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0:25 – Overview of the topics
0:52 – What is a USP?
1:53 – What a USP is not
3:07 – Example of a dumb USP
3:31 – 3 Examples of successful USPs
3:49 – Example of successful USP by Dominos
5:03 – Example of successful USP by Fedex
5:57 – Example of successful USP by Bill Phillips
7:13 – 3 tactics to make your own USP
7:26 – Tactic #1: Go against the negative perception of the market
8:22 – Tactic #2: Tell them first tactic
10:39 – Tactic #3: Specialization
12:29 – Bonus Tactics
14:13 – What results to expect when using a USP
14:32 – Questions to ask yourself when making a USP
15:57 – Tip of the week
Hello everybody! Welcome to the hvacbusinessgrowth.com podcast. I’m your host, Nick Bielawski. Welcome to the show! We’ve got a great show planned for today. Today’s show is on the unique selling proposition or the unique selling advantage.
I’m just going to give you a quick overview of what we’re going to cover today. First, we’re going to discuss what unique selling proposition is. Then, we’re going to go to “what it is not”. Then we’re going to cover some examples which I hope will shed some light on what is a unique selling proposition. Then, we’re going to go over your USP for your business. Then, we’re going to cover 3 tactics that you can use in your USP. Then, tip of week and then that will be the end of the show.
Let’s get stuck into it.
Let me first define what is a USP. We’re going to turn to a good friend, Wikipedia, for this because they really give an excellent definition of what a USP is. A USP actually gives a precise definition in 3 parts.
Firstly, each advertisement must make a proposition to the consumer and it can’t just be a wishy-washy string of words put together. It must say to the reader or the viewer: Buy this product and you will get a specific benefit.
Secondly, the proposition has to be one that your competition cannot or does not offer. So, it must be unique hence, the word unique selling proposition.
The proposition must also be so strong that it can actually move a market in mass; it has great pull. Last week, we spoke about pull marketing and push marketing. So, the proposition itself has to have a lot of pull; has to knock people off their feet and get them to do business with you.
So now is the time to go over what a USP is not. A USP isn’t a dumb slogan. I did some research on slogans and most people get confused with slogan and USPs.
There was a study done on 22 really really big US-based advertisers and the slogans that they had. Of the consumer market, only 6 of the 22 advertisers were recognized by more than 10% of the consumers; Wal Mart actually topped the list. They had 66% people who recognized the slogan that they were using at that time.
What this information is saying is that, a lot of these companies are spending over a hundred and million dollars on advertising on these dumb slogans I guess you could say. But more than 90% of people don’t identify the slogans at all. So, basically, these big companies are just throwing money up against the wall and not getting any really good results as opposed to what they could be doing if they actually had a really strong USP.
An example of a dumb USP, in my opinion is, “We’re with you”. Obviously, that is very very broad. In fact it can actually be anybody’s slogan or USP that they could use for their business. So, it’s not very clearly defined at all. There’s no direct benefit as to what the consumer will get if they do business with you.
An example of a dumb USP, in my opinion is, “We’re with you”. Obviously, that is very very broad. In fact it can actually be anybody’s slogan or USP that they could use for their business. So, it’s not very clearly defined at all. There’s no direct benefit as to what the consumer will get if they do business with you.
The first one that I want to go through is the Dominos one. The Dominos USP, that was made famous years ago and is probably still the most famous one in the market is “Fresh Hot Pizza Delivered to Your Door in 30 Minutes Or It’s Free”. Everybody is probably familiar with the Dominos one. A lot of pizza companies in recent years have actually have ripped off that particular claim or made their own version of it.
The great thing about it was, Dominos grabbed a fantastic market share in a short span of time using that USP. But in that statement, it doesn’t actually say anything about the pizza being good. They just said that it’s fresh and it’s hot and it’s delivered to your door in 30 minutes or it’s free. That’s a great statement to be able to stand behind. All Dominos has to do is make hot pizza that’s decent and get it to people’s door in 30 minutes. That’s the client that they’re making. This was pretty simple. To be honest the pizza company should be doing this sort of thing anyway. You don’t expect to order pizza and have to wait an hour or an hour and a half to get your pizza. This was a pretty simple one but it moved the market very very quickly and Dominos was very very successful because of that.
The next one that people might be familiar with is Fedex. Fedex positioned theirs against the postal service and there USP was: “When your package absolutely, positively has to be there overnight…” It’s a little bit suggestive. Although it was not clearly spelled out, this was tremendously successful for Fedex because they are positioning themselves as opposed to the others who could never really get the delivery of their package precisely on time. Fedex stepped in and again, just completely wiped out the market and now people are actually replacing or using the brand, Fedex, when they want to post something. That just goes to show how great it is and how powerful USPs can actually be.
