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How to develop a bulletproof Unique Selling Proposition (USP) – Part 3
A USP is not a slogan and a slogan is Not a USP…Crafting a Powerful USP and the Qualities of a Successful USP
Part Three of Four
A tagline is a short sentence or phrase that’s often part of, or next to, a logo. Here are some examples of taglines.
- Built Ford Tough
- USAirways: Fly with US
- YouTube: Broadcast Yourself
- Papa John’s: Papa’s in the House
A tagline is NOT the same as a USP. Your tagline is usually too short to communicate your entire USP. However, a great tagline quickly summarizes the full USP and communicates the key selling proposition in one or two seconds. A USP can be a few words or it can be full paragraph. Defining then encapsulating into what makes you different, unique, and desirable is more important than word county.
Remember, the successful USP answers this question: why should a potential client or customer buy from you? When answering this question, promise something special your competitors cannot deliver. Before we create your UPS, take a look at these excellent examples.
- SpeedFedEx: When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight.
- Quality/SelectionWoolworth’s: The Fresh Food People
- GuaranteeCraftsman Tools: If any Craftsman hand tool fails to provide complete
satisfaction, return it for free repair or replacement. Period. The first
Craftsman hand tool we sold back in 1927 is still under warranty today.
Just as some taglines are poor, many USPs are awful. These approaches are too vague plus they are not unique.
- “Good Quality and Low Prices.”
- “Affordable Quality Since 1984.”
- “Service With A Smile.”
- “Excellence In Quality And Service.”
These USPs are commonplace and they scream, THESE COMPANIES KNOW NOTHING ABOUT MARKETING AND ARE DOOMED TO FAIL.
Four steps to creating a bulletproof USP.
STEP ONE. Choose your category. USPs are grouped into one of these:
Price. Quality. Service. Speed. Selection. Convenience. Guarantee. Customisation. Originality. Specialisation.
STEP TWO. Crystallise and communicate your unique strengths by asking yourself these four questions:
- What do you offer your competitors don’t?
- Is #1 important to your customers?
- How easy is it for competitors to copy?
- Can it be communicated easily?
Ask your current clients and customers what they like about your products and services.
STEP THREE. Flesh out the concepts. These concepts are broad. For example, if you choose ‘Service’ as your category, you have to say more and be more specific than “We Give GREAT Service.” This type of cliché will not convince someone to stay on your website.
STEP FOUR. Lay on the proof.
We use these steps with our clients before we take any of the steps necessary to generate leads.
How Would You Like an 800% Increase in Sales?
We built a USP for a client who sells stickers, primarily customized bumper stickers: CustomizedStickers.com; we proved that even a product as seemingly simple as a sticker can benefit from a USP. Here’s how we answered the USP formation questions.
What they offer: Customized Stickers only offers low prices on full colour stickers, but they also include added benefits at no extra charge: a free artwork service, unlimited colours, plus UV-resistant coatings.
Is it important to the customer? Yes. Stickers are a “commodity” item and customers are typically price-sensitive. Many potential customers resent the extra cost and inconvenience of getting artwork designed separately. All-in-one pricing is simpler and more transparent; customers like the ‘no hidden charges’ benefit.
Is it easy for competitors to copy? Competitors could copy these advantages but with great difficulty. Customized Stickers is the first to claim this space and can back up the promise through their unique production process. They can cost-effectively offer the added value of not injecting hidden charges.
Can it be communicated? Yes. The tagline? Full Colour Stickers at a 1-Colour Price. The content on the website augments, enhances, and buttresses the promise.
The result?
Customized Stickers clearly defined their USP and built their traffic generation and conversion around their USP. In 18 months, we helped Customized Stickers boost their online sales by over 800% to more than $2 million.
… to be continued.
Why you need a mobile website for your business
The following is a feature article from Jaaved Khatree, SEO Strategist at 123SEO.
In the last quarter of 2010, there were more smartphones sold than PCs, for the first time in history. In mid 2011, consumers were spending more time on smartphones and mobile devices than on their PCs.
There’s now more people accessing the Internet from more devices, from more places than ever before, and this is a big deal for business owners and retailers.
Why? Because 79% of smartphone users in Australia use their devices for online shopping but a vast majority of Australian retailers don’t have a smartphone-friendly website. So when your customers are visiting your website on their mobile device, it doesn’t look half as impressive as it does when viewing it on a PC.
It doesn’t make for a great visual experience (tiny text, very large images, Flash, etc) and couple this with the generally slower loading times on mobile networks, your potential customers start to fade away quickly – and all because your site wasn’t optimised for a mobile device.
But it’s a relatively easy problem to solve – all it takes is a bit of time and dedication to provide a complete user experience, no matter where or how your customer accesses your website.
