book, but to go even further, heres a ninth! Now that you have the draft of your USP, you can improve it. Heres the process: Step 1: Using any of the prior eight methods, write out the first draft of a USP for your business. Step 2: Now study two or three of your chief competitors (their marketing materials, sales literature, the way they treat customers, deals they offer, etc.) and write out a USP describing them. Step 3: Youve now got yours and theirs in front of you, so now review your own USP and rewrite it in light of what you've just learned. Make your USP different better than what others offer. Then you are done. Step 4: You can also use this chance to look around in your industry and find a need or performance gap those other competitors are not fulfilling. Once youve identified that need, restructure your business so that you solve that problem and you have your USP. Remember, you can do this yourself, or simply ask customers what their competitors are doing that turns them off, or what they are not doing, and rearrange your business to fill the gap. The basic idea is to do a competitive comparison, rewrite your USP based on what you find, and focus on solving a performance gap you uncover. Once youve got the gist of your USP, you compare it to other USPs to see if you can add a guarantee here, a statistic there, some service feature here, bundling of products or services, and so forth that others are not doing. You perform a competitive evaluation, and then with your market research in hand, try to differentiate yourself from the competition based on genuine customer needs, and even restructure your business if you have to in order to solve customer problems and satisfy their desires. Find the performance gap, or USP gap, and use that to structure your dramatic difference, big benefit, and selling proposition.
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METHOD 10: Preemptive Marketing

Weve already established that if these nine methods fail you and you really have no unique advantage or differentiating factor over everyone else, you always have the option of preemptive marketing for creating a unique selling proposition. This is a strategy weve discussed in detail many times, so our review will be brief. Basically, preemptive marketing is being the first one in your business, niche, industry, market or locale to promote a particular benefit that everyone else provides or offers but because everyone else provides it or does it, no one bother to promote it. In other words, you are the same as all your competitors but you bother to educate your customer of the pains you take to deliver them the very best you can in terms of product or service. Perhaps you tell them about the history of your product, or the manufacturing process, or the selection process or delivery technique. It doesnt matter. You simply advertise what you do that others are not advertising since it seems so commonplace to give the customer a winning buying experience. If you then promote the facts of what you do, even though everyone else can or does the same thing, youll have the upper hand. Youll establish a market preeminent position and will become perceived as a market leader. Other firms who try to then quickly fill the gap by claiming the same things will be considered copycats and me, too firms, and theyll only end up advertising you. Let me provide another example besides the case of Schlitz Beer. There was an Ethan Allen furniture store outside Washington, D.C. that had competition from other Ethan Allen stores in the Ethan Allen chain. The owner of the store, Jim Mahler, wanted to make customers come to his store rather than the other Ethan Allen stores and yet his prices were the same, the furniture was the same, and the arrangements were equal. What could Jim Mahler do to differentiate himself and make the customers come to his store? Mahlers marketing man examined the situation and found that Ethan Allen furniture was guaranteed for life. In a few short days, he had Mahlers Ethan Allen store advertising, We guarantee every piece of Ethan Allen Furniture to last your lifetime.
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The ads went on to carefully explaining the guarantee, including the fact that every piece of furniture was sold with an attached tag attesting to that guarantee. Soon other Ethan Allen stores started advertising, Hey, our Ethan Allen furniture has a lifetime guarantee, too, but the customers continued patronizing Mahlers store in preference to the others reasoning that the other stores were just copycats. It was all because Mahlers had said it first and established a preemptive position. Thats preemptive marketing. Are there other ways to establish a preemptive marketing strategy? Weve gone over several, but heres two you should consider. One way is to give your product, service, business or yourself a unique name that has positive connotations for your business. Quick Stop Photocopy, Loyal Pets, Enjoyment Pizza, Turn Their Heads Fashion Supply, you get the idea. Another way is tell prospects that when they buy your product or service, they additionally get you as part of the package (a monopolistic positioning strategy if there is one) If there are any problems, you promise they will get your personal experience and attention on the matter, which no one else offers. I know our product and prices look the same as our competitor, Mr. Jones, but theres one other thing you get when you buy from us. You get ME! I will personally handle you order, see to it that it gets shipped on time, and if there are any hassles or problems or last minute changes I will be the one to personally handle things. There will be no run-arounds or mistakes or passing the buck or hassles. The one thing EXTRA you get when you buy from us is ME. See how that works in creating a USP? Those are just a few ways to establish a preemptive USP when all other strategies fail. Thats why, with these ten methods now explained, I can virtually guarantee you have the ability to create a UNIQUE selling proposition, or customer unique buying advantage, even if you think your product, service or business is the same as all your competitors. One more thing
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Before you take the route of preemptive marketing because youre in a mature industry where you dont think there is much room for differentiation, I want you to really, Really, REALLY examine whether or not you can truly craft an exciting USP to set you apart from the pack and start gobbling up the market share. Take the grocery business, which is a mature business if ever there was one. Instead of just saying, Well, all grocery stores are the same, you could call together a mastermind group of advisors and strategize on some possibilities Perhaps your USP could be that you carry more ethnic food than any other store (if you were in an ethnic neighborhood), or the fact that you featured exotic produce or gourmet foods (if you were surrounded by upscale consumers), or you could advertise having the largest organic produce section in town (for health conscious consumers), offer free recipes for new produce, advertise that you were the place to find vegetables and fruits when they were out of season, or had the most checkout lines and therefore offered the best shopping convenience. The point is, do some brainstorming first before you settle on the preemptive USP. You can usually find some way to create several different USPs that would make you successful. The preemptive marketing route is always an option, but with a little bit of brainpower, theres usually a way to profitably differentiate yourself from your competitors and start gobbling up the cream of the market share in your industry.
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Once Youve Got It, Flaunt It Use It Everywhere

