Are
you struggling to create a memorable positioning statement for your
marketing? Do you want to stand out from
your competition, but the uniqueness of your business seems to elude you?
Here’s
a sneaky, vital secret that turns conventional marketing psychology on its
head. By changing your positioning
statement, find out how to transform your weakest link into your strongest
marketing tool ever.
Avis is
Only Number 2…So, Why Go With Them…
Years
ago, in the rental car market, Hertz was chugging along merrily, with Avis a
distant second. With one Problem-Based
USP, Avis closed the gap. Its catch
phrase, "We’re No.2, We Try Harder," ignited the minds of the target
audience like a rampaging bush fire.
They turned a liability into an asset.
Southwest
Airlines took to the skies with a similar message. We’re Smaller Than Everyone Else, it told us,
while gently explaining why its service was dramatically better, as a direct
consequence of their size. They also
turned a liability into an asset.
In
2001, Harley Davidson proudly boasted how their CEO was 38th on the waiting
list for the company's then, new V-Rod motorcycle. And they took pains to describe how each
Harley was lovingly rolled off the plant.
The waiting period, which normally would be perceived to be a negative,
was turned into a publicity coup that burned a stamp of quality and a
uniqueness into the brains of every prospective Harley owner.
All
of these companies took a cold, hard-nosed look at reality. The superlatives in their business had been
taken. Instead they unearthed their USP,
in what most people would consider a disadvantage of sorts.
Are You
Doing What Sally Did…
Sally
is one heck of a real estate agent.
Barely six months into real estate, and she’s already forging a red-hot
path into the top ten salespeople in the country. While her talents and persuasive powers are
formidable, there’s a little something that puts her head and shoulders above
the rest of the crowd.
That
Little Something is a USP on Steroids…
If
she chose to be unimaginative, Sally’s USP or tagline could have ended up as
pretty run-of-the-mill. It could have
ranged from a tacky, "Residential Properties for Every Budget," to
utterly boring, "Getting Top Prices for Your Home." All of which would see her struggling to
stand out, in a dog-eat-dog me-too marketplace.
A goody-gum-drop USP would get her nowhere in a hurry. She needed a USP with rocket fuel in its
tanks. Something that would reach out
and demand your attention without hesitation.
“If You
Sold Your Home in a Week or Less, You Probably Got Too Little…”
How to
Create a Knockout USP for Your Business…
The Primary
Reason You Should Search for the Hiccups in Your Business…
That’s
the USP that Sally created. Can you see
what I mean? Doesn't that USP go for
your jugular? Sally’s target audience is
sellers, not buyers. If you just sold a
house, wouldn't you feel a twinge of regret?
What if you were about to sell a house? Wouldn't you be curious to find out just a little bit about what Sally
does to lasso in a higher return? And wouldn't you be just a little bit wary if the next real estate agent you met
told you that she could sell your house in next to no time?
You've just witnessed the psychological power of
the Problem-Based USP.
Let’s
assume you’re in the wine selling business.
To own real estate in a customer’s brain, you’d have to do battle with
about a zillion other wines. Yet decades
ago, Paul Masson cut through the clutter with a simple statement. We sell no wines before their time. With charming simplicity, they turned a
negative waiting period into an exploitable advantage.
You
too can turn your liabilities into assets.
Stop screaming about how magnificent you are, and look for the apparent
glitches in your business. Let’s just
consider a few scenarios. Are you
perceived to be too expensive, extremely slow, or maybe just too busy?
Consider
when PsychoTactics.com launched their website and were faced with a similar
dilemma. As human beings, we often disdain simplicity and common sense. The distillation process needed to simplify a
concept into easy-to-munch bites is often just seen as common sense, and of no
huge intrinsic value. Taking that
liability into consideration, PsychoTactics.com created a USP concept that
stressed the fact that everything was not just old, but at least 5000 years
old. In fact, everything has already
been tried and tested. That put them
into a mould that was totally different from all the new-fangled marketing
angles we hear about every day. The liability of common sense was turned into the
asset of experience.
Best
of all, it turned a problem into a winning USP concept.
Finding what makes you beneficially
different is a notoriously difficult task.
However, just about any client or potential buyer will very quickly
identify your weaknesses and liabilities.
If it’s a technical problem, you can fix it. If it’s a conceptual problem such as speed or
price, it’s much harder to fix.
This,
however, is the key to your success. The
more you try to keep your weaknesses and liabilities under wraps, the more
customers will uncover them. On the
other hand, take a liability and turn it into an asset. Expose a problem to the harsh glare of the
spotlight and transform your frog into a prince. This brave act will gain the instant
admiration and support of your clients, while giving you a USP that others
simply won’t have the guts to match.
Can You
Make the Leap?
Creating
a negative USP is a tricky, dangerous tactic, and one not to be taken
lightly. "We're slow and proud of
it!" is hardly a selling point, yet fulfills the requirements laid out in
this article. However, if you’ve been
struggling with your USP, as many companies do, this is a tactic that may work
well for you—as it has with some of the companies above.
It’s
time you tickled your customer’s brain with some sharply focused psychological
marketing jujitsu. Find the weaknesses
and liabilities in your business, carve them into a dynamic USP, and the
attention your business has been craving for, will be yours forever more.
And that’s worth thinking about…
