A lot of people use the term ‘unique selling proposition’ very loosely.  But when Rosser Reeves defined it  in his 1961 book, ‘Reality In Advertising’, there was a real idea behind it.

Your USP is a statement, like a slogan, that distrinuishes you from your competitors.  but it’s more powerful than a slogan because it is unique, it is sales-focused, and it makes or infers a proposition… it’s a unique selling proposition.

We’ve taken his definition and developed real criteria and evaluation points around it.  We’d suggest you can evaluate your own USP like this…

First, ask three basic questions

Is there a proposed action in the statement?
Is there a targeted person implied, a reader/buyer who can say “that’s me”, or at least a context that serves just as well?
And is there a benefit to them implied in your statement?

Second, look at your competitors

Is your statement unique?

And third, check usability

Can it be used as a headline?
Can it be used on your stationery and signage?

There are other criteria that can help round out a USP and make it read better.  Bit if your USP meets all of the above criteria, you’re at least well on your way. 

If you want meto check your USP, send it to me and ask for a quick verdict.   If you don’t have a website I can view, tell me who you sell to and what you sell… along with your USP… and sent to stephen@strategyandaction.com.au

Marketing efforts don’t always work.  Where a lot of misses occur is when the connection with the target is missed.  Not a mushy ’sense of connection’ but a real, tangible connection.  Let me explain -

If you have a sales person, and you ask them to walk directly to a potential client’s home or business, and they talk with them, deliver a proven pitch, engage in dialogue that learns the target’s needs and they adapt the pitch accordingly… and then that sales person, having made a good impact, walks with the tagret back to your shop to buy… then you’ve never lost the connection.

Marketing attempts to duplicate the efforts of a dedicated salesperson and multiply them, hundreds or thousands of times.

We spread our net over a wider area, attemptong to catch more than just one target.  We throw a headline and a promise.  We try to get them educated about us.  We make a pitch.  We then try to encourage them to walk to our shop and take advantage of that pitch.

But it’s very hard to maintain a good connection with them when we act remotely like this.

The ad or letter may not be read.  It may not even be delivered.  It may not make the right pitch.  It may not consider something that dialogue would have picked up.

Even if it’s delivered and read and understood… what’s going to make that target walk to your shop?

Good marketing tries to keep the connectivity in place.  The closer you can get to identifying the target by person, placing your pitch directly in front of them, tailoring your pitch to their unique situation, suggesting explicit action, detecting what actions may have been taken by them and then being able to respond to those actions… the closer you get to effective marketing.

Map your conversion process.. from lead generation to sales efforts to database and retention activity.  Look for places where you might not have connectivity and try to find a way to re-establish the connectivity.

Plug those holes and you’ll probably convert and keep a lot more customers.

Woolworths and Coles have continuously grown their various house brands or ‘private labels’.  They are a significant way to increase margins and increase control over suppliers.

They might be cheaper than traditionally branded products, but the margins are better because the premiums paid to branded manufacturers isn’t there.

One figure I found suggested a 2 percent better margin.

That might not sound like much, but it adds up to tens of millions of dollars, and in tough times you can bet that they’ll pursue it more ardently and that it’ll be received more gratefully by the market.

Already, Woolies has an estimated 1600 products and  Coles about 2600 products in their various private labels.

These are taking sales from traditional brands.

The trouble is, if you project this to its logical conclusion, the picture could look something like this…

You have a number of house brands, all controlled by the retailer.  Manufacturers and primary producers see their margins squeezed, the value to consumers dissipates, and your real choice is largely removed.

The hidden cost of going cheap is that you’re building that future.

Buying specific and real brands isn’t merely a joy to marketers, it’s actually protecting the variety, value, and spread of profits throughout the economy that all of enjoy.

It’s like the analogy of putting a frog in cold water and bringing it to the boil, slowly… we won’t notice it in big leaps… but it’s already right in front of us and growing ever warmer.

We’ve come across a number of website owners wanting to create significant revenues from their websites but approaching the task the wrong way.  They’ve tried to solicit the revenue stream before the other parts were in place.

The concept was good, but the steps to monetisation were wrong.

For instance, one website product providing entertainment information wanted venues to subscribe up-front, and was having difficulty convincing venues to hop on board.  Another providing information to a category of employment seekers wanted job placers to subscribe and advertisers to come aboard.

The models had great ideas behind them but the model chosen was not quite right.

Websites have four main components or opportunities for components…

1.       Content

2.       Content Consumers

3.       Content Providers

4.       Advertisers

And there’s a definite chronology to these that helps you develop your website faster, even though it might at first seem to delay revenues.

Content… is read by Consumers… and this attracts Providers… and Advertisers.

And it’s the latter one or two that can provide the revenues… at least in the beginning.

But it all starts with Content.  Without compelling content that is differentiated from other competitive or substitute sites, your website risks being irrelevant.

Content should therefore be sourced, produced and provided as quickly as possible.  The faster you have it, the faster natural and marketed searches will find and value that content.

That attracts the Content Consumers.  These people will value your site.  The more of them you get, the more your true asset grows… visitors.

