In the Four Step Marketing system, the first step is defining your Unique selling Points. In fact your USP becomes the center piece for all your marketing. It is used in all your messaging to your prospective client. However, if your Unique Selling Point doesn’t resonate with your prospective buyers then it will not help much.
This past Friday, while out to eat with my wife, I found a great example of a company articulating their USP in an effective manner. Tony Sacco’s Coal Oven Pizza has two locations in the Charlotte area. One is in Charlotte, NC and the other in Concord, NC. As the name implies they offer pizza baked in a coal oven.
When I first saw this, what came to mind was my time in peace Corps. A primary source of heating in Southern Africa is coal. When I was there, the coal used was not clean burning coal like used today in our coal fired plants. It was inexpensive coal burned in small stoves. The air in the morning hung heavy with coal saturated smoke and when you were around the small stoves spewing the coal heavy smoke your eyes would water up. You can see why I would be more than hesitant to eat at a place where coal was used for cooking one of my favorite and go to foods – pizza.
Tony Sacco’s quickly put my fears to rest by highlighting their Unique Selling Points. On each table was their promotional collateral. One piece centered on their Unique Selling Points. They quickly put my fear to rest about pizza made in a coal fired oven. They explained that the coal they use was anthracite coal and explained the reason for anthracite coal – a clean burning fuel, that burns at much higher temperature, and allows them to run the oven temperatures at 1,000 degrees. This reduces the baking time of the pizza to about 4 minutes and creates a perfect crust in less time. In the description, they also highlighted how this was the traditional authentic method for cooking pizza.
Finally, they boasted about the quality and the freshness that goes into making the pizza. The sauce, is made from scratch using only the finest, freshest, plum Italian tomatoes, fresh basil and garlic. The use the best mozzarella available and how all water used in the dough is filtered.
After reading their USP, I looked forward to biting into their pizza and found that the pizza did not disappoint.
Their Unique Selling Point worked, because the company recognized the buyers would have the same concern I had. They spoke specifically to that concern and turned it around by articulating how using the type of coal they use results in a perfectly cooked, great tasting crust while reducing the cook time. A reduced cooking time, means I don’t have to wait as long before I can start to enjoy the pizza. Think about families with children, and how that will resonate with them, if they know that their children will not have to wait as long before the food arrives. Finally, the use of fresh ingredients results in a great tasting product. Today, many families that want to get away from eating highly processed food, for them this is a USP that will hit home.
One additional lessons you can learn from Tony Sacco’s
On the table they had a text offer which provides an immediate 15% discount. It baffles me why more companies do not do this. Tony Sacco’s, by having people text for a discount will be able to build out their database of contact cell numbers. Once they have you cell number, they can market to you at any time, with minimal cost. If business is a little slow, they can send out an offer and encourage customers to come in. They can text people at 5:00 PM reminding them to place an order and pick it up on their way home. In our Four Step Marketing System, this is step three – The Marketing Arsenal.
The Takeaways
- Define your Buyer Personas. This should be an important step to help you define a message that will resonate with those buyers you are trying to connect with. More about the Buyer Persona can be found here.
- Define your Unique Selling Points. If you are not familiar with what a Unique Selling Point is you can learn more by visiting our page that describes the Unique Selling Point.
- Make sure your messaging and Unique Selling Points aligns with what your customers are looking for. I you have a Unique Selling Point that your target audience doesn’t care about, then it wont help you with sales.
- Make sure all your marketing and collateral support your Unique Selling Points. This includes your web site. If you have a web site that takes away from the user experience, it will not only reflect poorly on your business and discourage people from visiting it and will adversely affect your search engine rankings.
If you have a business or know of a business that makes use of a great Unique Selling Point we would love to hear from you.