The trick is to keep it very, very simple. From navigation to calls to action to information. This is not meant to be like your regular website with all the bells and whistles. Know what your customer wants when they visit your website and make this the centre of attention. For example, if you’re a removalist, you’ll want to make your ‘free quote’ button big and clear as well as your contact number. Your customer should be able to get information easily without scrolling or navigating too much. There’s no need for fancy imagery either as this just adds to the load time which we want to minimise at all costs.
The other trick is to make your site work with any mobile device, since the screen sizes vary significantly. A key is to use responsive CSS when styling up your website as the site will stretch/shrink based on the screen of the device it’s being viewed on.
If the desktop version of your site is Flash based, there’s no need to replicate that on your mobile site as Flash doesn’t render on the iPhone/iPad and also adds to page load times. Stick to HTML and keep it simple yet classy. If you’re wondering about SEO, it’s actually very easy to optimise for a mobile site. Using clear headings, dot points and concise paragraphs that succinctly provide information whist using your target keywords, you can easily dominate the mobile space.
Now while you’re working on your mobile friendly website, you might be considering an app. It’s generally a lot more affordable and easier to develop and maintain a mobile website than a mobile app. Of course, there are many instances where an app makes sense but it doesn’t remove the need for a mobile friendly website. With mobile set to explode in 2012 in every way from usage to Internet connectivity to commerce, a website that displays correctly on a mobile device is an absolute necessity.
How to develop a bulletproof Unique Selling Proposition (USP) – Part 2
A Strong USP is Much More Important (and Profitable) than Branding
Part Two of Four
If you’ve read marketing books, been to conferences, or sat down with a marketing or advertising consultant, you may have heard the word ‘branding.’ For small business owners, it’s an extremely dangerous word: you can quickly waste tens of thousands of dollars on branding at the recommendation of a branding consultant or advertising agency that uses words like ‘brand-centric’ or similar nonsense. Ask a branding agency or a branding consultant about results. Ask them to show the actual revenue their latest ‘branding’ campaign produced. If you’re an owner or a marketing manager at a small or mid-sized business, be extremely wary when you hear amorphous marketing chatter about “building your online brand” and “leveraging brand equity.”
It’s tempting to listen to the branding experts and hand them money. After all, big companies spend money on branding so it must produce an ROI, right? Let’s take a quick look at branding and what it really means. To “brand” a product or service is to imprint your mark on it. Branding started to differentiate items that look similar…like horses and cattle.
The goal of branding is to increase awareness. Companies pour money into branding campaigns because they want to imprint the brand into the mind of the consumer, increase awareness, and create a certain feeling. The hope: when it’s time to make a buying decision, the consumer will recognize the brand, like its associations, remember the funny ad he or she saw on TV last night, remember the ‘certain feeling’ and buy ‘Brand X’ over all the other brands. Although it’s difficult to measure, branding can be effective for large companies that sell a mass-market service or product. And you must have deep, deep pockets to buy TV time and radio spots plus big ads in newspapers and magazines.
In one of his blogs, Dan Kennedy, widely regarded as one the top small business marketing experts (and an excellent marketer himself), writes:
“I do counsel AGAINST investing directly into brand-building, especially with large-company style ‘image’ advertising that cannot be accurately and ruthlessly held accountable.”
Kennedy has a brand called “No B.S. Marketing” but it’s not where Kennedy spends his marketing money. And Dan Kennedy’s brand is Dan Kennedy. Kennedy has a logo with him standing behind a bull. That’s about it for Kennedy’s branding.
Highly successful direct response copywriter and marketing consultant Bob Bly, who is no great fan of branding, wrote a blog titled “Is Madison Avenue a Big Fraud?” In the blog he talks about an advertisement for Six Flags, a chain of American amusement parks. The ad is set in a town where everyone is so busy working they have no time to have fun. Up rolls a Six Flags bus and out pops an old man who starts dancing wildly. All the people in the town get on the bus, go to Six Flags and have a big time. Bly said the ad world acclaimed the ad for its “humor, energy, and cleverness.”
According to Bly, who cites Parade magazine, the ad campaign cost $72 million yet generated no increase in attendance and “not a drop of added revenue.” Look up Six Flags on Wikipedia and you’ll discover the New York Stock Exchange delisted the company in April 2009 and it filed for bankruptcy on June 13 the same year.
If you’re still in doubt about branding, watch a YouTube video comparing direct response (measurable) advertising to general (branding) advertising. The star of the video? David Ogilvy, one of the most famous and successful advertisers in the history of advertising. From the video…
General advertisers know almost nothing for sure because they cannot measure the results of their advertising.
Yes, a branding agency may win awards at advertising awards dinners and a campaign may temporarily (and expensively) build awareness, but it won’t produce what every small business needs: a daily torrent of qualified leads. Branding will not help you get these leads. We spend, and our successful clients spend, every marketing dollar and every ounce of psychic bandwidth generating qualified sales leads instead of building awareness.
