Your Small Business Target Marketing Must be Built Around Your Unique Selling Proposition

Copyright (c) 2008 Paul Flood Marketing, LLC

When you create your marketing programs, do you believe your investment should only get your name out there and build your brand. There's an ongoing debate among marketers about the value of this strategy.

Those of us in the direct response crowd disagree with that thought process because the typical small business owner usually lacks the resources to wait for prospects to need their service. We believe marketing investments should generate leads or clients with branding being an added benefit of the investment.

An additional problem with pure image or brand advertising is that it is very difficult to track and measure its effectiveness. In my mind, if I am going to invest in my company, whether it is in advertising, direct mail, new equipment or staff, I want to know my return on my investment and believe clients should also be able to do so.

Is there a happy medium between the two camps where we can serve our clients with marketing that builds brands and gives prospects a reason to buy now? Is there a small business target marketing strategy that accomplishes both objectives? Absolutely!

The tool to make this happen is the Unique Selling Proposition, or USP. A good USP is pure marketing gold and creates a compelling reason for the consumer to act immediately. They will think, "I need this" or "I need more information about this amazing product."

Let's go back a couple of decades so we can illustrate this point with a couple well-known examples: If Federal Express just ran ads that were about their name and logo, they would have gotten name recognition, but that's about all. Instead they said to their prospects "When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight."

Did the compelling USP work? Most people will agree it worked rather well for FedEx.

Will it work for a small business? Well, several years ago, a man named Tom Monohan was in one of the most competitive businesses that also traditionally has one of the highest failure rates - The restaurant business. He was in the most competitive arena of this market - pizza. The marketing message Tom created was a lot more compelling than the name of his pizza parlor is." His message was, "Fresh hot pizza in thirty minutes or less - or it's free." I think we can agree that Dominos Pizza did well with their USP!

People, businesses included do not care about you, your name or your brand. They care about what you, your product or your service will to do for them. Once they've made the decision to buy, your name increases in psychological importance, but not until then.

Remember that your small business target marketing has very specific objectives and they are to deliver prospects or clients. If they are not designed to do so, you can either hope that you will get more clients or throw out useless ads and switch to ads and marketing designed to bring you profits.

The marketing designed to generate profits starts with your USP and tells your targeted prospect why they should buy from you and do so now.