Products that market themselves uniquely from their competitors tend to sell better. There’s a reason for this…
I have written about the basics of a USP <include link>. If you have not read this yet, or you do not understand what a USP is — maybe you’ve simply never heard of one — then I recommend that you spend a few minutes to brief yourself on the basics here: <LINK>
Products sell better when they feature a USP. They penetrate their audiences deeper. They forego puffery and trite clichés in exchange for originality and creativity that leaps out of store windows or magazine pages that are otherwise populated with the same old, same old:
“Succulent!”
“Sun-ripened!”
“Oven-baked!”
“Fresh and delicious!”
These are the kinds of common banalities that you typically encounter in food advertisements. Just like people are prone to develop “banner blindness” on web sites — we learn that the very top of the page will probably contain a banner, so we just ignore that area in our daily browsing — shoppers grow cold to these common utterances.
Everything new is like everything else. Everything else is like everything old. A product with a USP leaps out at the shopper because it breaks this mold of thought. It sticks in their mind after they leave. It may hit a specific hot button of theirs and sing their name like a sweet, sweet song.
There are no specific, unique promises in the trite phrases above. What about these:
“Sweet!”
“Crunchy!”
“Nutty and delicious!”
“Melts in your mouth, not in your hand.”
One of those four phrases is a powerful USP. Amidst a fog of blandness, it leaps off the page. Can you spot it? Do you know which candy it is associated with?
Answer: M&Ms. It is one of the great classics, an example of an inspired USP.
Don’t worry if you don’t think you can come up with something as brilliant as that. That particular USP was developed by Rosser Reeves, a master marketer. He was an advertising genius.
But you can still develop your own USP. It doesn’t need to be brilliant or genius. It just needs to follow the three main points of the USP: promise a specific benefit; ensure it provides value or does something no other competitor has or currently does; it must actually be a desirable product or service that can motivate the masses of people into buying.
The process of developing your USP can take you some time. I suggest you invest it. An old but tried method is to use blank note cards. Write down USP ideas on them. Look through what you’ve written. Combine the best ideas.
You should be able to fit your USP into approximately 25 words. It may take a few more, it may take a few less. But you don’t want to go much over 25 words. Go through the trouble of doing this process and you will jump ahead of your competition. You will become a better business person for it because you will pay more attention to your marketing.