What is a USP?

Wikipedia does such a good job of explaining the Unique Selling Proposition, that I am simply going to pull material from their site.

“In his book Reality in Advertising, Rosser Reeves (Chairman of the Board at Ted Bates & Company) gives the precise definition as it was understood at his company:

1. Each advertisement must make a proposition to the customer: “buy this product, and you will get this specific benefit.”
2. The proposition itself must be unique - something that competitors do not, or will not, offer.
3. The proposition must be strong enough to pull new customers to the product.

However, Reeves warns against forming a USP based on what he calls “The Deceptive Differential” - a uniqueness that is too small or too technical for customers to observe the differences in actual practice.

Examples

Some good current examples of products with a clear USP are:

• Head & Shoulders: “You get rid of dandruff”
• Olay: “You get younger-looking skin”
• Red Bull: “You get stimulation of body and mind”
• Ronseal: “You get exactly what it says on the tin“

Some unique propositions that were pioneers when they were introduced:

• Domino’s Pizza: “You get fresh, hot pizza delivered to your door in 30 minutes or less — or it’s free.”
• FedEx: “Your package absolutely, positively has to get there overnight”
• M&M’s: “The milk chocolate melts in your mouth, not in your hand”
• Wonder Bread: “It helps build strong bones 12 ways”

In my next post I will start the series that I previously offered as my USP mini-course. I decided against the mini-course for a couple of reasons. The main reason I started it was so I could “capture” email addresses and then send follow-up “selling” messages. That just didn’t feel right. It felt too devious and gimicky (is that a word?). I feel that people should have the right to choose what kind of content they want to receive in their emails. Instead, I am going to add the option to have my posts sent directly to your email. You can also receive these posts through a news aggregator (such as Bloglines, Google Reader, and many more). As time goes by and this series of posts about your USP becomes covered up by newer posts, I will have an option in the sidebar to view all of them at once. I want to help artists understand all the facets of online marketing and how they can use it to help them sell more art.

Chris O’Byrne
OnlineArtsMarketing.com/blog