Its a task to make an effective USP as bold, simple, attractive, and memorable as possible once youve got one. That takes time and creative effort but by now youve got the goods in your hand to start with. Whats next is to shape that material with copywriting flair so that it does the best job possible in bringing customers to your doorstep. With a little bit of work, and perhaps some help from your staff, customers, friends or even marketing consultant, you might be able to reduce a thirty or forty word USP into just ten words or just one or two lines. Thats the task in front of you, which is one of editing and adding copywriting flourish. Try to reduce the size of the description of your USP so it isnt wordy, but dont reduce your USP to fewer words than it needs to be. To help with that task well next turn to a variety of very famous USPs, and see what examples they provide and lessons they have to offer us. But first I want to show you a case study of how to turn your USP into longer advertising pieces that will also help promote your business. Once you have a USP, there are all sorts of creative ways to use it that will slowly help bring in more customers. One of my clients, for instance, is a chiropractor. By interviewing him and recording his responses on a tape recorder for four to five of these USP methods, in less than an hour we were able to create the basis of his USP. It only took an hour! Next, we turned that USP into all his marketing communications including a sign for his office wall that patients would continually see every time they visited him. This service pledge containing his USP helped him distinguish himself and solidify his reputation in his community. It spoke of what he was doing for his patients and brought in countless referrals because people now had the right words and story for introducing him to their friends. By posting his USP, he gave them the words to use. He gave them the ammunition they needed to differentiate him from everyone else!
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Heres a sample of this USP promise or guarantee or pledge that was conspicuously posted on the walls of his office so that clients would see it again and again. My Promise To You
I guarantee that I will look harder than most any other practitioner to find and permanently correct the cause of your problems. My office was the first in [city] to offer the ionic foot bath as part of a comprehensive, integrative natural healthcare program that eliminates the sources of your neck and back pain, digestive troubles, stress, fatigue, and emotional problems. You'll look better, feel better, and be freed of aches and pains after your visit. You will have more energy for fun. I will find the source of your problems because I have a more refined way of evaluating your body. With the latest techniques in natural medicine, chiropractic, applied kinesiology ("muscle testing") and thought field therapy, I also make a full effort to "lock in" the corrections so that your body remembers them and they last. This is possible because I spend more time with you during office visits than most other health professionals, and continuously upgrade my skills through post-graduate seminars and training. I also have a world class knowledge of herbs and how to use them because I am the founder and formulator of one of the most respected fresh plant organic herbal medicine companies in the world, supplying thousands of doctors and health professionals who turn to me for advice. You'll know it's one of my patients when they say, "I just feel better all over." If you follow my program, it is my personal guarantee to you that you will say the same thing. With 25 years of clinical experience, this is my calling, my passion, my lifes work. I WILL MAKE SURE you are happy you put your trust in me. That is my promise and pledge to you.
One might argue that this pledge bucks advertising rules in using the word I too much, but thats what a pledge is all about. You has been worked in as much as possible wherever benefits could be legitimately promised. If you want to see another fascinating sales piece that takes a similar selfpromotion approach, we can turn to a letter written in 1492 by Leonardo da Vinci to the Duke of Milan.
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Leonardo was trying to secure a position through this introduction, which contained all the rudimentary rules for benefit-laden copy and credible proof for the claims:
I can construct bridges which are very light and strong and quite portable, with which to pursue and defeat the enemy; and others solid that cannot be destroyed by fire or assault, and which are convenient to carry and place into position. When a place is besieged I know how to cut off water from the trenches, and how to construct an infinite number of bridges, battering rams, scaling ladders, and other instruments which have to do with the same enterprise. I can make cannon that are very convenient and easy to transport, and which can hurl small stones like hail so as to cause great terror, loss and confusion to the enemy If there is to be a sea battle, I can construct many engines suitable either for attack or defense, and ships which can resist the fire of the heaviest cannon I can make safe and unassailable armored cars that can enter the serried ranks of the enemy with their artillery, and there is no company of men at arms so great that they will be able to break it. Behind these armored vehicles, the infantry will be able to follow quite unharmed and without any opposition. Where it is not possible to employ cannon, I can supply catapaults, mangonels, trabocchi, and other engines of wonderful efficacy not in general use. In short, as the variety of circumstances shall necessitate, I can supply an infinite number of different engines of attack and defense. And if any of the aforesaid things should seem impossible or impractical to anyone, I offer myself as ready to make trial of them in your park or in whatever place shall please your Excellency, to whom I commend myself with all possible humility.
Both these examples give you an idea of the many ways in which you can use your USP once you have it. The key is to first establish a clear positioning for your product, service or business by constructing that USP. Once you have your USP down flat, you have a positioning statement that you can start using in all sorts of targeted marketing practices. Thats when you can turn to all sorts of marketing-related activities such as advertising, public relations and promotions to capture the attention of intended audiences. Heres a big hint: You dont want to just capture attention; you want to DOMINATE a market segment. Thats why you might even use the USP generation process to fashion your own individual brand statement.
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Heres my confidential consulting list I use to select some of the possible marketing vehicles (weapons) you might consider for promoting your business, product and service. In each case, youd want to make sure that each of these vehicles is imprinted with the uniqueness of your USP:
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Action plans Advertorials Advisory Air blimps After sale service Agents Annual reports Answering machine Application Guide Articles Attire Audiocassettes Audiovisual aids Autoresponders Bag imprints Balloons Banners Banner ads Barter deals Billboards Books Booths (trade show) Boxes Branding Breakfast seminars Brochures Bulletin boards Bumper stickers Bundling Business cards Buzzword guide Calendars Canvassing Card decks Cassette tapes Catalogs CD-ROMs Celebrity endorsements Centers of influence Charity events Checks Classified ads Cold calling Columns Community service Comparison chart
Competitions Conferences Consultations Conventions Contests Co-op mailings Coupon books Coupons Courses Credibility Credit Cross-promotion Decals Demonstrations Direct mail Directories Distributors Donations Doorhangers Easy to do business with eBay Elevator speeches E-mail Employee attire Endorsements Enthusiasm and passion Envelopes Exhibits Ezine ads Ezines Ezine articles Fairs Fax broadcasts Fax on demand Flea markets Floppy disks Fliers Flipcharts Follow-up Free Frequent buyer program Fund raisers Gift certificates Gifts Guarantee
Handouts Hello/goodbye words House to house Infolines Infomercials Inserts Interviews Invitation Events Invoices Letterhead Letters Labelling Licensing Listings Location Logo Magalogs Magazine ads Magazine articles Magazine columns Magnets Mailing labels Mailing envelopes Matchbooks Movie ads Moving displays Name of company Networking New product releases Newletter inserts News releases Newsletters Newspaper ads Newspaper articles Niches On-hold messages On-line advertising Operational hours Package advertising Packaging Per inquiry ads Personal contact Personal letters Placemats Pocket Guide Point of purchase ads
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Positioning Postcards Posters Powerpoint presentations Premiums Previews Price increase Private events Product sell sheets Promotional items Proposals Public relations (PR) Public speaking Publicity Quality Radio ads Radio shows Recorded messages Referral programs Reports Reprints Reputation Research studies Restaurant placemats Restroom ads Sales Sales reps Sales training Salesmen Samples Satisfied customers Seminars Service Shows Shippers Sig files Signs (inside/outside) Slide chart Solution workshop Space ads Special events Special reports Speed Sponsorships Statement stuffers Stationary
Store window displays Streaming audio Streaming video Success stories Supermarket postings Surveys Sweepstakes Tabloids Talk shows Taxi cards Teleclasses Teleconferences Telemarketing Telephone demeanor Television ads Television interviews Testimonials Theme Toll free number Tours Trade ins Trade shows Training clinics T-shirt ads Upgrade opportunities Uniforms Vehicle ads Vendor sponsored events Video conferencing Videotapes Viral marketing Voice mail Vouchers Warranty Websites White papers Window displays Word-of-mouth Workshops Yellow Pages Zazz video
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This is just a short sampling from my private files of all the things you can spend money on to deliver your USP marketing message. There are hundreds of business strategies to try and marketing weapons you can use to increase your business. For any business, it always makes sense to have multiple selling mechanisms (multiple sales pillars) in place. That way you will diversify your source of sales and never become dependent on just one way of winning new business. You do not want to be held hostage by a single sales technique or become overly dependent on just one sales system. You always want to be operating multiple sales systems simultaneously. For instance, if you only relied on just salesmen to sell your products and they were all hired away by a competitor, what would you do? If you were dependent on fax marketing, telemarketing or internet marketing and the government changed the laws to eliminate those methods, you would be in a crisis if you hadnt built up a second, third or fourth method of sales generation. Wisdom and prudence teach that its best to use as many systems as possible to generate business the internet, advertisements, referral systems, articles, and so on as long as each method pays for itself. Some methods will generate new customers at a lower cost per sale or cost per lead than other techniques, but you should always try to keep a variety of sales systems in place as long as the cost of those sales is less than your profits. To make the burden of multiple systems easier, you must also try to automate them as much as possible. Initially you should limit your energy into getting just two or three new sales generating techniques up and running, and then work to systemize them over time so that they can run automatically without much oversight. That will free you from the day-to-day drudgery of business, and let you maximize the use of your time and energy. Automating your sales systems, and delegating tasks to the lowest level of competence in your staff, lets you leverage your time to the fullest. A perfect example is any type of direct mail. Once you write an effective direct mail sales letter containing your USP, an automatic system would have you simply sending out a batch of letters each month in order to generate new sales or leads. Thats something you can easily delegate to someone else. Even finding a mailing list is as simple as picking up the phone and calling a list broker. A letter house will even print your letters, stuff
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your envelopes and mail them off for you. It can all be managed with a few phone calls. Any sales system should run on automatic pilot as much as possible. Follow-ups, referral systems, everything that can generate sales should be turned into a routine, for routines set you free. Wherever possible, you should institute simple automatic, routine systems in your business. That makes it easier to manage your operations, keep track of quality control and whats getting done, and also increases the value of your business for when you want to sell it. All things considered, people would rather buy turn-key money-making systems rather than have the hassle of dealing with personnel problems and finicky talent. This concept of automation was widely popularized in Michael Gerbers The EMyth and by marketing guru Jay Abraham. The idea is to turn your marketing into a run-while-you-are-away system. The goal is to create day-to-day automatic systems to eliminate the drudgery of your business so that you work on it, not in it. To achieve this, you must find what marketing vehicles work best for you, and then turn those vehicles into automated systems that run without much need of oversight. That will free you up for more important money-making concerns. Once your two or three initial selling methods (marketing weapons or techniques) are working, only then should you start on fully developing two or three more. Dont bite off more than you can chew by trying to juggle too many things at once. First get your initial systems working profitably, and only then should you turn to creating more. Marketing success is not a matter of doing 3,000 things right, but just two or three things well. That might mean using 3 marketing methods 3,000 times each rather than using 3,000 methods 3 times each. The key to success is to go deeply into each method and optimize each technique for the highest possible return. You are always optimizing and automating the use of that technique so that you get the best use of your time and money. Once you have a method working, you have to fine tune it to get the most performance out of it to increase the number of prospects it pulls in, the conversion ratio of prospects to clients, the amount that customers buy from you,
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how often they return for repeat purchases and how long they ultimately stay with you. You have to strive for constant incremental improvements to optimize all these variables. You must test all sorts of techniques to improve your ads, your sales dialogue, your telemarketing and so forth. Be willing to fail with your tests, but measure everything so that if you fail, you fail fast and fail cheap. That way you can get out of a bad thing before it cripples you. What gets measured gets down, what gets measured is respected so measuring things will also help you manage things as well. Testing means feedback, and feedback is the breakfast of champions. People respect what you inspect, so make sure you are measuring and monitoring the effects of your marketing tests and campaigns to see how they are doing and how they can be improved. Every media choice has to be accountable for the money you spend on it, but youll only know the benefit/cost tradeoffs of your marketing weapons when you measure their costs and results. Dont be afraid of failure but become willing to risk and innovate. There is no constant in marketing as to what will always work, yet the one sure way to keep generating good results is to test everything and always be trying new techniques. Those tests are the cost of doing business. When we say risk, think test rather than gamble. Remember that testing new things, innovating and keeping up with the times is one of the costs of staying in business. Dont look for excuses not to try something new. Dont look for the perfect situation, because it will never come. Just test, just start. There are all sorts of ways to advertise your products and services. There are all sorts of marketing vehicles you might use to promote your USP, but let me give you several pointers that go way past the task of just constructing an effective USP. First, test every marketing vehicle, weapon or technique you try. See if it actually brings in sales and whether its cost effective. If its not cost effective, either drop it or try to alter it so that it pays for itself. Measurement ends argument, so measure the results of everything you do and try to optimize all the individual components of your efforts so that you can see
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the results from changing the headline of ads, your offers, the envelopes you use in direct mail marketing, the time of day you run your radio spots, the length of your video e-mails and so forth. If you dont have the numbers, you cannot determine whether anything you do is better than anything else. Test all the major variables in your marketing campaigns. Yes, you are looking for 10-20% improvements here and there, but you should also be testing those things that can double or even triple your sales. It has been done, it is being done, it can be done. Oft times great business success is not about creating a better product or service, but about better marketing. When you are trying to make the sales curve move upwards, one of the very first things you can do is simply redirect the money youre already spending rather than spend more. Take the money youre already spending now and try to use it more effectively (efficiently) by devoting yourself to this idea of optimization. The principle behind optimizing your marketing, which is the idea of constant incremental improvement, is to test everything and keep the changes that work so that you end up spending your money more effectively over time. You test your headlines, your offers, your mediums, your message, your markets. You test until you find something that works better than everything else, and then set about incrementally improving what you have found so that it returns the best results possible. Now one of the very first strategies to try is to reactivate old customers since new customers usually cost six to eight times more to win than reselling old customers. That being the case, go back to those old customers and see if you can reactivate them. Another thing to do is look at the leads youre getting and the conversion rate you have in turning those leads into sales. The practice of sales scripting, whereby you find the best sales approaches of your superstar salesmen and turn those dialogues into something everyone can use, is a strategy Im quite fond of. Its a way to duplicate the best sales talks and sales practices of your business. Did you know that a 2% conversion rate to 4% will double your sales? Sales scripting can often help you do that overnight. One thing you mustnt do is take your top producer out of sales and make him a manger. Instead, use sales scripting to clone him and keep him out there in the field producing. Let him play to his strengths rather than become something that might not suit his personality, and which cuts your sales. This is a common mistake in business.
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A last bit of marketing advice. Once youve gotten your USP, target a small market niche and then work to totally dominate that market with your marketing and sales efforts. Pick a limited target audience and then try to capture that marketing target. When you succeed, move on to the next thing. Become the big man in a small pond. Become the one person or business or product that everyone in that pond thinks of when they have your particular business issue. Be aggressive because successful marketing strategies are aggressive. Think of focus. Think of domination. Shrink your marketing efforts and focus them so that whatever resources you spend will allow you to make a big impact in a tiny niche and become the player of choice in that marketplace. Go after that market target and hit it with as many different marketing weapons as possible. That strategy of dominance will win you sales. For instance, buy radio spots to be run at the same time every day and dominate that time slot rather than spreading out your radio advertising so that people hear a little here and a little there. Diffusion is a sure way to influence no one but concentration and repetition is a way to give your marketing IMPACT. Dominance is all a function of repetition saying the right thing (the right message or USP) to as many of the same people as you can reach over and over again. Prospects typically need to hear or see you at least seven to nine times before they become willing to buy to buy from you, and the way to insure that you achieve top of the mind awareness and are imprinted into someones long term memory is to dominate some niche. Dominating some niche is the only way to make sure that they hear of you or see you the necessary seven to nine times before becoming a customer. Whether that means your salesmen have to get past at least nine Nos from a customer before they buy, or a business has to hear of you 4-5 times before they feel comfortable enough to risk purchasing from you, the necessity of repeatedly placing your name or proposition before the public is best achieved by trying to dominate a market niche. Once youve got your USP, select your target your niches or mini markets, work to dominate them and then move onto the next mini market to conquer. Dont abandon any method too soon. If you use direct mail, mail to the same list not once but over and over again until youve exhausted it of sales. If you use radio or television spots, occupy the
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same time segment on a continuous basis and dominate it. If you advertise in a magazine, get articles written about you in that publication or advertise again and again so that you become the solution provider people think of. Marketing repetition is the key to response. Commitment to a technique or market, using it over and over again to gain dominance in the marketplace, is a key strategy for higher sales. And one more thing Now that you have a USP, you can use it to get a premium price for your services or to help eliminate painful price negotiations. Prospects always want to negotiate for lower prices, but you can squash some of those requests when you start using your USP. In fact, I advise you rarely to cut your price but rather, to repackage your product or service because price objections are usually value problems. There are several ways to do it. You can add bonuses, make your packages BIGGER, or give customers half of what they want (or some similar proportion) for half the price, but dont cut your prices. The best strategy is to add value to your package so that the price prospects perceive you are asking is just a pittance compared with the value they are getting. Thats changing the perceived value. Bundling products together into a package, or adding bonuses or premiums that are inexpensive yet have a higher perceived value are effective ways to justify higher prices. In fact, if you are in a very competitive niche and you bundle a number of products together for a reasonable price, that bundle is a wonderful differentiator and the basis of a powerful USP in the mind of the consumer. Another thing you can do is deliver your product faster, actually limit its distribution or accessibility, or make an EXTREME guarantee. Remember, you are trying to answer the question, Why should I buy here, why should I buy from you? Another strategy is to find out what your customer values besides price and if its something that your USP trumpets, youve got em! After all, your USP is a monopolistic bundle of benefits that they can only get from you and no one else, so there is no reason to lower your price if they need and want that package of benefits. When the topic of price comes up, find out your customers motivations and then press them. A USP offering 24-hour
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service, or a guarantee of some form, can squash lower price requests in their tracks. Really outrageous guarantees can often get people. Highlighting the benefits you provide and the difference between you and your competitors is another strategy that will usually keep a customers mind off of price especially when you use testimonials, cite successful case studies and really tout your skills, experience and credentials. To squash the price complaint, use your USP. Use your uniqueness that youre the only one. Whenever customers perceive you are offering the benefits they desire but which they cannot get elsewhere, you can get a premium price. Part of this strategy, as mentioned, includes crafting an attractive guarantee. Money back guarantees, better than money back guarantees with bonuses or premiums customers can keep, free trial examinations without paying all these things overcome buyer resistance and price resistance to win you sales. The right strategy is to focus on your uniqueness and distinctive difference over competitors because price doesnt count if you are the only one who offers what prospects want, and a carefully crafted USP makes you a virtual monopoly in this regard. When no one else in your industry is formulating a USP but you do, you can clean the field of competitors and end up charging whatever you like. You also become a monopoly when the product or service you supply addresses a narrower and narrower niche, for the more vertical your product or service, the higher the price you can charge. Lets say you can charge $159 for a set of cassette tapes explaining referral generation systems for marketers. Thats so general you can only get small money whereas you might be able to change $259 or even $359 if you adapt those tapes to just focusing on the real estate or financial services market. The niching can get you higher prices. Become a guru or expert who is identified with that specific benefit they want building your reputation over time -- and you can get a premium price for your goods or services. When you establish yourself as the leading expert or guru, such as a Tom Peters, price negotiations get thrown out the window and the prices you can charge are always higher. Naturally you can always raise your fees when demand is outstripping supply, and thats a typical way of getting premium prices. However, when demand doesnt outstrip supply, you have to use the other strategies weve mentioned including demonstrating the return customers will get on their investments. Whenever you can show customers that they will get a rapid and significant return on their investment that theyll have a high ROI you can charge
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higher fees as well. Most firms dont bother to do this, but part of the strategy of selling is come up with the proof that this is true and using that in your sales literature. Honestly speaking, most people actually charge too little for their services, so once youve gotten your USP you might even raise your prices by 10% and see no drop in business at all. Now that you have a USP, go ahead and try it. See what happens. Making larger profits is what the USP is all about.
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Superstar Examples of USPs That Knock em Dead

