It’s late at night. You’ve been breaking your head over your USP (Unique Selling Proposition) and finally you think you’ve got something that suits you to the T. Before you go and plaster that USP on your website, business card and everything else, do you have the two ‘U’s in your USP?
Two ‘U’s? Huh, where did the second U come from?
The first U is kind of obvious. It stands for unique. The second one is kinda harder. It stands for U. As in YOU. And yes, I know, it sounds kind of obvious that you need to talk about the customer. But what’s obvious, doesn’t always translate into reality. Let’s look at a few straplines that have tried and failed because they haven’t considered the two ‘U’s.
Here we go deep into strapline country
1)Serving fine steaks since 1952
2) Set your sails for success
3) Our service is second to none
4) Winning in Our Way
5) Breaking the Barriers of Mediocrity
I heard that yawn…
You think these straplines/supposed USPs are putting you to sleep, don’t you? Well…wait till you get to your own strapline. You’ll do exactly the same as these straplines above. What’s worse, is that you’ll be darned proud of your so called inspirational strapline.
So let’s corral one those dumb straplines and see if we can turn them around a bit, shall we?
Serving fine steaks since 1952
The steaks we serve, only 2% of America gets to eat.
See how quickly we got the uniqueness and the u factor in that line? The first line was all pompous and uppity. The second one was precise (read unique) and gave you, the customer an immediate benefit.
Personal Experience:
When I was in Las Vegas earlier this year, I had squillions of restaurants to choose from. And yet, I consciously chose this steak restaurant because of the strapline was so arresting. This steak house had both the ‘U’s going at the same time. I paid thrice as much to get the unique taste of steak that just 2% of America eats.
Needless to say, I waddled back to my hotel room.