Designing a USP for Your Business

Your brand image is primarily an emotional construct. Emotion is probably always more powerful in swaying people than reason, but people like to be able to rationalise their choices. This is where awareness of another advertising theory - the USP - can be helpful to you.

The USP, or unique selling proposition, formula was developed by Rosser Reeves, an ex-copywriter who became head of the Ted Bates agency in New York. He wrote an excellent book, largely dealing with this theory but also covering other aspects of advertising, called Reality in Advertising.

To establish your USP, you compare your product or service with your competitors. Then you determine one feature you have which no one else can offer. This is your unique selling proposition. It is this which you must promote singlemindedly.

A 1987 issue of Marketing Week, the British trade paper, gave a wonderful example of how little the average marketing executive understands the phrases he deploys with such gay inconsequence. The subject was 'Store credit cards'. A bank executive said: The whole point of a Marks & Spencer, Boots, Dixons or even Fortnum & Mason card is to bring people into the store - and to provide a bit of a LISP' (my italics).

How a credit card can be a unique selling proposition when the same facility is offered by any number of retailers is difficult to comprehend. It reminds one of people who refer to things as being 'rather' unique, or 'fairly' unique. Here are some typical USPs:
'Cleans your breath while it cleans your teeth.'

Colgate toothpaste. 'The too good to hurry mint.' Murraymints. 'There's more for your life at Sears.' Sears Roebuck. 'It ain't fancy but it's good.' Horn & Hardarts. 'The mint with the hole.' Polo Mints. 'It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken.' Perdue Chicken

And, finally, another gentleman in the chicken business: 'It's finger lickin' good.' Colonel Sanders

One of the problems with the USP is that you sometimes have to rely upon some pretty trivial points of difference to arrive at your proposition - as you can see from the list above. And although, for simple products a good USP may often supply a successful selling idea, I think it is difficult to arrive at one for complex services such as American Express or The Consumers Association.

However, comparing yourself against your competition to discover what USP may exist is a great aid to clear thinking. For example, I was able to improve results for Odhams' Kathie Webber Cookery Club by writing a headline which was simply a personal way of expressing a USP: `My cookery cards mean you control your weight without giving up luscious food you love to eat.' This did well in the UK, and even in France, home of gastronomy. Moreover, subsequent approaches to selling this product revolved around this original thought. ====

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Technology And Plumbing

Plumbing first made its way into urban communities while the Romans and the Greeks were the powerful empires of the world. Plumbing was used by the Romans and Greeks for the public bathing houses that were so popular. Aqueducts came into fashion while the Romans were in power and they were used to carry clean water to the bathing houses and take the dirty water away. The Roman aqueduct system was used until the 1800s when advances in technology started a replacement process of the aqueducts by piping systems located underground.

Pipes were constructed mostly from lead during ancient times and aqueducts were pieced together from stone and clay. However, this is no longer the case in modern times. Today, steel, brass, copper and plastic are the most popular building materials for plumbing and piping systems. Lead is no longer used to make pipes because the toxicity of lead is considered to be too high.

The bath houses that the Romans enjoyed are considered the predecessors of plumbing as it currently exists. Originally, public bathing only occurred while the sun was up because the bath water was only replaced once each day. Remember, it was not until long after the Roman Empire fell that bacterium was discovered and the western world learned how diseases were spread with the obvious implications on bathing and personal hygiene. In Roman times, one water change each day was all they thought they needed.

The modern toilet is, arguably, more important to many modern UK citizens than the aqueducts of the Roman Empire. The toilet that most western citizens are familiar with in today's society was first built in Mohenjo-Darco in approximately 2800 BC. This toilet consisted of a pile of bricks upon which a wooden seat was fixed. These "modern" toilets were only available to the highest members of society and, in fact, would not be used by the masses until the 1800s when the western world adopted them.

Wedding Planning And Making Money Online

It is very true that couples will spend a lot of money of their wedding. As a result, there is really a great potential for you to make money online with wedding planning. What I mean here is that you will be able to make money online by selling items related to wedding planning.

When a couple is planning for a wedding, they have to consider a lot of details. For example, they have to send the save the date card at least half year before and send the wedding invitations 12 weeks before their wedding.

People are very busy nowadays. They may not really have enough time to plan for their wedding. Even if they have the time to do so, they may not really know the etiquettes. It can be even more difficult if it is a Chinese couple. There are a lot of etiquettes associated with Chinese wedding traditions. The couple may not really understand or know all these etiquettes.

As a result, there is a possibility of making money online by creating ebooks on wedding etiquettes or ebooks on tips about wedding planning. These kinds of ebooks can be sold very well. In fact, you can see that there are some people who are selling such ebooks when you try to search in clickbank.

Selling ebooks is not the only way to make money online with wedding planning. You can even be able to make money using PPC networks. There are a lot of advertisers in this field and you can earn quite a bit of money with it. You may start a website on free wedding invitation templates and make money. It is not difficult to do so at the end of the day. However, if you are doing SEO work, the keyword wedding can be a very challenging one. As a result, you will still want to concentrate on long tails instead.

Of course you may also consider starting an online shop which sells wedding gifts. The gifts are certainly something very important. However, the capital involved should also be considered. You may need to spend some money on the inventories. Yet you may consider join some affiliate programs which sell such products and this may be an excellent choice.