USPs dont have to be famous. They just have to be effective. Dont despair that some of the famous USPs weve already mentioned of firms like Federal Express or Dominos Pizza -- dont apply to your modest establishment. Dont fear that you cannot come up with a USP thats so shattering it will dominate the four corners of the globe. USPs are just as effective for small businesses as they are for large corporations! You just have to come up with a USP, a hook, a positioning statement, a key differentiator thats going to get you more customers. It doesnt have to make the 10 oclock news. It just has to work for your business to bring more customers into the door and make the cash register ring. An effective USP tells potential customers what you do. It promises that youll provide them with a benefit that separates you from your competitors and it excites their interest enough that theyll come to you rather than anyone else when they want or need what you have to offer. Thats all you need. To give you some more ideas on how to craft your own USP, lets look at the USPs for some superstar marketers who know what theyre doing, and see how they did it for themselves. If youve already gone through my 10 methods for generating your USP, its simply time to refine your answers to make them short but compelling as these experts have done. In looking at the introductions of these marketing masters, youll get the idea. Instead of saying, Im a marketing consultant or marketing expert, these top marketing professionals crafted simple introductions that tell exactly what theyll do for clients and yet beg the question, Do you want this done for you, too? You know you have a killer USP when it prompts people to ask further questions so take a look at these USPs of people who Im going to make a bit more famous and advertise to their own benefit. All these guys are superstars and you can hardly go wrong hiring any of them:
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Dan Kennedys USP ( www.DanKennedy.com ): I devise direct marketing strategies for all types and sizes of business that eliminate all the fat and waste from their advertising and increase the productivity of their sales people by at least 1000%, Guaranteed. Jay Abrahams USP ( www.abraham.com ): I know how to take overlooked assets, hidden opportunities, underperforming activities and turn them into windfall profits and then ongoing steady streams of additional revenue. Harry Pickens USP: I specialize in low cost, high maximum impact marketing strategies that help you get maximum leverage out of every marketing dollar you spend, plus as opposed to marketing consultants, who will charge you at least thousands of dollars a day or 2 to 3 thousand per month retainer, I am so confident in my ability and skill, I only get paid when you make money. David Freys USP ( www.marketingbestpractices.com ): I work with small business owners who are struggling to attract new customers and who want to implement marketing systems that make new business automatically come to them . Alex Mandossian ( www.marketingwithpostcards.com ), the Postcard Marketing King has recently switched his USP to that of an internet traffic conversion specialist, someone who can write copy for the web that converts idle browsers into buyers. However, his previous postcard marketing USP ran along the lines of the following: I consult my personal clients on how to make postcards their #1 marketing weapon to build their businesses ... even during economic slumps, downswings, or full-scale recessions. Glenn Osborn, marketing consultant, ( www.archive.enchantedNLP.com ), has the following USP: What I do is double your sales and cut your work hours by 30% GUARANTEED and it only takes between 60 and 90 minutes on the phone.
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Joe Robson ( www.adcopywriting.com ), co-author of Make Your Words Sell, wrote on his website: There are lots of 'average' copywriters around. And a few really good ones. Yet even though many of my clients tell me that I am a cut above the rest, I still have to convince potential new clients they will be wiser choosing me. So I had to identify my USP. And what is it? In which area am I different to most other copywriters? And more importantly, what can I offer my clients that would specifically benefit them? It's 30 self-employed years in marketing and one-to-one sales. And the fact that I rely on my Copywriting skills to sell my own books through my own Direct Marketing company. So I have a very unique benefit to offer my prospective clients. I have hands-on practical experience of doing exactly the same thing they are doingselling a product through advertising. So my clients get more than just professionally crafted words. Their sales results benefit from skilled advertising copy filled with marketing experience, and my natural instinct to sell. As David Ogilvy said of himself "Once a salesman always a salesman." That's my USP.1 Copywriter Michel Fortin ( www.successdoctor.com ), the Success Doctor who turns words into magnets and author of the fabulous Profit Pill newsletter, introduces himself on his website saying: Last year, my clients enjoyed record response rates as high as 7%, 11%, 18% and even 46%. Some of them catapulted their response rates by a massive 500%! If you want to give your sales a booster shot, then I urge you to read this web page ... "My name is Michel Fortin. For 15 years I wrote hard-hitting copy and was instrumental in selling over $35,000,000 worth of products and services. "I wrote highly profitable copy for million dollar marketers and copywriters whose reputations would shrivel if their followers ever knew someone else wrote their own copy!
Robson, Joe. Without A USP You Are Dead. So Create One Now and Watch Your Sales Rocket! http://www.adcopywriting.com/Tutorial_3_USP.htm (10 May 2004).
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" If you wish to detonate your response rate, and crank it up by as much as 10, 50 or 100% even 500% or more! my copywriting, editing, and review services may give you the ammunition you need!2 Marketing and productivity specialist Jeff Mayer (owner of the site www.succeedinginbusiness.com ) recounts that he used to have the following USP which never produced any phone calls, and if you analyze it according to our rules youll see why: Jeffrey J. Mayer is one of the countrys foremost authorities on time and business management, [SO WHAT!] and is the author of many best-selling books. [SO WHAT!] He has been featured in The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, Esquire, People magazine, and many other publications. [SO WHAT!] When he changed his USP to promise benefits for his clients, his business really started picking up: Jeffrey Mayer helps business owners, corporate executives and sales professionals manage their time, set their priorities, and stay focused so they can achieve their goals, grow their business, and be more successful.3 Each of these USPs does several things. They tell what each man does thats different from other marketing consultants, tells how he benefits the client (the promise of benefits), and they say it in such a way that it inflames the natural curiosity factor. You read some of these USPs and you just gotta find out more. You spontaneously want to ask, How do you do that? Lets get away from the marketing superstars, copywriters and the billion dollar corporations and concentrate on USPs for the entrepreneur and small businessmen. Weve already gone over the components of a successful USP, and how to come up with the right dialogue. Here are some modest USPs that do their job quite well:
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Plumber: We have 24 hour round the clock service and have 37 trucks in your neighborhood fully stocked with whatever you need
Fortin, Michel. Crank Up Your Signups, Sales and Profits With Hard Hitting Copy And Tested Conversion Strategies That Can Mutate Your Sales Letter Into A Raging Cash Machine. http://www.successdoctor.com (10 May 2004). 3 Mayer, Jeffrey. Jeffrey Mayers Succeeding in Business Newsletter: Helping you grow your business, close more sales, and make more money. http://www.succeedinginbusiness.com/Tips/ElevatorSpeech.shtml (3 March 2004).
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Private Investigator: Well find the person youre seeking for a flat fee or double your money-back. Podiatrist: Free foot exam. Vocational School: 87% of our students get higher paying jobs within 3 months of graduation. Dentist: Painless tooth care for kids who can watch entertaining movies while we make sure they maintain their healthy smiles. Accountant: Well get you every possible legal tax deduction and if you are ever challenged, well sit with you and defend you for free. Home Security: Systems designed and installed by a team of expolicemen. Cosmetician: Ill do a beautiful job because your face is my fortune. Nutritionist: I teach you how to behave in front of food and shed excess pounds through non-toxic herbal formulas. Weight loss Center: Well help you lose 10 pounds in 10 weeks or double your money-back. Feng shui Consultant: With a few simple changes of rearranging furniture or using new colors, I help you create a new energy flow in your home that brings greater health, romance and prosperity into your life. Refrigerated Trucking Business: The UPS of refrigerated trucking. Jeweler: We keep track of birthdays and anniversaries in our computer so that youll never forget your wife. Contractor: We use materials that will save you 40% on your heating bill Real Estate Agent: Our 5-step marketing plan will sell your house in 30 days or the fee is reduced by a quarter point at closing. Travel Agent: One call does it all well handle everything for you, even the tiny details. Packaging Company: Environmentally friendly, biodegradable packaging that surpasses the US FDA standards. Commercial Photographer: Digital photography with instant approval of the shots that lets us shoot the picture YOU want. Dance Studio: Without laughter or embarrassment, learn 5 new dance steps in 2 months time, painlessly. Comedian: Im a convention comedian who can raise spirits and bring smiles and laughter to the faces of employees just when you need it most. Advertising Consultant: I make creative ideas heard. I design direct response ads that result in immediate sales, or you dont pay a thing. Personal Injury Lawyer: I cant put Humpty Dumpty together again for you, but I can sure sue the guy who pushed him off the wall. Motivational Speaker: I instill confidence to help people aspire and achieve. Avon Representative: I help women look more beautiful. Business Coach: Not only will I keep you on schedule, but well put together a minimum of 3 new marketing strategies every month to help
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you get you so many more clients that you have to bring on extra staff to handle them. Real Estate Broker: I put people into their dream house. Trade Show Specialist: We create eye-catching trade show booths for companies who want to increase their product sales but not experience any difficult set-up or tear-down hassles for their area. Criminal Lawyer: The 24-hour lawyer. Call us anytime, day or night. Well be there when you need advice the most. Photographer: My pictures say a thousand words so you dont have to. Copywriter for Foreign Sales: If you want to sell overseas, profit from my experience. Self-storage Facility: With our triple lock system, two roofs over every unit to guarantee dryness, and 347 security sensors monitored 24 hours continuously, youll have true worry-free 100% secure storage. Graphic Artist: One stop shopping for computer graphics for the financial industry. Limousine Service: Prompt and comfortable every time. Well pick you up at your door in a brand new Mercedes with a driver who speaks perfect English. The more you ride, the more you qualify for bonus pick-ups at no charge at all. Limousine Service: Rolls Royce pick-ups at Volkswagon costs. Computer Store: Every major computer brand at discount prices so you dont have to pay megabucks for megabytes. Locksmith 24 hour emergency radio dispatched service. Unlike other companies, all our employees have security clearances. Sign Company: Special night friendly signs for restaurants and small business owners. Metal Scrap Company: Small or large amounts, if its metal we buy it. Debt Collector: Debt collection for service professionals. Insurance Salesman: Our package insurance covers all your need and saves you money at the same time why pay more? Roofer: Free gutters with any new roof. Shipper: Pack, wrap, crate and ship we do everything for you shipping anything, anywhere. Financial Planner: I help you create and manage wealth.
Here are some sample USPs for products: Microwave dinners that kids can make for themselves A shampoo and conditioner for swimmers hair Computer screens with 15% more color resolution and 24% less radiation A car whose global positioning unit comes as standard equipment. A time management seminar for career women with families A home toolkit for the woman who does everything herself
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Lightweight flashlights made of high tensile aluminum that can withstand any impact and last forever Light bulbs that shine 53% brighter, last 30% longer than competing brands, and use 10% less energy Vedic grade colored gemstones of the rarest colors, clarity and quality that are good enough to change your astrological fortune A French language course that involves your emotions so that you learn more words quicker and have higher recall A pair of hiking shoes guaranteed for life Toll free technical support with a live, in-the-country person A cruise ship for hire where the only affair aboard the yacht is yours A coffee maker that uses no hassle, prepackaged gourmet coffee pads A European shirt ironing device whose results amaze even professional launderers A steam iron that incorporates a special anti-crease agent cartridge An electric shaver that incorporates shaving gel A safe running show with blinking lights in the heel so that people will see you in the dark
Remember there are all sorts of things you can do to create a unique USP. You can open longer hours. Offer free training. Add bonuses and premiums people cant resist. Give a free estimate. Be on call 24 hours. Have an unbeatable guarantee or warranty. Offer exceptional value. Do follow-up service. To come up with your USP, put yourself in your prospective clients shoes. What are they looking for? What are they frustrated with? Why should they do business with you instead of using another company? Really think about what makes your business different and what benefits you can offer people. Tap into you heart and soul and think, how can you serve customers better? Once you really believe in the idea of better service and start executing on that ideal, theres no way the market is going to ignore you. With that in mind, one of the best ways to learn about USPs is to analyze a few more of the ones that gone on to make history because those are the ones that have truly serviced clients. Within these USP youll see all the factors that weve gone over, and by studying them youll get a few more ideas for your own business. Imagine the possibilities in front of you less than 10 words turned a humble pizza company a college town pizza company ! into a billion dollar monstrosity. 132
Its all in the USP. Remember, you basically offer a big promised benefit to your customer. You summarize what you do and how you do it better or differently than others, and say it in such a way that your words naturally come off with credibility. Your USP must immediately overcome a customers credibility gap, and it has to be attractive enough that it excites their interest so that they come to you. Here, now, are a few other famous USPs and their stories from which we can learn more about crafting that special magic. Aviss USP - Try Avis. Were number two, so we try harder. Avis rent-a-cars had the second largest market-share behind Hertz rent-a-car for years. Everyone knew that Hertz was the biggest player in the market, and no matter what Avis tried to do competitive-wise it just couldnt seem to gain ground on Hertz. Avis eventually came up with this killer USP, which enabled them to finally eat into Hertzs business. This was their ground-breaking USP: Try Avis. Were number two, so we try harder. The beauty of this USP is its believability factor. Avis was the number two rental car player and everyone knew it because the Hertz name was so large, so it was logical to the potential customer upon hearing the USP -- that Avis must try harder. Avis promised an implied benefit of higher customer service and unspoken deals. They used the USP strategy of positioning themselves against a category or competitor. Those carefully chosen words got quite a few potential customers into thinking, I should check Avis out Maybe theyll give me a better price or better experience since they must be trying harder. Score points for credibility on this one! It actually repositioned the competition, Hertz, as being a bit unresponsive not trying hard enough but just relaxing on its laurels. This USP also illustrates a very important USP trick, which is how to turn a disadvantage into an advantage or as the Chinese say, how to turn a yin into a yang. Let me elaborate.
