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In some cases, your USP may be very apparent. In other cases, you may need to spend a great deal of time thinking of a “slant” that’s effective and appropriate. Maybe, as in the case of Maytag and their “lonely” repair staff, your USP is more a subjective image than a hard fact. The point is that once you’ve developed a USP, you have a hook that can help you grab the customer but only if you use it effectively in your communication materials.

To identify a USP you need to consider the following:

The resulting statement should be a one-line statement that contains a clearly identifiable, unique benefit that is meaningful to your market. Do you remember the following?

Note that in each of these statements it is not the literal translation of the words, but the overall impact of the benefit implied in each statement that makes the USP truly powerful. That is the challenge that marketing communicators should embrace when working toward the development of copy that will achieve results.

Note, also, that each of these statements could have been made by the competition in each product category. But, they didn’t claim it first! The power of an effective USP is that it can create the  perception of uniqueness in the mind of consumers.

Once you’ve developed a USP it should be implicit in all of your communication materials. It becomes a reflection of your brand promise expressed in a way that is meaningful and differentiating from your audience’s POV.

I write more about USP’s and how they can be effectively created and communicated to generate measurable results in my upcoming book Direct Mail in the Digital Age.

Xavier Riddle and the Secret Museum.