Do You Want Customers to “Be Aware” or Do You Want them to Buy?
Instead of branding, start by positioning your product or service in the mind of potential customers.
Positioning begins by answering this question:
Why should I give my business to you, when with one click of a mouse button, or by flipping open the Yellow Pages. I can find 10 other providers who offer the same service?
When my clients answer this question in a compelling way, they start to generate top-quality enquiries and sales leads. And you can achieve this whether you’re a household name on the Internet or your website went live only last week. And when it comes to claiming prime USP real estate, it’s first-come, first-served. Think about the golf course: there may be other courses in the area with excellent greens but Rolling Lakes Country Club claimed the space first.
One of My Favorite USPs
Dilmah Tea is an example of a well-positioned business. I enjoy the tea and also admire the positioning. Founder Merill J. Fernando clearly differentiated his tea by focusing around a single, unique, and appealing idea. Here’s the tagline…The Single Origin Tea. (As I will detail in a minute, a tagline is not a USP and a USP is not a tagline.)
The company fleshes out the tagline in several places.
Each box of Dilmah tea contains a folded insert explaining the care the company takes sourcing, packing, and delivering each cup of their tea. There’s some excellent copy on their website. Here’s an excerpt.
Dilmah is the product of a lifetime devoted to tea. Founder of Dilmah, Merrill J. Fernando embarked on a quest to bring quality back to tea when in the 1950s, he witnessed the concentration of ownership in the tea industry into the hands of a few large corporations and as a result, the ‘commoditisation’ of tea. As one of the first Ceylonese to have the opportunity to be trained in tea, Merrill harboured a dream since his initiation in the world of tea, to launch his own brand of tea, and to offer consumers the choice of something truly different. His dream took over three decades to come true, and in 1988 he launched his own brand – Dilmah, coined from the names of his two sons Dilhan and Malik. Dilmah introduced lovers of fine tea to the concept of tea ‘picked, perfected and packed’ at origin. Being owned and managed by a tea producer, Dilmah is also a role model for producing countries. Merrill pioneered the concept of ‘Single Origin Tea,’ choosing to remain faithful to Ceylon Tea, acknowledged the finest tea on earth.
It’s “About Us” copy but notice how the copywriter wove these strands into a compelling story.
- A lifetime devoted to tea
- Struggling against the corporate hegemony to fulfil a dream
- The family story behind the name
- A model for developing countries
- Remaining faithful to Ceylon Tea
Combined, these elements of the story create a Unique Selling Proposition. And it’s a USP oozing with authenticity so often missing from most marketing.
… to be continued.
How to develop a bulletproof Unique Selling Proposition (USP) – Part 1
How a Bumper Sticker Company Increased Online Sales by over 800%, Starting with a New USP
Part One Of Four
Pizza aficionados might disagree but, when it comes to delivery and ‘mass market’ pizza, there’s not a big difference in quality between the major players. I’m confident a blind taste test would prove my point.
To be successful, a pizza company must differentiate itself from the other pizza companies by positioning themselves as better and different. A small company in the United States faced this differentiation challenge in the 1960s. Tom Monaghan had bought his brother’s share of Domino’s Pizza (for a used Volkswagen Beetle) and was sleeping on a cot in the store. At the time, Domino’s was just another pizza restaurant in Michigan. Monaghan needed to increase revenue and he wanted to grow a franchise. To make Domino’s stand out from the competition, Domino’s came up with a promise:
Pizza delivered in 30 minutes or it’s free.
In 2009, Domino’s reported $1.4 billion in revenue.
People in the shipping and logistics business might disagree but what’s the difference between the major shipping companies to the average person in the street who wants a package or letter delivered overnight? FedEx recognized this and, like Dominos, came up with a promise.
When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight.
FedEx went from being a small courier service based in Tennessee to one of the largest companies in the world; its airplanes travel nearly 500,000 miles a day.
When a potential customer decides to order a pizza, they’ve already decided to buy a pizza. The question becomes, “which pizza company?” When somebody needs to ship a package across the country and it has to be there tomorrow, they’ve already decided to ship the package. The question becomes, “which shipping company?”
Domino’s and FedEx succeeded and grew rapidly in part because they made a promise to their customers and kept the promise. In marketing, we call this promise a Unique Selling Proposition (USP).
In the mind of a potential client or customer, a USP defines the company’s position in the market. The USP positions a product or service as unique and desirable in the eyes of prospects and customers. The USP is the foundation of a marketing strategy for any company and every company that wants to be successful MUST have a clear USP.
Almost every day, I’m reminded of the importance of how vital a USP is to the success of every marketing project. A great USP with average execution can succeed but a weak USP with superb execution usually fails.