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In the 1984 Presidential race between Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale, Mondale was always trying to find a way to gain the upper hand over Reagan. Winning votes is like winning customers, so the rules of advertising apply. Thats why Ive written a book, The Means to Win: Success Strategies in Business and Politics, which talks about how to become elected and run a country or corporation in a virtuous way. Its based on the techniques of the Chinese strategist Kuan Tzu, who was the forerunner of Sun Tzu and his superior in terms of strategy and tactics. Rather than Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Confucius, Mencius, Sun Bin or Sun Tzu, Kuan Tzus enlightened writings are the most appropriate ones for us today. Looking for a way to attack Reagan, Mondale thought he might be able to use Reagans advanced age against him during a national debate. When challenged about his age being a detriment, Reagan quickly turned the situation around, turning a yin into a yang, and quipped, I will not make age an issue of this campaign, I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponents youth and inexperience. This seemingly spontaneous response on national television gave Reagan so many brownie points and squashed rumors about his mental acuity -- that Mondale never again dared bring up the age issue again. Its a funny quip part of American history -- and if your computer has speakers you can hear it at: http://tinyurl.com/3atqh I love the concept of turning a yin into a yang so much that I discuss its marketing usage at length in my book, Kuan Tzus Supreme Secrets for the Global CEO (formerly titled The Means to Win: Success Strategies for Business and Politics). You can find it at http://www.meditationexpert.com/kuantzu.htm if youre interested in a variety of high-level yet virtuous strategies for power, influence and dominance that put Sun Tzu to shame. In the movie Kismet, a beggar poet is about to be killed by a bandit chief and turns the situation around so that he receives 100 pieces of gold. That ability to turn situations around, to create victory out of the jaws of defeat, is the ability to turn a yin into a yang. Its the skill a great army general strives to learn and master through his training. Actually, most people dont know it but that capacity is the true expressive ability of Zen, which is one reason why the Zen masters have historically been advisors to kings.
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This concept has a lot of application in marketing, so to illustrate further heres another presidential story, concerning Teddy Roosevelt, on how to turn a yin into a yang, or a negative into a positive. During Theodore Roosevelts 1912 presidential election campaign, his campaign staff printed three million copies of a photograph to which they had no reprint rights. Realizing their error, Roosevelts staff panicked, thinking that the Moffett Studio, which owned the copyrights to the photograph, would sue them and crush Roosevelts chances to be elected. With a cool head, campaign manager George Perkins called the Moffett Studios and without tipping his hand, turned a yin into a yang by saying, We are planning to distribute millions of pamphlets with Roosevelts picture on it, and it will be great publicity for the studio that we use. How much would you be willing to pay to have us use your picture? After a short while, the Moffett Studios returned with the response, Weve never done this before, but wed be very please to offer you $250. Thats turning a yin into a yang, and it can be used in politics, warfare, business and marketing to make yourself more attractive. Another political example was that of Carl Stokes election as the first black mayor of Cleveland. His campaign staff put together an advertisement whose headline was, Dont Vote for a Negro. Everyone read that ad, including the rest of the ad which went: Vote for a man. Vote for ability. Vote for character. Vote for a leader. A man who can attack the problems and solve them. A man who can rally the people of Cleveland behind him. Vote for a man. A man who believes. Carl Stokes. That ad not only turned a yin into a yang, but had USP power as well. Advertising legend James Webb Young, author of the famous book A Technique for Producing Ideas, once had a company where he sold green apples by mail. One year a hail storm hit his orchards before harvest, bruising his apples with hail marks. While Jim Young had thousands of orders with checks, he realized that sending the cosmetically-slighted apples would result in countless returns even though cold weather during ripening improves an apples flavor. He therefore turned a
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potentially dangerous situation into a triumph by including a card with each order that said: Note the hail marks which have caused minor skin blemishes on some of the apples. They are proof of their growth at a high mountain altitude where the sudden chills from hail storms help firm the flesh, develop the natural fruit sugars, and give these apples their incomparable flavor. Businesswise, if you are in a similar situation, keep your head and try to turn a yin into a yang. For instance, if like Avis you are the number two guy or below, rather than work on promoting a similar benefit to your competitors, try to do a similar flipsy and turn a yin into a yang. If others are so big, maybe your smallness gives you the benefits of flexibility or faster service. If others are so successful, maybe theyve stopped listening to customers and people can only buy standardized services but you can customize things. If you do use a flipsy, back up your claims. Avis backed up its USP with good rates, comparable service, and hard work while from Reagans quit whit, it naturally showed he was still in possession of his senses and had a sense of humor to boot. Make sure you can back up your USP with credibility when you try to turn a disadvantage into an advantage. Enterprise - Pick Enterprise. We'll pick you up. Avis did a complete turnaround with its "We're number two, We try harder" USP that promised wonderful customer service, so what did the other has ran rental car agencies have to offer? How could they possibly differentiate themselves from both Hertz and Avis, and promise a benefit to the customer that would bring in business? The case of Enterprise just goes to show that theres always another feature or frustration with the product or service buying experience you can focus on. Enterprise came up with the following business strategy to differentiate itself. It offered the convenience of picking up customers who needed to rent a car.
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Enterprise recognized that if you needed to rent a car, it was probably a big hassle to even get to the car lot, so they decided to remove that hassle or frustration as the crux of their USP. USP generation method #3 tells us to consider the question: What is your greatest frustration about dealing with ___ [your industry, type of business, product or service]? Enterprise found one of these frustrations and designed their entire business around eliminating it. That became the core of their USP. When you know all your customers hassles or frustrations with your type of product or service, design your business model to do away with those hassles. Next, put that fact smack in the middle of your USP and advertise it everywhere. Customers will beat a path to your door. Basically, Enterprise promised a benefit of convenience because they come to you rather than you have to go to them. They changed their business model to provide this extra service, and then used this promise to build their business. Bounty - The Quicker Picker-Upper Heres another famous USP that also has to do with pick ups. There are many consumer products out there, such as paper towels, that have very similar characteristics. Take off the names and labels of these similar products, throw away the packaging, and youd be hard pressed to differentiate one from the other. Honestly. Since consumers cannot tell one from another, they tend to buy whoever or whichever is lowest in price or they tend to buy based on some advertised USP that this product is best for ___. They tend to buy based on brand images that were developed on the basis of selective USPs. Bounty faced this challenge with its paper towels, so how could it differentiate itself from all the other paper towel manufacturers and gain customers for what was basically a commodity item? Solution? Bounty named its product the quicker picker upper, meaning that Bounty towels absorb spills faster than other towels and therefore make your clean-up job go
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faster. Bounty advertised the benefit of time savings and fewer cleaning hassles with the name. Do Bounty towels really make your job noticeably faster? I have my doubts, but if this USP successfully penetrates into the psyche of the consumer, certain segments who like that USP for whom it seems a particularly striking, relevant, interesting, or exciting concept -- will lock onto that USP promise and become Bounty devotees. Everyone likes one paper towel or another for some reason or another, and Bounty chooses to make its absorbability excel so that it sells! I dont know what share of the marketplace Bounty has for its paper towels, but this is a smart strategy for differentiating a product with lots of competitors. In a way, this is using a preemptive strategy of claiming benefits before anyone else because most all paper towels will help you pick up things quicker. Bounty must measure its product absorbability rate to make those claims, but when you think about it, with a swish of the hands a spill is wiped away, and a 1-2-3 second difference is not going to matter much to you or me at all. Nevertheless, thats one way of taking a product feature, turning it into a major benefit that customers want, and turning that benefit into a powerful product USP. Pampers diapers - "Give your baby something you never had as a baby. A drier bottom." Heres another USP for a product that trumpets absorbability diapers! The reason why people buy them is because they keep a babys bottom dry. Thats absorbability. Every diaper manufacturer has a product that performs this very same function but Pampers simply grabbed the preemptive advantage of coming right out and saying that this is what they do. The promise of a drier bottom for the baby is something all diapers offer, but Pampers separated itself from the crowd by just flat out saying it first. As a result, theyve established themselves as the de facto diaper standard. Its all because of a preemptive marketing USP.
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Nyquils USP The nighttime, coughing, achy, sniffling, stuffy head, fever so you can rest medicine If you want to know how powerful this USP is, just start rattling off this sentence and see how many people can finish it. That shows how strongly its penetrated the American psyche. Does this USP segment out a niche in the cold medicine market? You bet it does those with nighttime cold problems. Not daytime, not headache, not runny nose but nighttime cold problems. Does it promise a big benefit? Yep relief so you can sleep. Is the idea of selling a night time cold medicine big enough of a market to keep the firm going? Nyquil has been selling its product for years, so they made the right choice with this one. Nyquil has the nighttime cold medicine category pretty much locked up. Pay-Less Shoes Doesnt it feel good to pay less? This USP illustrates how even a company name can support the USP and its business strategy, which in this case is to offer shoes at a discount to the consumer. This is a low price or discount price USP promise, and it taps into the sensory feeling of comfortable shoes and the intellectual satisfaction of getting a good deal by paying less. Two birds with one stone natural believability. The branding for payless has become so strong that immigrants returning to their home countries in South America would bring boxes of shoes back home, and paved the way for Payless to start over 200 stores in Latin America. Wal-Mart - Always the low price There you go another low price USP. Its usually not a wise idea to create a USP based on offering the lowest price unless you absolutely will always be able to deliver on that promise -- because eventually someone else always comes along with a lower price still. It only works as long as you are competing against higher priced opponents.
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Furthermore, you can never hold onto a customer who is a switchable buyer triggered by price alone. Only one competitor can be the cheapest and the others have to use different USPs. The lowest price USP is therefore the most vulnerable type of positioning because financially stronger competitors can use a price war to knock you out of the market. Home Depot does this by entering a new area, lowering prices so low that local merchants are forced to quit, and then raising prices once again after they are gone. Staples and Office Depot do the same thing. I remember the story of a man who made scratch pads and was the most efficient guy at it on the East coast. Business was booming and he thought no one could beat him until one day he found a small Chinese shop starting to eat into his sales. The shop used family employees who could produce the scratch pads for pennies less than he could and no matter how he tried to retool his operations, he realized they would always beat him on price. Admitting defeat, he eventually left the business before it became a loser knowing that he had truly lost his competitive advantage. Wal-Mart has replaced Kmart as the low price outlet, but someday somebody will eventually replace Wal-Mart. Nothing lasts forever, so its inevitable. The Gimbels Department Store chain used to trumpet its low-priced USP, Nobody but nobody beats Gimbels! Theyre not around anymore and Sears lost its low price connotations ages ago. Maybe Wal-Mart will disappear due to some strategic business mistake that weakens it, or someone buys it out and changes its basic strategies. Maybe customer buying habits eventually switch. Anything can happen. Did you know that the Greeks suffered a Dark Ages from about 1100 to 700 B.C. because they forgot how to write, and became the only people in human history to lose their literacy after having attained it? Who knows? Almost anything can happen the Berlin Wall fell and no one had predicted that! Basically what I want to say is that the low priced USP puts you in a precarious position. Its more fun and rewarding to compete on things other than price. It might takes decades, but its just a matter of time before one low price leader is replaced by another. History shows its usually just a matter of time before someone else comes along who indeed offers lower prices than you do, so be careful of positioning yourself as the lowest priced in your USP.
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You also have to consider the fact that Wal-Mart is under incredible pressure to keep pretty thin margins when using such a USP strategy. It has to make money through high volume instead. Can you do that? Putting aside the controversy over USPs based on low prices, what makes WalMarts USP particularly believable is the word always, which is like the positively, absolutely phrase used by Federal Express. Its a promised, credible benefit thats relevant to consumers (who doesnt want low price?) and a powerful motivator. Always try to factor a degree of believability into your USP because that will prevent customers from reacting with a Yeah, right to Hmmm, maybe I should look into this. Most copywriters and admen wont emphasize it, but credibility is a key feature behind the success of these mega-monster USPs. Timex - It takes a licking and keeps on ticking. If youre old enough, you might remember the countless Timex watch ads where they practically beat a Timex to death by subjecting it to all sorts of extreme conditions pressure, accidents, shock, water, cold and afterwards it just kept on ticking. Thats a promised benefit of durability if I ever heard one and a promise of value. You wont buy the watch and have it break the very next day, which is what you used to expect before Timex came out. Im old enough to remember having to buy one or two watches a year because of how often the other brands would break! The crazy demonstrations of putting the Timex through all sorts of extreme conditions, after which they would triumphantly raise the watch and show it running without a scratch, proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that you could believe in the Timex dependability USP. After seeing many of these ads on TV, pretty soon everyone in America knew that Timex watches keep on ticking. By the way, this is one of the benefits of running an extensive marketing or advertising campaign. Once youve got your USP and know its hitting the
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hotspot of the market, when you continue advertising it everywhere then the general public soon knows what you stand for. Once youve gotten your USP, try to find all sorts of new ways to throw it in peoples faces. Because Timex ran countless ads that were seen everywhere -ads where they kept beating the watch to death and it kept on running -- people ended up believing these watches were nearly indestructible. Timexs success was all a function of a good USP, a way to demonstrate its truthfulness, and a continuous advertising campaign. Timex focused itself on pursuing a particular market niche for its time pieces. They went after people who wanted reliability and durability not the fashion conscious watch crowd or the low-priced watch crowd. They didnt go after the Rolex crowd either. They niched themselves to go after consumers who were interested in a watch that would keep working. Timex selected its niche, got focused, and then went on to dominate it for years. American Tourister luggage also focused on a durability USP when it started running memorable commercials of a bezerk gorilla slamming its luggage around in its cage and banging the hell out of it like there was no tomorrow. That Gorilla spot was so effective that it ran for 15 years, which is almost an eternity on television, and everybody knew that the luggage was durable. People today still remember those luggage commercials. The moral? Prove your USP with a demonstration and forever keep at the task of pressing it forward. Roy Williams, author of The Wizard of Ads, always says that one of the twelve biggest mistakes in advertising is creating ads instead of campaigns. Its the running of campaigns that gets those ads into the minds of your potential consumers, so make sure you keep running a winning USP after you craft one. Its the repetition that does the work. Studies show that most people need to see an ad seven to nine times before their purchase reluctance winds down. Once youve created an advertisement that works, the general rule is to therefore keep running it until it stops working. Slowly, slowly it will start seeping into the minds of the public, just as rainwater slowly percolates into the ground after a dry spell. Let me tell you about a famous example Marlboro cigarettes. Years ago, the Marlboro cigarette was originally perceived as a feminine cigarette brand until Phillip Morris changed its image to that of the independent
