Positioning Your Brand - Part 2

The Key To A Powerful USP

The key to a powerful USP is to make sure that it is precise enough to echo the prospects thoughts. For example, let’s say I owned a mattress store and I wanted to sell high level premium mattresses for morbidly obese individuals. So, on my advertising, my USP would be, “Our mattresses are built so well, they can literally support a truck.” I could drive a truck over my mattress to illustrate the point or leave a bulldozer on my mattresses overnight and see how well they spring back to their original shape in the morning. Those are just a few examples off the top of my head. At the end of the day, you want to make sure your USP is that specific, so it echoes the prospects own thoughts.

Also, you want to make sure your USP addresses the biggest objection that a prospect would have to buying your product or service. So, let’s say for example, you were an insurance agent. You want to know that most people’s biggest objections or fear of buying insurance is maybe talking about death, or maybe talking about the accident that could happen to trigger that. So, you want to make sure that USP addresses that.

Let’s also say that you’re targeting the person who’s doing the shopping for a mattress and has tried four or five different mattress. They’ve tried the cheap ones, they’ve tried the firm ones, they’ve tried the high ones, but they’re not just built for heavy individuals. As a business owner of a mattress shop, when you do your marketing campaign you want to make sure that you’re USP promises to solve all of the prospect’s problem related to purchasing your mattress. That’s where good product or service guarantees come in to place.

Make Them Laugh or Cry

Next, your USP has to include the dominant emotion. For example, you want to know why they would buy a product or services that you offer. For example, let’s revisit buying insurance. Why does a prospect buy insurance? They’re buying it because they want to protect their family. It doesn’t matter if you target the husband, wife, parents or children. You want to make sure that you talk about the one thing they’re feeling.

As a husband, it may be making sure that his wife is taken care of in case anything happens to him while he is at work or traveling. He knows that taking good care of his family would be a burden on his wife. He might be thinking about the fact that his wife will have to go and work three jobs to support the family. You want to include that dominant emotion in the USP, and then you want it to be unique enough to be easily remembered.

Creating A Good USP Is Hard Work

Now, I do realize that developing a good USP is hard work, but a good USP can make the difference between struggling to meet payroll and having the best year ever. But, here’s the catch: no matter how good your USP is, you must be able to consistently deliver on your promise, or you’re better off not having a USP at all.

Once again, no matter how good your USP is, you must be able to consistently deliver your promise or you’re better off not having a USP at all. See, you must give a customer a compelling reason to buy from your business. So, no matter how great you think your product or services is, if you don’t have a compelling USP, then you are just another faceless company in a long list of faceless companies.

So, you may personally think that your widget or service are the best, but if you have no way to communicate that to your target market and your prospects in a consistently persuasive and compelling way, then you’re essentially invisible.

“You Know Your USP Is Good When…”

You know your USP is good when the costumers come in and say the only reason that they came in is because of your USP, not because of your super low prices.

You don’t want to attract customers to your business by constantly lowering your lowest prices. You want them to come in because your USP spoke to them. You want your USP to target their direct situation and cause them to take action.

Also, you know your USP is good when a prospect drives by your competitors business, then parks their car in your competitor’s parking lot because yours is too crowded on that weekend, just to make a walk across the street and buy from you, because you’re the expert.

The best part about great USP’s is that they allow you to charge premium prices and earn massive profits, selling the products or services that your customers love and feel good about buying.

It’s in your best interest to turn your business into an industry leader that’s known for being the go-to expert because expert’s can get away with charging more.

How Many USP’s Do You Need?

You can have more than one USP. So, you may have a campaign that focuses on one specific USP, because you’re targeting one specific market place. For example, if you are a real estate agent, you could target one neighborhood and say, “You guarantee the sale of the house in this neighborhood in 90 days or less or you sell it for free.” In fact, it’s smart to develop a USP for each target market you’re going after.

It’s even better if you can create a separate plan for each target market, but that’s not always possible. But, you definitely want to make sure there’s a clear separation. Be crystal clear about what you’re offering for each USP, what product and services you are offering, and exactly what’s going on with each offer.

Why Business Owner’s Hate To Use USP’s

If an effective USP is so powerful, then why don’t most business owners do it? Because it takes real work, and it’s dramatically different than what they’re doing now.  And it’s going to take time.

I hate to say it, but many business owners are just too lazy and too comfortable to do the work. Many business owners refuse to develop new products. They don’t even want to develop new marketing strategies, different sales techniques or anything else that takes work. Plus, you have the business owners who are just too stubborn. They refuse to listen to their customers, their staff, the market place, etc.

So, the point of it all is that creating an effective USP does take work. There’s no way around it.

You can’t rely on guessing. You have to go out and get real answers to these very real problems that you’re facing in your business. And once you develop a USP, put your USP everywhere. Put it in your business card, your voice mail, your business signs, your phone greetings, your letter heads, your stationary, sales receipts, websites, etc., because you want everyone to know you for what you do very, very well.

Summary

The first point is, you must develop a USP that connects with your target market and gives them a compelling reason to do business with you. Next, an effective USP allows you to charge premium prices while creating a database of clients and customers who will love your company.

Yes, USP’s take work, but the advantages are tremendous. It will make a huge impact on your bottom line. You could have more than one USP. As a matter of fact, I advise you to have more than one USP. As soon as you develop one that works, develop a second one for another target market. And put your USP everywhere in your business. Finally, you want to know what you do well, and you want to make sure that your market place and your target market knows exactly who you are and what you are selling.

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