Developing Your USP

The above picture represents one of the stupidest slogans I’ve ever seen.

In case you haven’t realized, loyal reader, I find something I notice or that directly happens to me during the week to come up with an idea for this newsletter.

I have a backlog of great ideas in case I don’t encounter something during the given week.

But after seeing Wendy’s slogan several times this week in my travels, I realized I had a topic for this week.

Let’s talk about your USP. Short for Unique Selling Proposition, your USP is what sets you apart from everyone else.

Your USP should succinctly answer the question, why should someone do business with YOU above the other choices in your category?

I contend that a good USP is hard to develop. It takes time. And thought. And mostly a deep understanding of your market.

To construct an offer that appeals to your prospects, you gotta know what their pain is. And then explain clearly why what you offer is the solution to their problem.

Here’s a BIG secret: Most of the time, no one ‘needs’ a magic show. And most of the time no one even wants one either.

Your magic show should solve a problem your prospects have.

Different markets have different problems. Here are a few:

- Birthday parents want their child’s birthday to be fun for the child and their friends.

- The HR director wants a solution to boring meetings or holiday parties.

- A library director wants a way to draw kids into their library to increase numbers…and thus lock in or increase government funding for the library.

At no point did any of those hypothetical examples mention anything about magic. Your magic is a vehicle to obtain the goal your client is looking for.

And you can have multiple USPs, one for each market. But you don’t want to do the “Magic for all occasions” thing. You need to hyper-serve each market.

But the most important thing you need to do is appeal to their emotions.

In effective selling, people usually don’t make a buying decision based on logic. We decide with our emotions. Then we justify it with logic.

Your USP should appeal to your prospects’ emotions. In the birthday example, selling to the birthday parent is easy when you understand their goal.

Focus on how much fun their child and friends will have. And how they’ll thank the parent. (That’s a hint of a massive benefit so many kids' show performers don’t tap into.)

For the corporate party, I’ve found focusing on how interactive the show will be is a massive benefit. Getting people directly involved ensures the ‘entertainment’ doesn’t just fade into the background like so many DJs.

Library directors want bodies in the room. This one is trickier. You can’t guarantee a full house because you don’t know how responsive the library’s patrons are to special events.

But you can focus on how strong your reading message is. And how you’ll push books based on that summer’s theme.

And of course, you’ve got to design your shows in ways that deliver everything you promise.

But keep this in mind. At no point in these examples did I mention how to market yourself as the ‘best.’ That’s a dead end.

If you say you’re the best, no one will believe you. Once you get rolling, let your testimonials tout you as the best.

When developing your USP, think of it as your mission statement. How you’re going to serve your clients.

Developing your shows with a client-first approach immediately sets you apart from the other ding-dong magicians in your area who just want to do their show.

What about that Wendy’s slogan?

There are several reasons why it’s bad. Here are a few:

- It doesn’t appeal to emotions.
There is nothing emotional about “quality.”


- It tries to be cute by saying its recipe is made of quality.
It’s sort of a play on words. And effective marketing doesn’t rely on clever wordplay. Be direct.

 

- It’s not believable.
People have decades of first-hand proof that fast food is bad for you. While most chains do pay lip service to health and serve a few salads or other options, most of the population knows you’re not going to any fast-food joint for good food.

It’s crap you can shove in your mouth quickly. Even if Wendy’s really does have higher-quality ingredients, trying to convince the average customer of this is an uphill battle at best.

In terms of fast-food chains, Burger King’s slogan was better. “Have it your way” stated you can get your meals customized. That’s appealing to people.

Whether it resulted in more sales or not I can’t say. But it’s certainly better than Wendy’s slogan.

“Quality is our recipe” was probably cooked up by a think tank of highly educated folks who got marketing degrees but never had to sing for their supper.

If these folks owned their own one-person businesses, I guarantee they’d find out right away that “quality is our recipe” doesn’t bring the orders in.

Name recognition, which Wendy’s does have, probably drives sales more than that dump slogan.

To put it in magic terms, that slogan would be like “Hire me for your event. I have really expensive high-quality props.”

Rant over.

Have a great week!

--Cris

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