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masculine cowboy who roamed Marlboro country. Before Marlboro started running its new cowboy image in ads, it ranked a lowly 31st in cigarette sales market share. After one full year of running the macho cowboy ads, Marlboro was still perceived as a feminine brand! The brand didnt even budge and Philip Morris had spent $18 million in advertising. Fast forward to today, and Marlboro is ranked number one at the top of the pack, but it took consistency in pressing forth its image on TV, radio, billboards, and print ads to finally get it to where it is today. And in all that time the same message has been pressed forth ... its still cowboys, the rugged West, the Marlboro man, come to where the flavor is. The lesson can be summed up in one word: commitment. You can also call it repetition, but commitment is a better term because thats what makes marriages work, what makes businesses work, and what enables anyone to excel and succeed at anything. You have to be committed to a cause. You will actually get tired of seeing the same message being promoted over and over again well before your customers do, so dont worry about being repetitive if your approach is working. While you might get bored, your customers wont, so do not switch ads or change USPs just because you personally feel bored. Repetition and commitment are the name of the game. Most marketing plans dont fail because of the wrong idea but because people abandoned it too soon. The rule is: keep running a successful campaign until it works no more because sales start dropping significantly. Youll get tired of it far quicker than your customers will so if it keeps on working, then keep plugging it. Keep on doing what you did to become successful. Winners repeat. They find out what works and do it again, perhaps with a twist or so, but repetition s the name of the game. DeBeers Diamonds are forever Speaking of long lasting durability, this USP is an example of pure genius. Diamonds are indeed the hardest natural substance on earth, so they will last forever. DeBeers simply hijacked this fact, along with all its psychological connotations in the area of romance, and used it to sell their diamonds as tokens of love.
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Through a clever USP, the sparkling diamond that lasts forever became the symbol of undying love. This USP basically says that if a girl receives diamond from a man, their love will last forever just as the diamond will. Their love will be as long lasting as the diamond. Thats a very powerful, motivating benefit which taps into many psychological factors love, romance, union, durability, longevity, gifting, pleasing a girl and making her happy. The USP needs to be powerful to sell a tiny little stone, with no real consumer value, at the price of small car! But consider how successful theyve been three tiny words that have sold billions of dollars! Forever love isnt that worth the money you plunk down for a diamond? Thats the question DeBeers poses. How much is your love worth? DeBeers has even answered for us just two months salary. Now its even affordable. Maxwell House Coffee - "Good to the last drop" Heres a longevity USP of another type a consistently great-tasting cup of coffee. Every time you drink Maxwell house coffee, you can depend on a great experience an experience of pleasure right down to the very last drop. Thats the promise but how do you establish the proof behind this USP in commercials? The believability of this claim is hard to establish through words, so Maxwell House did it pictorially. Whenever you see someone drinking a cup of Maxwell House coffee in its ads, you can always expect to see a large and very satisfied smile break out on the coffee lovers face. No Maxwell House commercial will ever show a face that isnt pleased or which doesnt break out into a large smile. That type of future pacing won Maxwell House its market-share. Midas Mufflers - Guaranteed for as long as you own your car.
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Your USP must differentiate you from your competitors in some BIG way and you must substantiate your claims or you will not be believed. Midas Muffler did this not through a price guarantee, but through a service guarantee. Everyone hates having their car repaired the trouble, the cost, the inconvenience. We want it to happen as little as possible. Solution? Midas Muffler tackled this frustration and promised that if you buy from them you will never have to buy another muffler again as long as you own the car. Guarantees are some of the best sales USPs because they remove all the purchase risks from the customer, and they testify that the USP claims are something you can count on. Can you offer some type of USP for your product, service or business? Wheaties cereal - The breakfast of champions" The premise of the Wheaties USP is that if you eat Wheaties you will be in the same league as the superstar athletes who have graced the cover of its boxes Bruce Jenner, Wayne Gretzky, Jack Nicklas, Pete Sampras, Arthur Ashe, Sarah Hughes, Chris Evert, Muhammed Ali, Babe Ruth, Lance Armstrong, Tiger Woods, and so on. Recognize any names? You will become like these giants yourself a champion when you eat Wheaties. Thats the promise. After all, Wheaties is the breakfast of champions ... thats what made these superstars great and it will make you into a champion, too. Thats the implied promise. Whenever you show someone actually using your product its an endorsement, and getting celebrities or authorities to endorse something is the best type of endorsement there is. By showing these trustworthy athletic champions and roles models who were also selected not just because of emulation but because of the believability spillover effect that comes from their reputations for honesty -- you figure it really is the breakfast they eat.
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You see famous athlete after athlete eating Wheaties and you start wondering whether they know something you dont so as to have become the champions they are. Maybe its the Wheaties Its all about the association. Hows that for a USP? Celebrity endorsement, the promise that youll become a champion, the connotations of goodness and wholeness in wheat. Wheaties tapped into many of these emotional issues with its USP. Smacks of a big promise, bold difference, and believability to me. Miller Lites USP Tastes great, less filling Miller Brewing put out a famous serious of TV commercials that had athletes and celebrities constantly arguing over Miller Lites best feature -- was it less filling or great tasting? In those commercials, beer drinkers were presented with not just one but two product benefits, and the use of famous celebrities squabbling generated lots of attention and controversy for the ads. Both the name of the product -- lite beer -- and the fact that they used thin people in the ads took away any potential objections that beer would cause you to gain weight. All the components in presenting the USP supported one another, which is why this beer catapulted to the top of the market. Another reason great advertising that promised an EMOTIONAL experience. Please remember that you want emotional voltage in your USP and advertising. I constantly stress that there has to be coherence and alignment between your USP, your packaging, business model, service, everything it all has to add up and tell the same story for your USP to have power potential. Consider that an expensive perfume is sold in an exquisite bottle in a luxurious setting by beautiful women all these factors work together to support the brand image. The Miller Lite commercials also serve as a perfect example of how to do this and link everything together to support a USP. You have to do the same thing with whatever USP you craft. If youre a doctor and your office looks like a dirty mess, dont believe its not important to your marketing. If you claim to be a service company and no one answers the phone or e-mails, what will people tell others about the wonderful service USP youve promised?
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Once youve created your USP, make sure you can deliver on it and that every part of your operations reflects on its believability. In marketing, its not the best product or service that wins, but the marketing that makes it so. Its all about creating perceptions of value. With a USP in your hand, ask yourself what you must do to incorporate it throughout your business. For the most profound business success, your entire business operation should have what I call USP coherence. Everything together should be aligned to support the delivery of that USP. Perhaps a better way to say it is that your marketing plan and business plan should surround your USP. Rolls-Royce - "At sixty miles an hour the loudest noise in the new RollsRoyce comes from the electric clock." This USP, written by advertising great David Ogilvy, promises a quiet drive for Rolls Royce, and that quietness conjures up unspoken images of a wonderful ride due to high quality performance. Thats what justifies the high price of a Rolls Royce. Thats the promise high class operating excellence, and Ogilvy got at it just by mentioning a clock. An amazing degree of believability was achieved simply by conjuring up a seemingly unrelated image that perfectly tapped into the promised benefits they were offering. The Rolls Royce is a luxury car of value. If only we could all be so creative! Clairols USP - "Does she or doesnt she? Only her mother knows for sure!" Clairols USP of a question for its do-it-yourself hair coloring -- Does she or doesnt she? -- promised that its hair colors were so good that people could not tell if your hair color was natural or not. In fact, when Clairol introduced its product, the results were more natural than anything you could possibly get at your beauty parlor, but this was so hard to believe that Clairol had to do onstage demonstrations at the International Beauty Show to prove they werent making a hoax.
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Magazines rejected their hair coloring advertising, too, because they didnt believe it would work. How to get over this fix? How do you make your claim of promised benefits believable when theyre so outrageously ahead of the competition? In time, Clairol eventually got the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval for its product, which is one of the strategies I mentioned you could use to gain credibility for your product. The big job, however, was the task of creating a USP. That job went to Shirley Polykoff of Foote, Cone & Belding who came up with these memorable lines. To men they suggested sexual encounters, but to women they suggested natural looking hair of another color. Clairol established its credibility for its USP every time it showed the picture of a beautiful womans hair (they always used models at least ten years younger than the typical product user) next to her childs hair (the mother-child motif always tested best) and you actually did not know whether she was using the product. The mental questions you started asking yourself, since you didnt know for sure, was itself demonstrative proof of the truth of the USP. The ads not only made their point, but they made hair coloring acceptable. Many great headlines for ads start out with a question like this: Do you make these mistakes in English? Are you ever tongue tied at a party? Who else wants a screen star figure? Whose fault when children disobey? Do you have a worry stock? Do you have these symptoms of nervous exhaustion? Is the life of a child worth $1 to you? Six types of investor which type are you in? Is your home picture poor? How much is worker tension costing your company? Are we a nation of lowbrows? Which of these best sellers do you want for only $1 each?
Can you create a question USP, or an question advertisement headline employing your USP, for your business, too? Burger King - Have it Your Way When Burger King started using this USP, its biggest competitor was McDonalds. 148
Lets consider Burger Kings competitive situation against McDonalds at the time so we can get the lay of the land. It was a situation similar to the #2 guy Avis going against the big guy Hertz. What could Burger King do differently that would separate itself from looking like a McDonalds me too, and yet be interesting or attractive enough to pull the customers away from McDonalds? Since McDonalds and Burger King both makes hamburgers, how in the world could Burger King differentiate itself from the market leader (McDonalds) and get people to become its customers rather than the market leaders customers? Ill tell you how they made a promise. In their USP they told you they will make the hamburger for you exactly the way you want it. Your way is the best way, so they promised to make it your way. In effect, they promised that they would make a hamburger that would taste better (they offered a better eating experience) since your way has to taste better than the McDonalds way. After all, thats why you like it your way. You like your way better because to you it does taste better. The promised benefit was eating satisfaction. How could you argue with the credibility of a USP that says the company will make your food just the way you like it and when you go to the counter they do exactly that. Burger King simply advertised what they chose to do with their customer service business model. Without giving you any hassles, they would make changes to your burger exactly how you requested them. As to McDonalds, in their old USP they told you exactly why you should stop by because you deserve a break today, so get up and get away to McDonalds. Or, they made the golden arches a fun place to be, or a family experience, or a teenagers experience. One of its USPs was We love to see you smile. McDonalds never fails to reinvent itself or create new USPs for certain market segments without damaging its major USP of hamburger enjoyment. At this moment, they are focusing on a taste experience USP -- Im lovin it. The moral of this story is: (1) Yes, you can go against the big guys but (2) The world never stands still, so even the juggernaut may have to evolve its USP over time.
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You can even wobble your USP a little this way or that to appeal to different segments of the market, or even craft separate USPs for the same product so as to appeal to different market niches. Kentucky Fried Chickens (KFC) -11 Secret herbs and Spices Speaking of eating, the promise you take away from KFCs 11 secret herbs and spices unique selling proposition is that the chicken recipe is so good that it must be kept a secret. Otherwise why would those herbs and spices be secret? That claim of secrecy sort of like Coca Colas secret formula locked away in the vault -- is what generates credibility for its promise of an extraordinary tasty meal. Theres another point you should note, too. If KFC had said, 10 secret herbs and spices, the ad would actually have less impact than 11 secret herbs and spices. Why? Because people would think they were just rounding numbers and that their USP was just advertising talk lacking any truth. Specific numbers suggest documented accuracy, truthfulness and credibility. Thats why they are so effective in the field of persuasion. Specific numbers are convincing. Whenever you can add a specific number to a USP, its a trick that adds tremendous credibility. Thats why McDonalds used to have a number under each sign post which said something like Over 6 billion sold. McDonalds used to periodically change those signs to increase the number, and I can remember as a child anxiously waiting with my brothers and sisters to see what the new total figure would be. Imagine you have two car ads in front of you. One says, This car has been proven to be the fastest in the world. The other says, Goes from 0 to 60 miles per hour in 2.31 seconds. Which ad makes a bigger impression? Which one is more believable? Do you remember those ads where they quoted the statistics saying, In blindfolded taste tests, 9 out of 10 people preferred Pepsi over Coke? Or 7 out of 8 doctors prefer ___?
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Those words are even more powerful than saying, The brand which doctors recommend most. People suspect the claim about doctors, but when you see exact numbers, measurements and statistics, people tend to believe it. Claude Hopkins, the father of scientific advertising, wrote that When we make specific and definite claims, when we state actual figures or facts, we indicate weighed and measured expressions. We are telling with the truth or a lie. People do not expect big concerns to lie. They know that we cannot lie in the best mediums. So we get full credit for those claims. If adding a specific number to your USP improves its credibility, then do so. For instance, you can say we offer 342 widgets, which is twice what everyone else offers. How about cell phones with 34% less radiation or 23% more gas mileage with our additive or 87% of our graduates get hired within 3 months ? Numbers add believability. Thats what Dominos did with its 30 minutes or less claim. Internet marketers put figures up like in 33 days or in 27 minutes because they know this has more believability than 30 days or half an hour. Its always best to add specific numbers to a USP whenever you can. That is, when its appropriate in making your case. Wendys - "Wheres the Beef?" McDonalds, Burger King and then along came Wendys. Lets see how could Wendys differentiate itself? Company executives looked at their product, saw that it was bigger than McDonalds or Burger Kings and then made that feature the center of their unique selling proposition. They didnt phrase the more beef feature as a benefit because its a given with hamburgers, so they didnt have to. In most cases, however, you definitely should highlight your benefits in your USP rather than just focus on your product features. Focusing on features will get you nowhere. Customers dont care about features. They care about WIIFM whats in it for them. Whats in it for them is the result of translating features into benefits, of