So consider deferring fees for accessing the content.  The easier it is to access, the easier it will be to ramp up your visitor numbers.

When your visitor numbers are up, you’ll start to see the monetisation opportunities emerge.  Content providers will want to provide material.  And they’ll pay for the privilege.   Advertisers will want to advertise on your site.

And these will be the source of revenue of most importance.

Keep up the content, to keep up the visitors, and you’ll keep up the contributors and advertisers.

Down the track, though, something interesting will occur.  It’ll be both the start of yet more revenues and the start of your vulnerability.

You’ll realise that Content Consumers are dependent on you, and you’ll be in a position to introduce fees for your content.

This will add an entirely new income stream to your website.  But it’ll also be the moment a new competitor seizes the day and introduces a source of content that is a substitute to your own.

Balancing the provision of value with the opportunity for leverage will be a challenge.  But that’s a nice challenge to have.

One of our clients, FM Innovations, is engaging in a clever strategy to make their product more accessible in what is likely to prove toughening times.  They’re offering finance for their software package, WSMenterprise, to remove the cashflow impact.

WSMenterprise is a facility management system - works management, asset register, sustainability module, contracts and suppliers management and more. It helps their clients get more efficiencies from their facilities and assets, reduce the burden of managing those facilities and get better information and reporting.

The financing idea is a good strategy.  It should mean clients can enjoy the fruit of implementing the system as they amortise the payment of the system and effectively rent it to achieve facility management gains.

For more information on it, visit: http://www.fminnovations.com.au/index.php?page=evergreen-software-rental-option

You are a start-up business, and money is tight. You have a lot of things draining your resources – insurance, premises and staffing. Why should you spend a little more on your branding, where it seems like money better spent elsewhere?

Here are six reasons that can justify that extra spend…

1. Time.
Maybe your small spend is looked at as a ‘quick fix’ to re-assess at a later date. The bargain-bin logo is probably viewed as a quick job by the designer as well.  Expect the time or effort taken in creating a lasting brand to work on a sliding scale that is directly in proportion to the price you pay…
 
2. Corporate Image.
I would describe the purchase of a weak logo for your company like James Bond ordering a goon-spritzer rather than the martini. Whether you like it or not, people are superficial. They will trust a company with a strong identity that stands out within their industry.

3. Longevity.
Look at your logo as something you want to follow you throughout the growth of your company. It needs to surpass trends and style changes, and needs to adapt to many applications. Your bargain option won’t necessarily worry about these options. Templates rarely do.

4. Quality.
I was once told that your logo should be proportionally valued to the size and scope of your business. So if you want to be turning over a few hundred-thousand dollars a year, you should look on your logo and branding as an asset that has worked towards a proportion of your profit. On this premise, a cheaper logo should apply to a lesser quality business.

5. Individuality
Unique logos shouldn’t be given away. And they aren’t.  I mentioned that templates are the cheapest. They work with a range of standard fonts and simple characters. Any number of companies within your industry could look very similar. Aim to stand out. Attention paid to unique and effective branding brings an attraction by clients.

6. Relationship
Trust your designer. Develop a rapport with them. Design and branding is a trade that is studied for.
You would pay for a good electrician to get your wiring right. The same should be said for the designer looking after your brand.

An extra tip from me to you:
Comic Sans must die. Like wearing Crocs anywhere other than gardening, this font should be left back when you were 10…

Ok, so Wayne Swann has reduced forecast growth from 2.75% to 2%.  It may not look much of a drop, but remember last year it was forecast at 3.9%.  So we’ve pretty much halved growth expectations.

There isn’t anything you can do, macroeconimically.  Not even the government is able to to do much to avert a recession.  All you can do is pursue more strongly your share of what will be a shrinking pie.

And there are five things we’ve seen that most businesses should be doing and are not…

1. Instead of assuming your lead generation assets are working as well as they can, question them and improve them.  For the same ongoing spend, an asset - like an advertisement, brochure, website or salesperson - can gain more for you than they were.
2. Go back to old customers and lost customers and open up both personal and mass communications with them.  A lot of revenues lie here.
3. Meet regularly between levels and functions of your company.  The better the realtionships and information between top and bottom, and between marketing and operations, the more effective each section is at pre-empting and capitalising on the wishes of clients and the better the entire business is at identifying quickly changing trends.
4. Manage your sales people tighter.  If they don’t meet weekly (it sounds arduous but it’s critical) then too much time is lapsing between efforts undertaken and the problem-solving that redirects those efforts.  Three priciples should underpin the work of your sales people… first no prospect contact should occur without an explciti and open agenda they have for that prospect, second no such contact should occur without an explicit action to follow it up, and third no time should occur in a salesperson’s day that isn’t accounted for.  That which is harmful in every salesperson will find this stifling.  It’s natural.  But that which is ambitious and mature will value it and benefit from it.
5. Leverage your successes.  When you achieve something for a customer or client, think of the following 4 ways to get more from it… publish it, ask for referrals or network from people involved in it, look for other opportunities that look like it and refer to the original as a case study, turn it into a product or packaged service.

What will the recession mean to your business?  For ours, it means we’re adapting, working more aggressively and apreciating what and who we have.