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01/30/2007: "Find Your Unique Selling Proposition or Fail in Your Marketing"

Do you ever wonder why you put a great sales letter or sales message on your Web site and yet you get no business? Do you send out direct mail that is professionally written and yet get few replies? That's not uncommon.

Why is it not uncommon? Several reasons. One main reason is that most copywriters are underpaid. The advertiser simply does not have the money or the desire to pay a copywriter what he or she is really worth. As a result, the copywriter simply writes an off-the-shelf sales message --- one that could be used by most any business.

You can't blame the copywriter really. Who wants to invest a lot of time and effort for little pay?

But a copywriter who is well paid will produce effective copy for you. For example, when a client hires me, they pay a lot of money. But in return they get someone who will research. They get someone who will dig out the unique selling proposition of that particular company --- not the industry in general.

THE UNIQUE SELLING PROPOSITION AND WHY IT MATTERS

What about the USP or unique selling proposition? Rosser Reeves, a well-known copywriter from the fifties, came up with the term unique selling proposition and it's lived on through the years. Strictly speaking, it simply means what it is about you or your business that is unique, that sets you apart. And it's very hard to find. Because in truth, most businesses are much the same. Most are not unique.

So a really good copywriter will dig until the USP comes out.

Unique Selling Proposition is really not new to Reeves. Claude Hopkins was digging out the unique selling proposition for his ads back in the twenties and thirties. He is the guy who came up with "plaque" for the Pepsodent ads. Oh, other toothpastes did the same thing. But Hopkins read and studied, talked to dentists and doctors, and discovered plaque --- that awful film on your teeth. And around that he built one of the greatest ad campaigns of all times.

Was plaque unique? No. Was Pepsodent the "only" toothpaste to offer protection against it? No. But Pepsodent was the first . . . and for a long time the only toothpaste to claim it did away with it and made your teeth healthy and good looking.

That alone set it apart. That was what would later be called a unique selling proposition. And it sold an awful lot of toothpaste. In fact, I think it set a record for sales. Hopkins introduced "a new way to whiten cloudy teeth." Was it really new? No. But he was the first to claim it for Pepsodent. Download one of the Claude Hopkins famous Pepsodent ads here. This is a PDF file so you need the Adobe PDF reader installed.

The bottom line is this . . . you have to find your own personal unique selling proposition. Off-the-shelf copy that worked great for another advertiser WILL NOT WORK FOR YOU! So stealing a great sales letter or ad from a swipe file or another company will do you no good. You have to hire a copywriter who has the skills to dig out your USP. And you must be willing to pay him or her enough money to do it right.

That's the only way you can make your advertising and marketing pay.

For more information on Claude Hopkins and how he applied the unique selling proposition to his famous ads visit the Claude Hopkins Vintage Ads page. You can download some sixty of his great ads and learn how to find and use your own USP.

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advertising, Claude Hopkins, Rosser Reeves, marketing, business, ads, print ads, Pepsodent, USP, unique selling proposition