When I ask a prospective client, “what’s your USP?” I usually get this reply.
“What does USP stand for?”
I recently spoke to 165 business owners at an online marketing seminar; fewer than 10 of the attendees were able to state their USP. That’s the bad news. The good news is that each of these 165 business owners could quickly answer these questions:
- What are the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors?
- Why do repeat clients and customers like you?
- What makes you better than your competitors?
If you can answer these questions, you can develop a USP. You know what makes your company different and better but you must communicate this to prospects. It takes a little time to develop a USP but there’s no cost; the USP is especially important for digital marketing.
Visitors to your website usually arrive through a search engine. Let’s say a man has decided to buy his loved one a diamond necklace. He’s already decided to buy so now the decision becomes, “which jewelry store is going to get my business?” If you’re in the diamond necklace business and you’re one of the sites the man is visiting, your competitors’ sites are just a click away. So it’s vital to differentiate your jewelry store quickly so they choose you and click around your site and ultimately click ‘buy now’ on your website instead of clicking to another site.
Leave Price Wars Behind
One of the major benefits of a strong USP is that it can help you get out of price war. Yes, some people shop purely for price and ‘the absolute lowest prices’ can be a USP but let’s take a look at Domino’s and FedEx. These companies stress a benefit, not price. Yes, price is important but it’s not the only factor in a buying decision.
When you position yourself correctly, you can charge more. For example, let’s say you’re in the public golf course business, which can be extremely competitive. Let’s say you’re in a suburb and there are five golf courses near yours and there’s a brutal price war going on and you’d like to get out of the battle. Golfers always comment on the quality of the greens at your course. A strong USP could be: Rolling Lakes Country Club has The Best Greens in the South Ridgewood area. Golfers value great putting surfaces and would be willing to pay for a course with excellent greens. In the New York City area, where golf can be funereally slow, especially on weekends, a course guarantees “a round of golf in four hours or less or your next greens fee is on us.” It’s a highly successful USP.
… to be continued
Intelligent Copy – “Words on Your Website” or the Key to Successful Online Marketing?
There are three keys to online marketing success.
- Traffic to your website.
- Converting traffic into buyers.
- Maximizing lifetime customer value.
I’m going to focus on a specific part of numbers two and three: copywriting. If you want to convert readers into buyers and you want to maximize what a client or customer will spend with you, you MUST have the right copy on your website—and in all your online marketing.
What is copy? It’s the words on your website, in your brochures, and in everything that’s marketing what you sell.
Great copy IS NOT flowery language that makes you feel good about your company; great copy persuades as many readers as possible to take the next step in the online marketing process. Testing has proven that copy written by a professional copywriter sells more than ‘words on a page’ written by someone at the company.
I like to go one step further and include ‘direct response’ copywriting on all websites and in all online marketing—including emails written to persuade current clients and customers to buy again. Direct response copywriting uses a set of proven techniques to maximize response.
The six characteristics of direct response copy written to produce ROI.
- It’s a conversation between the seller and the buyer—and nobody else.
- Direct response copy sells benefits more aggressively than features.
- The copy includes a guarantee, an offer, testimonials, a P.S., and a good story.
- The offer is especially important.
- A strong headline that arouses strong interest and desire is vital. You have less than three seconds to get the reader’s interest or you lose the prospect.
- Direct response is readable and conversational and not academic or complicated.
If you want to write your own copy, start with a simple and proven formula: AIDA. This stands for:
Attention.
Interest.
Desire.
Action.
- Get the reader’s attention with a sensational headline, a superb offer, or the lure of a stunning revelation.
- Arouse their interest through empathy, a compelling story, or by promising a solution to a pressing problem.
- Arouse their desire through the benefits—and the offer, guarantee, and testimonials.
- Get action by…get this…telling them the reader to take the next step.
I’m constantly amazed by the number of websites that completely fail when it comes to the extremely simple step of directing the reader to take a specific action. If you want to take a simple step right now to improve your online marketing, go through everything in your arsenal and make sure there’s a call to action to stimulate response in everything.
If you look online, you’ll find well over 100 books written about copywriting—it’s a complex subject. Direct response copywriters are highly specialized professionals who can execute all the techniques necessary to generate a response in different media. And direct response copy is proven to improve response significantly—and quickly.
So you have a choice when it comes to your online marketing—and even your ‘offline’ marketing like direct mail. You can write the copy in house and put ‘any old thing’ on your site…or…you can maximize response by using direct response copywriting techniques (or hiring a direct response copywriter).
If you’re serious about your online marketing then you’re investing in driving traffic to your website through SEO, PPC, or even direct mail. It makes total sense that when visitors come to your website, you want to convert as many visitors/readers into buyers. This can happen when you have direct response copy on your website instead of ‘words on a page.’
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