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translating features into scenarios that tell customers how you will truly make their lives better and different. How did Wendys decide to advertise their bigger burger USP? The result was advertising history as little old lady Clara Peller, simply stood in line at competitor burger counters, and asked in her huffy voice, Wheres the beef? The benefit to buying hamburgers from Wendys was made clear through comparison. Conclusion Weve gone over quite a few famous USPs, most of which have been reduced to simple, catchy slogans required by brand advertising. That doesnt mean you need a three word USP, though it helps if you have tons of advertising dollars and are going to go national. What you need for your product, service or business is just a simple message that describes what you are going to do for customers and how you are going to differ from your competitors. Clear, concise, convincing, and compelling it generates results for you. Shorter is usually best, but your USP message especially for services -- can be as long as it needs to be to get your points across. However, one to three sentences are better than a longer paragraph, and one sentence is best of all. USPs work best when they get your point across FAST! Customers, after all, have a hard time remembering long speeches. The longer it gets, the higher your chances of boring your prospect. A old maxim in advertising goes that theres no such thing as a sales letter too long, but there is such a thing as a sales letter too boring. Long copy or short copy is not the issue. The issue is whether you give enough information for people to make an intelligent buying decision. People need enough information to avoid making a mistake, which is why credibility is a big issue in your USP. Yet you must also come across in a way that interests your prospects, and that means interesting copy. Naturally you dont want to create a dull, stale, or unresponsive USP so get to work at finding some tight, powerful, motivating phrase that will persuade your customers to do business with you rather than somebody else. Make it compelling, because you are trying to convince people to be willing to part with their hard-earned money for the benefits you have to offer.
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They better be pretty good benefits! Remember a powerful USP has the following characteristics: (1) It is an overt claim of benefits, a unique selling promise to the customer that if you buy this you will get this benefit. (2) The proposition is unique so other competitors cannot claim it. Its something that no competitor owns in the customers mind. It dramatically differentiates you from your competitors saying why you are different. (3) It is focused, forcing you to give something up. (4) Your selling proposition is compelling enough that it cause people to buy. (5) Your claim has natural credibility. There is a real inherent reason to believe it. A killer USP is not too hyped or too incredible to believe, nor does it put people to sleep. It may take time to craft the perfect phrase that strikes gold and gets your message across, but now that youve spent all that time and money on education or developing a product or service, dont skimp on this phase of the process. It takes time to articulate just the right message but excellent phrasing is worth the time it takes to shape it so it strikes home. Youve got your content, but now you have to shape your USP for the perfect delivery. That brings up the topic of how you can introduce yourself with a USP, which is how to craft and elevator speech for yourself, your product, your business or services.
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Branding Yourself With a Personal USP and Crafting An Elevator Speech that Wins You Fame and Clients
What personality traits or associations do you immediately think of when you hear the following names? Richard Branson. Benjamin Spock. Michael Jordon. Martha Stewart. Carl Sagan. Tom Peters. Zig Ziglar. Donald Trump. Some of the associations that might come to mind are Richard Branson and bold risk-taking Benjamin Spock and conservative child psychology Michael Jordon and sports excellence Martha Stewart and tasteful entertainment Carl Sagan and astronomy Tom Peters and provocative, WOW! cutting edge ideas about excellence Zig Ziglar and motivational speaking Donald Trump and deal making. If we mentioned Oprah you might think of entertaining conversation and a person who reveals themselves. Madonna might bring up certain connotations while Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton would bring certain pictures to mind, too. All these people have made active efforts to brand themselves, or have been branded by the media. Each one has a variety of talents but is largely recognized for a very small subset of the talent package they possess thats been collapsed into a simple, understandable image. Thats personal branding. Personal branding is basically the task of finding your core descriptive traits and then positioning yourself, through self-promotion, so that you become known for
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those traits. Its making sure everyone know who you are, what you do, how you are unique and different, and how youll help. A brand is the sum total of all the mental and emotional associations brought up by your name or the name of a product, company or service, so your personal brand is essentially what your name stands for all the associations and mental real estate it brings up --in the public mind. Personal branding is therefore the attempt to distinguish yourself according to your unique talents and traits so that you naturally stand out from the crowd, namely your competitors. It is a perception you try to create intentionally, and its all tied up into a neat human package. Its finding a personal USP! Everyone is a unique package, but when you control your packaging and the message portrayed by that package so that it has a receptive audience and takes you to where you want to be, that is the essence of personal branding. Personal branding is creating a stable USP by which people will remember you and know you. Its a way for you to stand out amidst your competitors. Its a way to be associated with a certain message thoughts, images, emotions, expectations that you select and paint into a persons mind, and which is triggered by specific recall clues that you pick. Creating a personal USP is creating an identity, but its much more than creating a spur of the moment, fluttering identity. Even top designers such as Georgio Armani, Perry Ellis, Calvin Klein try to create a stable image or brand identity beyond the fleeting look of the season. So creating a brand image is creating an attractive identity that you will hold for a long time, and which will win you business. The goal is to become THE immediate name that your customer thinks of and thereby gain top of the mind awareness when they need whatever it is that you sell. Consider this. All supermarkets across the nation sell generic brand products that contain the very same ingredients as those produced by branded manufacturers. The generic brands cost much less, and yet they are not run away best sellers. Instead, people pay more for the branded products even though they are essentially the same. To become more saleable, you have to create a personal brand! Creating a personal brand can make your business that much more lucrative because you can introduce yourself as part of the product or package. When the customer is
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negotiating prices and you want to seal the deal without dropping prices further, with personal branding you can always differentiate yourself by adding the line, And theres one other thing you get as part of this transaction / deal / package ME! I will personally handle everything for you and Ill make sure everything goes well. If there are any problems, you can always come to ME. The other guys dont offer that. Branding yourself is all about establishing a professional reputation for yourself which focuses on and spotlights certain highly attractive (saleable) features, strengths, values or other characteristics youve selected. Its all about expressing your personality and functionality ... who you are and what you do, in a manner that garners attention or business or whatever it is you are after. Its all about influencing people to see you exactly the way you want to be seen. But heres a WARNING: it better be in sync with your personality and ability, otherwise it wont come across as authentic and you wont be able to live up to your promises. Its said that people buy people (for instance, people hire accountants rather than accounting firms) so crafting a brand image is creating the perception of a person/personality that others will want to associate with, buy from or hire. Personal branding will help you increase your visibility, attract and maintain clients, differentiate yourself from competitors, create the closest thing there is to a monopoly without actually having one, enable you to charge a premium for your services and even thrive during difficult economic times. Its a way to build a reputation and position yourself as an expert who commands respect so that prospects come to you, you can pick and choose clients as you wish, you develop a more lucrative income and have more free time to do what you want. With a personal USP applied to personal branding, you can become the only logical choice for customers, who come to you, and can avoid the pain of cold calling and being seen as a beggar who must go from door to door for their sales. Since people bond with people and people buy from people, dont hide behind your product or service but take advantage of that fact. Promoting yourself with a bit of personal branding will definitely increase your sales. Branding yourself with a personal USP involves coordinating your communication tools, fashion (Richard Simmons wears tank tops while Sally Jesse Raphael has red glasses), work tools (briefcase, laptop, car, pen, etc.), your office look, whether you desk is messy or organized, projects you choose to work on,
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whether you are prompt and courteous and so forth so that they all create the same image. Branding is about what you are known for, what your image is, what people say about you. It is about managing your reputation. Its the distinction of being the personification of some extreme focus. Its being positioned with a specialized reputation, and specialization, as you know, brings top dollar. Branding is also about my chief concern aligning all the critical components important to your professional success your wardrobe, hair style, website, business card, places you appear, etc. -- so that they all support a unified image of how you want to be perceived by your intended market. Just as with my USP concepts of image coherence and alignment, you have to make sure that everything about you is coordinated to support your personal marketing message. You want everything aligned to be saying the same story. Thats branding. Can you brand yourself if you are not famous? Can you do this if you are simply a humble accountant or a computer programmer amidst dozens? Can you do this if youre a professional of some sort? Sure. Its done all the time either passively or by conscious choice. You can become branded by others simply because you stand out and excel in some consistent way, or because you can actively take charge of the branding process to a USP image of your own choosing. If you have a reputation of some sort, youve been branded already. What you want to do, however, is sculpt out an image * YOU * want to be known for rather than have other people do the work for you. You want to create your image intentionally rather than have one placed on you unintentionally. The best way to do that is to take the time to tell everyone about your expertise and take explicit steps to show them through deeds rather than just words. Perception is what matters in marketing though of course it has to be backed up by substance so branding yourself in an active fashion is how you are going to win business. It can be done based on any number of factors such as: Age (senior or youth) Licenses, training, or certifications held Experience Personality
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Style Education Strengths or talents Gender Ethnic or racial background Significant accomplishments, awards or honors Location
Heres how to do it when you take the conscious route of choice. Personal branding is basically the task of establishing a reputation -- a personal USP. It involves making a name or reputation for yourself. Its establishing how you want to be thought of and what you want to be known for. Its first figuring out for what you want to be known some highly distinguished or specialized core strength, talent, skill or achievement -- and then brashly, boldly advertising who you are and what you have to offer. You do that by working on how you introduce yourself, how you appear to others, what services or performance you promise to do, and you establish your branding because of a successful reputation for doing the work you promised to do. Just as with a USP, you have to honor your advertised commitments. Always keep your promises. Do what you promised you would do. How do you publicize your USP or brand image? By all the normal ways of promoting yourself. You can: Write a book or ebook Get published by writing articles Become a presenter or speaker at a convention Create a website or newsletter Get media exposure Win awards Get certifications Network heavily, all the time showing yourself Become active in your local professional association Help other people for free, as helping others and service is what its all about
I know a female accountant who, because of her motherly care in advising clients, is endearingly known as the tax momma. Being the tax momma has become her personal brand statement since it suited her personality -- and she has gone on and further cultivated that image to get more clients.
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The title of tax momma conjures up multiple useful images for an accountant a motherly figure who will take care of clients, and an overseeing accountant whos in charge and will take care of things. Others gave her this title because it was a perfect fit for her whole package, and being smart enough to recognize it, she turned it into her marketing weapon. An executive I know has been coined the millionaire maker because of all the joint venture deals hes done which have gone on to make millions, and hes actively cultivating this USP or brand image to help him get more and more deals. That reputation of being a millionaire maker makes his life easier because it helps the deals come to him. I know of several computer programmers who work for others but have developed specialized reputations theres quick turnaround Charlie, get it right the first time Fred, up all night Sam, and visual maverick Richards. A certain manager I know had unknowingly cultivated the reputation of the on time, on budget wonder, which became his branding statement or personal USP inside his firm as well. It was a pure image, it reflected his personality and performance, and it was different. It was his reputation. Whenever a certain problem or situation arises that calls for some special talents, you can be sure that these guys will be the first ones considered if their USP matches the situation at hand. Thats the power of branding. Each of these individuals carved out for themselves or it was established for them by virtue of their work habits and track history -- a special type of reputation for which they are remembered. Its their excellence of work output, plus some extra flair thrown in that accounts for their personality, that has given them special brand images. We can call those taglines their personal USP, or we can think of it as their brand statement. In either case its essentially their reputation. To increase your business, you want to cultivate a certain type of reputation and in working to create a brand image, you do this consciously rather than just let it happen, if at all. There you have it you dont have to be Oprah or Michael Jordan or Donald Trump to create a brand image. You just need to distinguish yourself in your field or industry. To create a personal brand you cannot take the middle road because then youll remain anonymous amongst your peers. There are millions of chiropractors, dentists, realtors, accountants, caterers, stock brokers, computer programmers, lawyers, marketers or financial advisors out there, and you need to differentiate yourself and publicize it. The more you
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are visible in the public eye, the more people think you are superior to your competitors. The point is, to become remembered, you must become known for something and then consistently portray that to the public. Even cities (states, countries or other locations) can become known for personal USPs, associations, niches or brand images. Remember, however, that image is just one part of the brand because branding is everything a company does to attract and maintain a relationship. Your personal image, for instance, is just the superficial elements about you such as your clothing, background, car, speaking style, etc. whereas personal branding involves the purposeful, public projection of certain aspects about a person for very specific reasons. Thats why you can build a brand image for a city or town to bring in tourism or encourage development. A brand is sort of like a deeper, invisible aura or layer of meaning that people surround a product, service, person or company with. Its the gut feeling a person experiences about a person, business, product, service or place. Nashville, Tennessee, for example, is known for country music and all sorts of other country music associations. Aspen is associated with snow skiing. Indianapolis is known for auto racing. Sante Fe, New Mexico is known for native American art. New Orleans is associated with Dixieland jazz while Williamsburg, Virginia is associated with colonial architecture. Atlantic City is known for gambling and the boardwalk. Miami, Florida is not just known for its beaches and nightlife but for its pink sidewalks. I always remember those pink sidewalks because they have helped me tremendously when having to come up with ideas to make cities and regions more popular. These associated images or connotations bring up strong identities and the promise of certain experiences or events. Thats the basis of branding, or a USP. Once I was on a consulting trip in China when the troubled mayor of a small and non-descript town lacking any special characteristics and a limited budget -asked me how to increase its popularity on his low budget. Because the surrounding region had more than the usual varieties of trees, I told him to plant as many tree varieties as possible and then to promote the town as being famous for its trees and gardens. With nothing else to go on, he could turn
