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How The Right Unique Selling Proposition
Can Grow Your Company Faster
As the company that developed Unique Selling Propositions for all kinds of companies, from household names like Crimsafe to obscure industrials, we’re often asked to explain what a USP is and why it’s so important.
So here’s a valuable introduction for those we haven’t met yet...
A unique selling proposition or USP is one of the most potent forms of leverage in marketing.
That leverage comes from how the right unique selling proposition boosts the ‘forgotten’ side of the ‘marketing multiplier’.
The marketing multiplier is simple: you take your company’s sales message and you multiply it through marketing to knock on more doors than you could have through a sales person. In other words, Message x Activity = Outcome.
So marketing helps you reach a lot more people.
But the message that your marketing multiplies is something that can also be improved, not just the marketing activity that spreads that message...
After all, if you spend $10,000 on a campaign that takes a so-so message to market, you get a so-so result. But if your message is more competitive, you get bigger results from the same $10,000 spent.
So the right unique selling proposition makes a marketing dollar work harder. It’s extremely powerful, durable and competitive leverage.
What does a Unique Selling Proposition look like?
It looks like a slogan or a headline. Because that’s where it’s correctly deployed...
A unique selling proposition is not a slogan, a mission statement, a catch-cry, a sub-text or other tools of management, positioning and advertising. These may have their place within a company but they are not a USP.
If you break the term into its parts, you get a good idea of what a unique selling proposition is really all about.
A USP is a proposition you make to your market. Not only that, it’s one that is directed at generating a response, an action, a sale. It’s a selling proposition. And not only that, it’s a selling proposition that no other competitor makes. It’ a unique selling proposition.
“Fresh hot pizza delivered to your door in 30 minutes or less, guaranteed” is a USP for a pizza franchise.
Compare it with a slogan. A slogan positions a company or product, broadly. It rarely makes a promise, often plays on words and language, is short and often lacks specifics.
“Hot and fresh” is a slogan for a pizza franchise.
A mission is a focusing tool, something around which to mobilise a company, and sometimes it’s a kind of ‘corporate’ and expanded slogan.
“To be the number one player in all markets of operation” is a mission for a pizza franchise.
So as you can see, a USP is quite different. It suggests an explicit outcome of purchasing a product or service. It makes, or at least infers, a clear promise.
A USP has also gone by other names... Extra Value Proposition, Unique Value Proposition, Unique Selling Point. But all these all mean the same thing.
Who Invented The USP?
The concept of a USP is as old as selling itself, but it wasn’t really expressed as we know it until the 1950’s.
Rosser Reeves, a copywriter for advertising agency Ted Bates & Company, coined the expression and introduced it in a book he published in 1961 called Reality in Advertising.
Six Famous Examples
There are countless examples of unique selling propositions, in all kinds of industries, but here are 6 examples you might recognise more readily, depending on where you are in the world...
“When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight”
Federal Express, later Fedex and initially marketed as Comet in Australia, used this proposition in the eighties. It was perhaps most memorably illustrated in the “Fast Talking Boss” TV commercials developed by Ally & Gargano Agency of New York.
“Exactly what it says on the tin”
Ronseal, the wood dye manufacturers in the UK, developed this USP in 1994. It was very effective and able to be applied to other industries. Colgate adopted it in 2004, with “Does exactly what it says on the tube”.
“Wonder bread helps build strong bones 12 ways”
Continental Baking developed an enriched Wonder Bread in the 1940’s and in the fifties came up with the “8 ways” USP. By the sixties, it had become 12 ways. Today, the nutrition agenda is still pushed by new owners Interstate Bakeries corporation, but not as strongly.
“Let your fingers do the walking”
Cunningham & Walsh developed this campaign for Yellow Pages in 1962 under the steerage of Stephen Baker. It’s also when the walking fingers logo first appeared. Executed most strongly in print and in TV, the walking fingers carried a simple and powerful message. It’s still in use today around the world.
“Fresh Hot Pizza Delivered In 30 Minutes Or Less, Guaranteed!”
Tom Monaghan started Dominos while in university and almost went broke when his brother withdrew from the venture. But persistence and a strong proposition that introduced the fast home delivery we take for granted was a powerful promise. Today, the guarantee has been watered down to an “estimate, only”.
“Takes a licking and keeps on ticking”
The U.S. Time Company introduced its Timex wristwatch in the 1950s in ads which emphasized the durability and reliability of the watch. It featured torture tests, perhaps most famously shown on TV by news anchorman John Swayze. The ‘takes a licking’ campaign by W.B. Doner & Co and others was so successful that by the end of the fifties, one in three watches sold in the US was a Timex. The USP was brought back in the eighties for a second round but has been replaced more recently as the issue of durability has been deemed a given rather than a differentiator.
How To Use a Unique Selling Proposition
A USP is both a marketing tool and a management tool.
First, it can be used in headlines, proposals, scripts and calls-to-action for your lead-generation material. It goes on signage, websites, brochures and more.
It positions you distinctly, differentiating you and creating in your prospects a reason to favour you over other companies.
But second, it’s also a management tool.
After all, a USP incorporates a promise, and this can usually be broken down into explicit responsibilities across the different sections of your business.
For instance, a national packaging supplies company for whom we developed a USP realised the three components of their new promise depended on the delivery of the promise by three different departments: customer contact, procurement and logistics.
So each department, and then each employee within each department, all had their key performance indicators adjusted to reflect their direct role in delivering on the company’s promise.
The company implemented a USP PermeationTM to make sure they delivered on their promise.
It worked.
For more about that process, read about the Company Customer Alignment programme we’ve developed with Bob Ansett, a business legend well known for permeating the culture of Budget Car Rentals with the USP he developed for his company.
How To Get The Right Unique Selling Proposition For Your company
The right USP is derived not created. Our USP DerivationTM is a process literally triangulates the right USP for your company.
We conduct three pieces of intelligence-gathering...
Market Intelligence... what your market wants and fears and the words they use to describe these.
Competitor Intelligence... what your competitors are promising and the competitive strategy they seem to be adopting.
Client Intelligence... your strengths and weaknesses.
From these, we’re able to answer a plain English question:
What does your market want, which competitors are failing to adequately claim and which you could profitably deliver?
The answer is your USP... the core promise to take to your markets and a key idea to ‘permeate’ into the marketing we do for you and even aspects of the operations you have.
Isn’t That a Lot Of Work For a Stronger Slogan?
It certainly is.
But a USP is the single most sustainable leverage of a marketing budget we have ever witnessed.
It’s not uncommon for a client of ours to happily spend upwards of $10,000 for the derivation of the right USP for them, depending on the intelligence gathering required.
One client in the B2B services sector spent considerably more than that. But their new USP grew them 329% in 18 months and took them to 15th place in the BRW Fast 100.
Another used their new USP to force their much larger competitor to change their advertising and come to the negotiation table.
And yet another in the residential building sector used their USP to defy the post GFC housing downturn... and actually grow.
What To do Now, To Get Your New USP
Make contact with us. We consult throughout Australia, and we’d be delighted to help you grow your company faster with the right USP.
While we’re well known for our expertise in deriving a USP, we’re also a potent marketing consultancy and creative company.
Call Strategy and Action, today, on 1300 774 993
Or visit our website www.strategyandaction.com.au
Or fill out the enquiry form on the right.
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