The next USP that I want to go over was from Bill Phillips. If you don’t know who Bill Phillips is, he is the man responsible for the Body for Life challenge which is a weight loss program that’s famous the world over. He was launching a product and the USP that he used to market and advertise his product was “Feel Great and Double Your Fat Burning With My New Transformation Solution Program”. There are some direct benefits in there that you’re going to feel great and you’ll actually double your fat burning if you use his program. It’s a unique selling proposition. There’s a guarantee in there that it’s going to happen if you use his program; that you’re going to double your fat burning and you’re going to feel great.
Bill Phillips is a fantastic marketer. He runs successful businesses. I think you can learn a lot from Bill Phillips and also from the USPs from Dominos and Fedex that I covered just a little bit earlier.
So I hope by now you are starting to get an idea what a USP is and what it isn’t. Again, a USP isn’t a dumb slogan. It’s not a tag line or anything like that. It’s something that’s clearly defined and the benefits are stated for the consumer.
We’ve probably spoken enough about other people’s USP so now we’re going to talk about your USP. We’ve got 3 tactics here that you can use for your USP.
The first one is: going against then negative perception in the market. One that’s quite common is things that are made in China or are made overseas. If you actually have your products or your services based in the US or Australia or the UK or wherever you are from, you can position the manufacturing of your products or services that you got against the negative perception of the market.
Now China is great from the production point of view but people have the perception that goods that are produced in China are actually of inferior quality. Sometimes, they are sometimes they aren’t; it obviously depends on the market but you can position yourself with your unique selling proposition to being “Homegrown” or “Australian made” or “Made in the US” or “Made in your country of choice”. This is a great position to take in most markets, to be honest.
The second tactic that you can use is what I call the “Tell them first tactic”. You might actually have something that you might be doing in your business that some other people might actually be doing as well. But the secret is to actually tell people what you’re doing first.
I’ll give you an example and it’s around the Schlick Brewery and this is a story from quite a few years ago. Originally, the Schlick Brewery was number 8 in the beer market. They actually have a marketing consultant on board. The marketing consultant was given a tour of the factory and the owners of the factory actually went through and said that in the last 5 years, they’ve actually done 1,623 different experiments on the beer to get the perfect process for creating pure beer.
In those days, everybody was bragging about making pure beer. What Schlick did was actually come out and, in their marketing campaign, they discussed the fact that they’re doing 1,623 experiments on their beer in the last 5 years. What they did was explain why their beer was pure and purer than the other beers that were on the market. They got an advantage by actually telling the market first what they’re doing. Even though some other companies might have similar manufacturing processes, Schlick Brewery went from #8 in the market to #1 in about 6 months.
By mobilizing your marketing first and actually going out and telling people what you’re doing and what the process is and what the effort is that actually goes into the manufacturing or into the production, you can get a great advantage over the competition by just going out there and telling them first. Tell the market first about what you’re doing before anyone else. That way, anyone else that comes into the scene can’t quite tell the exact same story. If they do they’re going to be copycat and everyone in the market is going to see that. So, you’re getting the most unique and distinctive part of the market and out to the market first.
The third tactic that I want to discuss is specialization. So, this is a little bit of an oldie; it’s quite simple but it’s really really effective. If your company or your business specializes in doing a particular service or a particular product and you tend to not do business in any other area, then you should really hone in on this for your unique selling proposition. It’s something that you should really really highlight and magnify to let people know what you’re doing.
We know the old saying “you can’t be everything to everybody”. So if you’re actually specializing in a particular product or a particular way of manufacturing or a particular service that your business does, you can take that to the market and tell them that you’re the best at it and that’s all you do, people-when they have a problem or they need a product and they want the best that’s in the market–will come to you because you’re the specialist in that area. The great thing about being a specialist is you can charge more as well.
In 2 ways, think of it like a general type of doctor—they have a good rate, don’t get me wrong they get paid fantastically but when you go and see a specialist and you want specialist information in that particular area, you always pay more to go and see a specialist.
Secondly, from a wholesale perspective, if you’re specializing in something, that volume that you’re going to be doing can be a lot greater. So that may mean that you’re going to get a pricing advantage from your distributor or from your wholesaler that you can either choose to pass on to your consumer –so you can have a lot of prices—or you can just keep a larger margin and try that specialist rate that we’re talking about earlier. So there are some great advantages to taking more of a specialist type of approach in your unique selling proposition.