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it into a place where people could come and see a wide variety of unusual or rare trees. In the city of Chang-xia, I advised the business school to create a program for managing the arts, craft production and exhibitions (shows) because the city was naturally becoming a center for small scale artistic productions. In providing consulting advice, I simply went along with the citys feng shui as well as its natural personality and growing trends. Even places can become branded in this fashion. How about websites? Absolutely! The colors you use, the layout of your page, your picture files and logos, your signature file, the words you use on email newsletters and as a tagline -- all of them can help you establish the perception of a site thats different from everyone else. Content aside, a big part of website sales has to do with the looks and graphics of the site, the feel of the site and its ease of use. These are all appearance factors that play a role in branding you online, though of course the most important thing is what you ultimately supply to your customer, or web reader, other than just the visual looks of the site. Having a web USP means you must be offering something significantly different than everyone else in order that the customer buys from you. To establish a branded web presence, or web USP, you need to follow all the rules we previously mentioned about building a USP for a regular business or profession, for you have to find some way to meaningfully differentiate yourself from your other competitors in coming up with that unique customer buying advantage, and once you have it you flaunt it on the site. You have to find out whats important to customers and then give them a unique advantage in dealing with you over everyone else, and that will become the basis of your USP. Of course, there are USPs for people, too. Heres how to come up with your own personal branding statement. What you have to do is identify a number of key things you wish to stress or be known for, and then put them all together to establish your personal brand. The rule to follow is the following:
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Your Skills/Specialization + Your Authentic Personality/Passion + Market Relevance/Perceived Needs = Your Brand Statement You can also think of the rule as the following: Your Focus (Commitment/Contribution) + Market Relevance/Needs = Your Branding Niche Or, Your Skills/Specialization + Your Authentic Personality/Passion + Differentiation + Relevance (Market Needs) = Your Branding Or perhaps the longest and best definition, Your Skills/Specialization + Your Authentic Personality/Passion + Distinctive Differentiation + Relevance + Persistent Visibility + Market Perceived Needs = Your Personal Brand Sitting down and thinking about it, youll know which one of these applies. In making a name for yourself along business lines, you have to choose some saleable skill, market need, market niche or focus thats important. There has to be a market for what you can do or offer, and you have to focus on that market. You also have to choose some unique feature of your personality or some passion and flair or excitement that differentiates you from others. But you want something NATURAL that fits your personality. For instance, one famous copywriter I know always wears a hat. Another sports a goatee. Another favors a highly unusual mustache. Each of these men knew that one of the best ways to help their marketing was to become known for their special appearance. Its part of their panache When you put those all these basic things together your skills, personality, passion, and market niche or needs -- you can come up with your own personal branding statement. In essence, its like a personal USP and the methods we used to create a USP for a product, business or service are exactly the same things you use for individuals. Creating a personal USP is simply giving people a simplified sorting device by which they can readily identify or remember you. Its your promise of value to the customer.
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If you are known for one or two excellencies that are highly different from how other people operate or conduct themselves, thats enough to create an eight to ten word positioning statement of what you stand for and how you stand out. Thats the basis of a personal USP. A personal brand statement, or personal USP, is distinct and saleable. It appeals to special needs in the marketplace or special niche desires. Its your saleable distinction how you are known and how you are different from others and why they should hire or use you rather than somebody else. Basically, to create the personal USP you go through all the steps we previously went through for products or services, but you apply them to yourself. Theres all sorts of things to choose from. You can paint a picture of the pain and frustration your customers or prospects are suffering, explain why they should listen to you, how you can help, the benefits they will get, how those benefits will impact their lives, how it will make them feel emotionally, supply evidence to support your claims and remove any risks they might have to dealing with you. Basically, you focus on what you can offer (the promise of service that has a demand and is saleable) and how youre distinct and different from others. Add in the WOW! factor of personality and passion, which you might even do through appearance, and youve got it. Once youve got that, youve got the basis of a personal USP or brand statement, and brands always command a higher price. In fact, when you have a good USP and are well niched, price usually isnt an issue. Once you have your USP, what you must do is reduce that USP to a short introduction called the elevator speech or elevator pitch. Its also often called the 30-second commercial. Have you ever heard of the term elevator speech? Its a 15-30 second scripted dialogue, using laymans terms, that you use to introduce yourself to someone. Its a verbal business card thats quick, clear and compelling. Basically, its a mini-USP or executive summary of your branding statement designed to make a positive impression and arouse the interest for a job or potential business.
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If you run a service based business, your USP is probably your elevator speech already ... if you can reduce it to saying it in under 30 seconds. Your USP is probably your brand statement. Lets pretend you are at a business gathering, such as a networking event, and you have to stand up and introduce yourself. Those few short and punchy key sentences, which can inflame the audiences desires to know more about you and which arouses the possibility of new business, are an elevator speech. Anytime you have to introduce yourself to a new contact, you can and should use your elevator speech. Wouldnt you love to have just the right words available when youre in one of those tricky situations effortless words that would win you business just through your introduction alone? Words that will get you the contacts, actions and results you want? Thats the purpose of an elevator speech, which is to fluently deliver a short rehearsed introduction that naturally generates this type of response. Its a USP introduction that helps you build business. It doesnt happen every time because you cannot sell everybody, however you know you have really done it right when someone in turn asks, "Can I call you?" or "Can I have your card because I want to give it to somebody whos looking for someone like you. What you first want to do is get attention, and then try to get action. Wouldnt you like it so that afterward you were introduced, people actually followed you around and started asking questions about doing business together? Of course it doesnt always happen that way. Sometimes the other person isnt interested in doing business with you, but you can still use the situation to create a favorable impression that will bring you future business through referrals. Heres the real secret to how you can effectively network with your elevator speech so that it brings you future business from people who arent ready to do business with you immediately. The key? After you introduce yourself, focus on the other person in a conversation, asking questions about them and centering on what they have to say. Keep quiet yourself and have them do the talking. If you do that, theyll think youre a wonderful conversationalist and will generate good feelings about you. Thats what will generate future business.
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When you meet someone, for instance, tell them your name and ask for theirs in return. Ask them what they do for a living and when they ask you, deliver your short elevator speech. After you tell the other person what you do, dont dwell on it if there isnt any interest. Rather, go right back to asking him/her questions about themselves and their own business. Be you-oriented rather than I-centered. Invest most of the time in the conversation asking about them rather than talking about yourself. When you are talking to another professional who faces a sales situation where they need clients, customers or prospects, referrals networking expert Bob Burg says you should always end such conversations with the sentence, How can I know if someone Im talking to is a good prospect for you? When you get home, a great thing to do is send the other person a thank you note saying, It was nice to meet you. If I can ever refer someone your way I will. Sincerely, and then sign your name. The principle is to concentrate on helping the other person, follow through in actually helping them, and in time they will send business your way. Thats the key. Focus on the other person, send them referrals whenever you can, and in turn they will indeed send business your way, too. Why? It might be because of a sense of obligation or because the other party feels inclined out of friendship due to the help you have rendered all sorts of reasons are valid. The bottom line is you can bet it will happen. If you follow the steps Ive just laid out, people will send business your way, which is what this book is about. Crafting a USP is about increasing sales and creating business. Thats how you should use your elevator speech. Its low key, it doesnt focus on you unless the other party starts asking questions because they are interested in your services, and running a conversation this way (with the follow through) shows you are truly and sincerely interested in the other person and helping them with their situation. Once you help them, when they know what you do through your elevator speech, you can be sure business will follow. Lets look at Dan Kennedys USP again, which can serve as his elevator speech: I devise direct marketing strategies for all types and sizes of business that eliminate all the fat and waste from their advertising
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and increase the productivity of their sales people by at least 1000%, Guaranteed. Jeff Slutsky, of Street Smart Marketing fame, uses the following USP: I specialize in teaching businesses how to advertise, market and generally increase sales without spending a lot of money. When you hear these USPs, as business professionals arent you interested in finding out how these guys do what they do? If you are a service professional and hear referral specialist Bob Burg say, I teach people how to cultivate a network of endless referrals, doesnt that wet your appetite to find out more, too? When the person to whom you are speaking starts asking questions, thats the sign of a great elevator speech because it shows your prospect is interested in what youre saying. Because they want more information, theyre definitely interested in you and what you might have to offer! That reaction is the reason people take the trouble to craft an elevator speech USP in the first place. You want to get their attention, which buys you more time to sell them. Studies show that the average time spent in an elevator with a stranger is about 16 seconds, so people also often call the elevator speech your 16 second sound bite. Some people call it your 150 word introduction, and others your 3 floor introduction. It doesnt have to be as short as 16 seconds, but it should be succinct and deliverable on a moments notice. Remember the rules quick, clear, compelling. Forget about making it just 15 seconds, 16 seconds, 30 seconds or 60 seconds for the moment. Just ask yourself this question: Can you distill the basic information about yourself, or your product or service, into an attractive message that is short, quick, interesting and to the point? Can you create a memorable, garbing message that makes listeners want to buy your product or fight your wars? Basically, an elevator speech is a personal USP for you or your business that you have to script, hone, and rehearse just like anything else. Its not really a sales pitch, but just a way to introduce yourself in a memorable fashion. You want to avoid cliches but instead focus on simple, powerfully arranged words. You also have to practice it because it must roll off your tongue with ease.
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What are the characteristics of an elevator speech? The same as those of a USP. You introduce yourself in a brief but memorable fashion telling of the benefits you provide, you showcase your uniqueness, and try to set yourself apart from your competition. You want an interesting sound bite that attracts attention, is powerful enough to be remembered and convincing enough to stir people into action when they need your product or services. To get started crafting your elevator speech, just use USP generating method #3, Do you know how Well, what I do is and youll have your elevator speech in no time. Thats even a good way to get started on a branding statement, Do you know how Well, Im different because Focus on who you are, what you represent, how you make a difference a beneficial difference in customer lives. Theres even a website online where you can fill in the blanks and start crafting an elevator speech using what Ive just told you: http://www.saleslinks.com/sideline/99c/11v1.htm Lets say you are a stockbroker. The rule for an elevator speech is not to say something simple and forgettable, such as Hi, Im a stockbroker. You have to talk uniqueness, talk promised benefits for the customer, talk branding statement, talk USP. A stockbroker might come up with something like, Hi, Im Peter Franks, and I work with people who want to accumulate wealth by investing in safe high yield bonds, rather than the turbulent stock market, that pay more than CDs, money market accounts and stock dividends. If a computer programmer says something like the following: Hi, Im Bill Malone, have been trained at MIT and run a computer programming service that designs internet application software, it wouldnt excite anyone at all. If on the other hand he says, Hi, Im Bill Malone and I write custom internet software applications that require no upkeep and effortlessly wipe out all your web business problems and headaches, then hes got a much better elevator speech introduction. An executive recruiter could say, Hi, my name is Shelly Long, and I work with fast track companies that need to find talented, friendly people to handle the companys challenges so that the business can grow to become more profitable and successful.
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All we are doing is creating a personal USP and then reducing that USP if its more than one or two sentences -- to a quick sound bite format that introduces you in a memorable manner that arouses interest in a possible relationship. To come up with your elevator speech, first start out developing your personal USP or branding statement. That might already be the USP for your service or product or business, but if you work for someone else and are seeking a new job, it might be what you personally have to offer thats presented in USP type format. You have to make sure your USP sets you apart from others, showcases your uniqueness, and informs someone of the tangible and intangible benefits you have to offer. When the words you use attracts their attention so that they realize they should do business with you, youve got a good speech. Next you have to script, hone, and rehearse this mini-introduction just like anything else, but concentrate on your opening sentence and try to leave them asking a question. Heres a test your personal USP, brand statement or elevator speech has to pass. Its called the 4-year-old test. Your elevator speech has to use words that even a 4-year old can understand. If a 4-year old cannot understand what youre saying, go back to the drawing board, get rid of any jargon, and simplify your message. Practice makes perfect, so once you have it, memorize your elevator speech so that it can roll off your tongue with ease. The worst thing that can happen is to be tongue-tied during an introduction that might win you business, so practice delivering your elevator speech by smiling in front of a mirror. It may sound hokey, but even telemarketers are given mirrors on the job so that they can see if they are smiling when they are talking on the phone. Smiling when you deliver a sales message will change the inflection of your voice in a positive fashion, which will in turn lead to more sales and interest. Therefore, the final hint is to deliver your speech with energy and a smile. It takes a few rehearsals to get this down right, but the rehearsals mean money so they are well worth it. When you are always seen as being friendly, thats the best type of brand image there is. Most of all, however, is the concept that instead of working on your closing skills, you might be focusing on the wrong end of the equation. Work on improving the quality of your opening skills through a well crafted elevator speech, and youll open more doors. That, my friend, means more sales and success.
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Upwording Your Marketing Message With USP Punch Power and Using It to Align Your Business
