Small Business Advertising: Sexy USP’s They’ll Love

USP = Unique Selling Proposition. But how do you make it sexy?

SSP = Sexy Selling Proposition. Get your mind out of the gutter. I’m talking glamorous, head-turning, ear-catching.

The most important question you need to answer for your customers is “Why?” You must communicate the clear and conclusive reason why potential customers will want to do business with you. It takes sexiness to make people want to do business with you.

In AdScam: Kick-Ass Advertising Without the Madison Avenue Price Tag, freelance writer and creative director George Parker tells us that you must:

“present that discernible difference in a such a way as to make your potential audience consider it something it cannot live without.”

Now that’s a sexy way to describe it.

SPECIAL NOTICE: George Parker will be our guest this week on Power to the Small Business, our internet blogcast on small business marketing. Check back to the blog this week for a listen.

The SSP that works best relies on one, easily understood differentiating fact. Avoid being all things to all people and carve out a specific market niche. But how do you find your sexiness

Here are 14 ideas to help you define your SSP, courtesy of George Parker in AdScam:

• being the first on the market with a new product.
• making or selling better stuff.
• offering a wider range of inexpensive things.
• offering a smaller range of super high-quality things.
• making it really easy to buy stuff.
• making it pleasant and fun to buy stuff.
• being the best at what you do.
• being more effective at what you do.
• being more flexible in how you manufacture.
• being more flexible in how you stock.
• being more flexible in how you sell.
• being more flexible in how you do everything.
• Men hate to shop, Make it less of a pain.
• Women love to shop. Make it more than love. Make it ecstasy.

But that’s just the beginning. Flexibility itself is not sexy. You need to dress it up.

Parker himself is famous for one of the sexiest SSP’s of all time: Smirnoff Vodka, “It leaves you breathless.” Parker talked about Smirnoff’s charcoal filtering process so as to imply that you could drink it without it leaving an alcohol after taste on your breath. That’s how you make charcoal filtering sexy.

Your SSP is there and waiting to be dug up out of the everyday processes you have come to rely on and take for granted as the normal way of doing business. It just needs some new clothing, some jewelry, and an alluring fragrance. Start digging.

Related posts small business advertising:
The Secrets of Stickiness: Stop wasting money on your message.
Be Interesting or Don’t Advertise
Cut The B.S. in Your Marketing Materials

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See our other blog with small business marketing case studies: The Idea Spot