So another idea that I have when I have a formula of USP: you can go with a broad selection type of approach where if you have a really big range of air conditioners or heating systems in your business you can use that sort of approach. If you offer big discounts, which I’ll probably advise that you don’t do but if your company has that advantage in the market then, you can use that as the big promise that you give to the market. If you give big advice and assistance, if you have a great sales team or an after-service team or a service team, you can use that. If you have a great location or you’ve got immediate delivery or installation within a certain period and no other company in the market actually does it, then you can use that as the big promise that you give to the market. If you actually have top-of-the-line products, if you have the A-grade manufacturing processes or the A-grade products that you are delivering to the market, then use that as your big promise to the market. If your service is speedy, if you have a great telesales team and you promised to have your telephone calls answered in the consultation booked in a certain time-frame then you can use that. If you can actually give a more comprehensive warranty or a guarantee that’s well above the industry standards then you can use that.
So there’s no shortage of ideas that you can actually use for your unique selling proposition. You’re not limited to just one tactic as well. You can actually take a hybrid approach; mix a couple of benefits together or mix a couple of guarantees together to make 1 super unique selling proposition that you can take in the market. So like I said, the possibilities are really endless with what you can do with this.
So I guess the question that you’re probably asking is: What results can I expect to get by implementing a unique selling proposition into my heating and cooling business? Well, I don’t know everybody’s business individually but I’m pretty sure you can get a 30% improvement by either improving or adopting a unique selling proposition into your business.
If you’ve actually got the unique selling proposition currently or you think you do, here are some questions that you can keep asking yourself to refine this process:
Is your unique selling proposition too generic or could it be used for everyone? So examples are “We’re with you” and “That was easy”. These can be used for a nappy company or a paper manufacturer or anything basically. So that’s not clearly defined at all. If your USP or slogan is like that, then I suggest you look into improving that.
You need to keep asking when you’re formulating your USP. So what? What does it actually mean? What does it actually mean for the consumer? Do they actually just say, “meh!” or “I don’t know”? You need to make them come off the fence.
The big question that the million-dollar marketer Dan Kennedy always ask is: Why you? Why should people choose to do business with your company out of all the other options that they have including doing nothing? I think that’s a great approach to take because, really, people will have 3 options. They can say yes, they can say no not with you or they can say maybe, can’t they?
So what you need to do is get people off the fence; make sure that they’re making a decision. You don’t want them sitting on the fence. You should make them make a decision; that they say yes or they say no, that’s not for me.
Okay, so now it’s time for the HVAC Business Growth Tip of the Week.
This week’s tip of the week is about how to actually implement the USP.
So, what I want you to do is just go down to your local office store or your stationary store, you might even have some stuff in the cupboard, but what I want you to do is get some 3×5 index cards (The size actually doesn’t matter but 3×5 is sort of a standard).
Now what I want you to do is this: for your products and services or for your business, I want you to write down all the features and benefits onto some cards. Ideally, you just do this by having 1 feature or 1 benefit per card. This might take you 20 minutes or an hour to do. It depends how familiar or hands-on you are on your business. You might want your staff to help you with this process.
After you’ve completed this, shuffle the cards up and just sit them in the drawer for 24 hours. I don’t want you to make rash decisions straight away. So, put the cards in the drawer, go away and let them simmer so to speak. Then, come back in a day or 2, grab the cards out and I want you to start shuffling through the cards. Having been through this process, you’re going to throw some of your ideas out because this was just, originally, a brainstorming session. So, throw out the bad ideas that you just think are total crap and don’t want to use and keep the good ideas.
With the good ideas, what I want you to do is try and order them in order of importance. The really big overriding, number 1 benefit that you’ve got should be on the top of the file and then it should filter its way down from there. So, if you are running a multiple product-based business, meaning you’re doing different types of heating and cooling systems or air conditioners or whatever you’re doing where you’re doing different services, then ideally you’re doing this process for each product or service that you’ve got within the business. You’ve actually got a unique selling proposition for each item that you actually deliver.
Just start with one product or one service and try to formulate a USP. I’ll just run over the formula again. What you really want to do is give people the answer to the “Why you?” question. Again, Dominos used “Fresh hot pizza delivered to your door in 30 minutes or it’s free”. Fedex was “When your package absolutely, positively has to get their overnight”. These are a couple of examples that you can model or copy. You can just insert your own benefits or guarantee to that particular statement that I mentioned above.
Just try it and have a go!
Come up with half a dozen different USPs if you have to. The best one will actually stick out to you. And when you get the best one that sticks out, start to use it in your marketing. Start-test it. See if you get an uplift in the quality of the people that are coming to you. See if you get an uplift in sales. See if it’s actually easier for your sales team to actually sell the products or services that you’re marketing.
If you’re actually getting poor results with your marketing right now and bad customers, the reason why you’re getting it is your marketing. If you’re not going to market with a strong USP and you’re not answering the question, “Why me?” that’s the reason why you’re struggling. That’s why you’re not getting the proper tick you deserve in your business.
I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s show. That’s all we’ve got time for today. I’m Nick Bielawski for hvacbusinessgrowth.com. I’ll see you next time!