Your USP is a one-of-a-kind package of benefits that your product or service offers that is dramatically unique ... no competitor offers the same thing. In fact its so different than what any competitor offers that prospects must come to you for this blend and you thereby create a monopoly for yourself in the marketplace. Thats the strategy behind creating a USP, which reflects your strategy for dominating your market and virtually eliminating your competition. The USP is your strategy for dominating the marketplace. After you have crafted the USP for your product, service or business, the final step is to stamp that USP on absolutely every piece of sales paper your company uses on brochures, sales materials, brochures, direct mail pieces, premiums, newsletters, invoices, letterheads, business cards, envelopes, signs, and articles you write EVERYTHING that comes into contact with customers. Unless you are testing some new marketing approach, sales materials should contain some form of your USP since youve already determined it is the biggest and most attractive benefit you can promise to potential customers. Foremost of all, make sure you start working your USP into the headlines of your ads and advertising copy. Integrate your USP into your most important marketing communications. Lets take the example of a marketing brochure. People are so inundated with direct pieces and brochures today that you have literally seconds to impress a potential customer before they toss away your expensive marketing materials. In fact, direct marketers know its better to send a letter than a brochure since a letter has a higher response rate. That tip might save you a lot in mailing costs. The major point, however, is that you have to make your USP known in a flash! Heres what you do put a headline on that brochure or sales piece that boldly draws attention to your USP. Make it big, bold, and attractive so that it captures their attention. Make it stand out.
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Next, make sure your brochure or sales piece tells exactly what you have to offer. Make it benefit laden rather than feature-centric. Use the word YOU a thousand times! Its all about your prospect and whats in it for them. Offer proof you can do what you say youll do that youll deliver on what you promise. That means testimonials, a client list, a money-back guarantee. Cite your credentials that will give credibility to your claims. Sweeten the pot by offering bonuses or premiums for acting NOW rather than later. Heres the rule for adding bonuses, by the way: (1) they must be valuable, (2) they must be desirable, (3) they must help in the use of the main product. People will often buy your product or service just for the bonuses or premiums alone, so always consider whether you can add on a bonus that costs you but little in order to secure a sale that makes you a lot. Thats a competitive strategy and a powerful factor for your USP that adds fuel for your offer. Since your unique selling proposition is the biggest rewarding promise you can make that shows how youre different than everyone else and brings the most customers to your doorstep, plaster it everywhere in all your sales literature. Why wouldnt you want to promote that message everywhere if its the key to bringing in more business? Now that youve got it, flaunt it! Use it everywhere to upword your marketing message. Now is not the time to be shy. This is your life, this is your business. Communicate it everywhere. If you truly have a better offer, a better deal, a better product or service then its your moral obligation to let everyone know about so you can help as many people as possible. Thats what service is all about, and by doing this you put pressure on your competitors to upgrade themselves, too. A high performance USP is actually a very noble thing that elevates the market because it helps nudge everybody toward being more in tune with helping customers and fulfilling their needs. Once again, communicate your USP every chance you get. Work out sales scripts that repeat your USP message in novel and interesting ways though the new ABC widget is very simple to use and never breaks down, no matter what happens you can always call our toll free technical support day or night for as long as you have it.
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Dont forget to put your USP into your voice mail messages, too, as well as on your website sales copy and under your e-mail signature. Thats whats called the sig file or signature file, which is a tagline that appears at the bottom of your e-mails or right under your name. In a way, its like the P.S. used in direct mail thats been proven to dramatically increase customer response. For instance, Michael Senoff, who runs www.hardtofindseminars.com (a website which sells used books, tapes, videos and CDs of expensive marketing seminars), always sends out private e-mail with the following sig file underneath his name: What else can I do for you? Is there anything else I can do for you? P.S. Buy preowned Jay Abraham seminars on direct marketing, product development, copy writing and advertising here for pennies on the dollar. When your e-mail sig file incorporates your USP like this, you will constantly be reinforcing your business by making it easy for people to remember why they might want to do business with you. You will be attracting qualified prospects to your product or website without effort. Its a way to interest people to seek you out because youre telling them exactly what youll do for them. A powerful sig file can create a compelling reason for customers to make decisions in your favor, and if its memorable enough your e-mail recipients will often pass your contact information to others who may need your services. A good sig file incorporating your USP is therefore a great way to get new customers to come to you without spending any money. All you have to do is make sure you add it to all your e-mail communications, and make sure it incorporates your USP and tells the customer whats in it for me when they do business with you. Stamping all your web communications with your USP is the essence of online branding. Remember youre trying to differentiate yourself from others and promise a big benefit that solves your customers pains, so always broadcast how you benefit your customer. Dont be shy about it. After all, this is your life. Most people with internet businesses dont use a signature file containing their USP, so dont neglect this painless, effortless way to increase your business. So use that empty real estate under your e-mail signature by filling it in with your USP.
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Heres the key point I want to stress. Once you have created your USP, dont sit on it. Start using it! If you just timidly mention it every now and them without actively promoting it, it wont do a thing for you. Youve just uncovered the biggest promise you can make that appeals the most to people and can catapult your business to the next level of success, so use it. Promote it everywhere. Whether its an elevator speech, a sig file or the headline of an advertisement, Im trying to get you to think of all sorts of costless, painfree ways to use your USP to increase business. Promoting your USP basically means two things: (1) As weve discussed, it means upwording your marketing message so that all your written communications contain or reflect your USP. (2) It also means aligning your company operations to support the USP, which I call establishing corporate coherence or alignment. Everything about your company must reinforce the USP, so aligning your companys operations to support, exhibit, reflect, display or better service your USP is establishing operational coherence and image coherence. Everything has to work in concert. There has to be image and operational consensus and alignment. People are observant. They tend to pick up on inconsistencies they notice rather quickly. Red flags get raised in their minds whenever people sense there is an inconsistency between some message they hear and what they personally experience. When a companys inner workings therefore do not testify to and reinforce its USP when all the factors involved in delivering on a USP dont reinforce one another -- then be careful that youre raising those flags. You better make sure your company policies, bonuses, performance evaluations and other reinforcing processes make your USP come alive. Once you start publicizing your USP, stand up and deliver on it. Organize your business around your USP so that you can deliver on it effectively. Integrate your USP into everything you do. Lets say, for example, that your USP is Two For One Pizzas in 30 Minutes or Less. If thats the case, youll have to be sure you arent advertising this service outside a specific territorial region otherwise youll never be able to make good on your 30 minutes or less claim. You also have to make sure you have enough staff to produce double the normal number of pizzas, since volume is the key to your profitability, and enough delivery boys to get them to your customers in time. 172
In other words, you must organize your business operations so that they can deliver on your USP with excellence. Your bonuses, compensation plans, procedures, uniforms, the way your staff answers the phone, customer service and even your quality control procedures or the appearance of your delivery trucks should all reinforce your USP to make it come alive. Lets take customer service as an instance. If your USP is having a broad selection of product, call your customers up after the sale and ask if they are satisfied with their purchase. If not, offer to replace the product with something else from your large inventory that closer fits their needs. Thats aligning your customer service with your broad selection USP. If extended service or after-the-sale help is your USP, then once again call your customers to check if everything is all right, as that will really cement the association of your company with your USP. Trust me, itll make an impression. In coordinating all these factors, you are basically establishing your business reputation for delivering exactly what you said you would. These arent tricks, these are the positive steps of a macro-business strategy. In short, live up to your USP. Make sure your whole business reflects it. When you make a great promise to the marketplace, you and your staff have to back it up for all its worth. The best thing you can ever create is a reputation for trustworthiness and honoring your claims, which will in turn bring you yet more customers. On the other hand, every business casts a shadow so if you cannot deliver on your USP then abandon that USP for something you can deliver on. Thats part of the selection process. Dont destroy your business reputation by not being able to deliver on your claims, so be careful of any negative shadow you might create because those shadows will follow you everywhere. A great USP can work wonders for a shoddy product over the short term, but if you dont upgrade your products and services then no USP will be able to save the day because you will ruin your credibility and reputation. In courts of law we commonly dismiss testimonies that are bundled with lies, so anything you say after youve failed in meeting your commitments just wont be believed. The point I wish to make is the following: if there is a deficiency in your product, or in your customers experience, then fix it! Marketing and advertising cannot fix
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a lousy product or customer experience. It wont make you better at what you do. In fact, if your company is mismanaged or your product/service is terrible it will only accelerate your fall. Famous ad man Claude Hopkins learned this lesson when he created a very successful campaign for the Mitchell automobile. Hopkins said it was, in fact, the most successful automobile advertisement campaign in his entire career, but it led to disaster rather than victory. To advertise the Mitchell, Claude Hopkins called attention to all its efficiencies. This USP struck a responsive chord with the general public, which was expecting efficiencies in automobiles, that they flocked to buy the Mitchell in droves. However, Hopkins found out The car was a fizzle. Its engineers had skimped in every detail. Hundreds of cars came back, and every car sold blighted the name Mitchell. The larger the sales the worse became the ruin. The very success of the advertising, with the car that was offered, led to destruction. We played too high a note for the product we had to sell. The bad reputation was so widespread that recovery proved impossible. The business moral? Stop doing unexcellent stuff! Never be content with delivering the ordinary. Always deliver more than you promise. Take positive steps to go the extra mile with each and every transaction. Give people some EXTRA ADDED VALUE they werent expecting. Consistently meet and exceed your customer expectations and youll develop trust, loyalty, referrals, higher sales, longevity and success. Under-promise and over-deliver. Wow! your customers. Become a walking, talking, living, breathing extension of the soul of service. Lets change things a bit and go at this from a different angle. I want you take a moment and imagine something pleasant right now. Imagine you walk into a nice restaurant, sit down and enjoy a wonderful meal. The napkins are impeccably folded on a spotless tablecloth, your waiter is
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friendly and attentive, the lights are turned down low it is a truly enjoyable experience. How much did you pay? Now imagine that very same food served in a cafeteria under harsh lights, with a noisy crowd, spotted silverware, and the hassles of self-service. Actually, its not far-fetched to say that the cost of ingredients can be pretty much the same between the two establishments, but youll pay far more for one of these experiences than the other because of the perception of value because of the presentation, the restaurants reputation, the dcor and so on. Advertising your USP can bring you business but it cannot change your lighting, service or dcor. If you want to command a premium price and create a stream of returning, repeat customers, you have to align all those things all your company operations with your USP. It has to impregnate your operations. Your office design, your dcor, how quickly you answer the phone and in what manner, how you reply to customer complaints or returns all these things should reflect the spirit of your USP. They should all work together to solidify your reputation for delivering on that promised benefit. Crafting your USP is about words, but now were talking about pictures. Image matters, too, for the promotion of your business and you want a customer to be able to peel up the floorboards and see youre actually doing what your lips are saying. Thats aligning your business so that it presents the picture of a coherent USP whole. Thats the next step beyond simply upwording your marketing message. Once I was doing consulting for a chemical company that decided its USP would be faster service (due to on-time production and delivery) in the highest quality packages. That actually determined the companys entire strategy for operations and all departmental units. Since safe packaging and on-time delivery were now part of the USP, the company made sure every facet of packaging and delivery reflected upon the USP. On-time delivery now meant the factory had to rearrange production schedules for 24 hour round-the-clock shifts to meet demand and it had to start keeping inventories. That required space and financial considerations. The packaging they selected for their chemicals was not only one or two grades above everyone else, but they printed special labels with colors that had connotations of safety and high quality.
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Everything was arranged to support the USP, and the efforts actually gave new focus and new life to the business. It gave people benchmarks and yardsticks to work by. It gave them a mission and calling. Just as with the pizza company which needs an efficient delivery system, large enough staff and sufficient volume to drive its profitability, the USP dictated how this chemical business should be operated. The USP became the competitive differential as well as the focus or rallying point behind what constituted better and better service. It became the strategic focus of the firm, and became part of the measuring system for how well the company was doing, Delivering on that USP became the soul of the company, its reason for being, its raison dtre. It became a verifiable statement of who the company was. A great USP puts you on the customers side, and solidifies the idea of service. Your customers, employees and investors may all be attracted to you simply because of your USP, so it can be a very powerful magnet for all sorts of attention. You might even present your USP to each of these groups in a slightly different way so as to maximize good relationships. In summary, choose your USP carefully because it will probably be the foundation upon which your company will grow. It will become your competitive strategy as it clarifies your competitive position. Since all your customers and employees will identify you with it, it can even turn into the embodiment of your companys essence. Thats why everything must be aligned with your USP and your business must exhibit USP image and operational coherence. Do that and youll be elevating your business, which is how you get the world to beat a path to your doorstep. Best of luck to you, and if you ever need help, be sure to contact us for consulting.
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How to Write A Million Dollar USP, Upword Your Marketing Message, and then sell, Sell, SELL in RECORD

How to Write A Million Dollar USP

Top Shape Publishing, LLC

What is a USP Unique Selling Proposition?

The 10 Essential Characteristics of a Powerful USP

3. Your USP Must be Focused; Dont Try to Appeal to Everyone

4. Relevancy, Relevancy, Relevancy is The Name of the Game

6. Your USP Must Grab Attention

7. Your USP Must Be Perfumed with Credibility

8. Your USP Must be Compelling Enough to Get People to Act

9. Your USP Should Penetrate All Aspects of Your Business

10. If Your USP Isnt Economically Feasible, Then Look Again

METHOD 1: Roy Williams Competitive Comparisons

METHOD 2: The Gary Halbert Index Card Shuffle

METHOD 3: Whats Your Greatest Frustration?

METHOD 4: Barney Zicks You Know How

METHOD 5: Your Reason for Being

METHOD 6: Doug Halls Dramatic Difference

METHOD 7: Dan Kennedys Famous Question

METHOD 9: Rewrite Your USP for the Performance Gap

METHOD 10: Preemptive Marketing

Once Youve Got It, Flaunt It Use It Everywhere

Superstar Examples of USPs That Knock em Dead

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