To the Prospective Customers Question Your USP Is the Answer

When you set out to attract a new, prospective customer to your business for the first time, there is one, paramount question you must answer:

"Why should I choose your business/product/service versus any/every other competitive option available tome?"

I choose Domino's pizza because it's gonna get to me hot, fast. I choose a McDLT because my lettuce and tomato stay cool and crisp. I choose Yuban so I don't have to count scoops. I choose Minit-Lube because I hate hanging around greasy, dirty gas-station waiting areas. Why do I choose the chiropractor I go to? The restaurants I regularly patronize? The dealership where I buy my cars? More often than not, it's because each has USP POWER that appeals to me.

Boosting USP POWER with an Irresistible Offer

I grew up in Ohio and briefly owned an ad agency in a rural community halfway between Cleveland and Akron. At least a dozen times each winter there was enough snow and ice on the country roads to make it ill-advised if not downright impossible to go anywhere. Those days the office stayed closed and I stayed stuck at home.

On one such day, in the midst of a severe blizzard, I stared out my apartment window and watched a neighbor slog through the snow, struggle through the wind, scrape ice from his car's windshield, unfreeze the car's door latch with a cigarette lighter, fight to start the car, and finally slip and slide off into the storm. "I wonder," I asked myself, "what would motivate a guy to go out in weather like this?"

Then I remembered a very similar storm just a couple of winters before when I had quite literally risked my life and badly banged up my car driving all the way from Akron, Ohio to Murray State University in Kentucky to spend a weekend with my girlfriend of that time. For hours, it snowed so hard I honestly couldn't see past the hood ornament of my car. Every bridge was so icy I spun my way across it. Yet I pressed on.

Waiting for me in Murray, Kentucky was "an irresistible offer"!

If you can come up with an offer that's irresistible, you are really on to something! Try this one on for size: for $198 per person, $396 per couple, I'll put you up in a luxurious minisuite in an exciting Las Vegas hotel, right on the famous strip... give you tickets to a show with name entertainers ... put a chilled bottle of champagne in your room ... let you drink as much of whatever you want whether you're at the gaming tables, playing the slots, or in one of the lounges... hand you $1,000 of my money to gamble with... let you keep all your winnings... and, as a bonus, guarantee you'll at least win either a color TV, a VCR, or a faux-diamond ring. Obviously I'm not going to give this incredible deal to everybody in the whole world. There can only be x (a small number) of these vacation packages available, first come, first served, and the race is on. Assuming you trust the offer, how fast can you get to a phone and call in to reserve yours? Would you go out in a blizzard and drive to the post office to get your order form in the mail before the deadline?

Well, this is a real offer, from one of the savviest marketers I know in Las Vegas, Mr. Bob Stupak, the sole, entrepreneurial owner of the giant, always-growing Vegas World Hotel. Bob keeps his hotel filled to capacity, keeps a waiting list going, and gets paid months, even years in advance by his guests—all thanks to his invention of this irresistible offer.

The Embassy Suites hotel chain has flourished for years and sparked much competition thanks to its offer of "every room a suite," free evening cocktails, and free breakfast

A business associate of mine, Joel Beck, keeps Constance Cosmetics' studios filled with new customers by offering a complete nonsurgical face lift, skin care treatment, and cosmetic makeover free. The women attracted by this irresistible offer buy, on average, between $80 and $250 of the company's products.

For many years, the Howard Johnson's restaurants were famous for their Friday night all-you-can-eat clam frys.

One of the mail-order catalog companies I occasionally buy something from recently sent me a "preferred customer catalog" from which I could buy anything I wanted with "no payments for six months." I confess—I went through that darned catalog looking for something to buy!

One of the classic, often-used irresistible offers is the book and record clubs' "Choose 6 for 100," like the offer shown in Figure 1.

Continue reading here: The Three Best Ways to Target Market

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