A USP, or Unique Selling Point, is a unique attribute of a product, service or company that customers cannot get from any other source. By focusing on USPs, the received wisdom goes, firms can differentiate themselves from competitors and resist ‘commoditisation’, where competing products are effectively equal and customers buy primarily on price. Sugar and oil are commodities; MP3 players are not.

Most markets feature products and providers that are, to some extent, interchangeable: not completely commoditised, but not completely unique either. Each product or provider probably has some unique attribute, but it’s just one of many factors affecting buyers’ choices, along with price, quality, convenience, switching costs and so on.

If uniqueness isn’t the be all and end all for your product or firm, it follows that relying on USPs exclusively doesn’t always make for good copywriting, or good marketing. ‘Unique’ doesn’t necessarily equal ‘good’. In order to sell, your USP needs to meet all three of these criteria:

• Does it translate into a benefit for the customer?
• Is it clear – easy to communicate and understand?
• It is compelling – that is, does it have the power to motivate a switch from a rival product?

The sorts of attributes that might constitute strong USPs are:

• The only product to offer a particular function or benefit (patented devices, secret recipes, proprietary solutions)
• The only supplier to offer a particular range of services or set of skills under one roof (the ‘one stop shop’ argument)
• The only product, service or company of a certain type in a particular location
• The leading or largest company of its type, perhaps in a particular location
• The cheapest product or service of a particular type (but use with great caution: if price isn’t compelling, it won’t work as a USP – plus if you’re undercut, your USP goes down the pan).

Your product may not be unique, but it can still appeal to customers

The recipe for Coca-Cola is a good example of a USP. If you want the taste of Coke, you have to buy Coke. That’s a unique benefit, and one that’s easy to communicate (‘Coke is it’, ‘The real thing’, etc) and compelling for customers. However, there are many ‘generic’ colas that people also like and buy.

Similarly, UK entrepreneur Clive Sinclair understood in the late 1970s that home computers would not become truly popular until they were available at the right price point. By designing a machine (the ZX80) that could retail for under £100, he gave his product an unbeatable USP.

Very few firms have a ‘killer’ USP that can drive their whole marketing effort. But that doesn’t stop them using the USPs they do have, however ill-advisedly. I once worked for a firm that was over 200 years old. This point was much trumpeted in marketing and PR, since it positioned the company as an important part of local history – which, of course, it was. But although being long established is easy to communicate, it offers very little benefit to customers and therefore no reason to switch.

Other companies bend over backwards to achieve a USP just for the sake of it, setting up tiny ponds in which they can be the biggest fish. Don’t fall into this trap. If you have to scratch around for your USP, it’s unlikely to be effective. For example, I could position myself (I think) as ‘the only copywriter in Norwich with both publishing and agency experience’, but my clients couldn’t care less about that. ‘Experience, professional, reliable’ is clearer, more compelling and offers more benefit, even though it’s pretty generic and far from unique.

So what should you do if you haven’t got a strong USP? It comes back to the three points above:

• Communicate benefits. Work out (or ask!) what customers really value about what you do, and build your marketing around that. Don’t worry if it’s not unique – very few companies have a genuinely unique offer.
• Make it clear. Just clearly and simply convey the value you offer. So much marketing falls at the first fence by trying too hard to be unique – or different, clever, quirky, whatever – and neglecting the audience in the process. Why not stand out with some straight-talking copy, strong branding and elegant design?
• Compel the audience. Give people a reason to switch to you with a special offer, fixed-price package, free consultation or some other variation on the standard offering in your market. 

Not being unique isn’t necessarily a barrier to success, but failing to connect with your audience certainly is.

The principle of social proof states that people follow the lead of others who are similar to them. They look to those around them for cues on how to behave, with peers giving the most powerful cues.

The most famous examples of social proof in copywriting are headlines along the lines of ‘Ten million housewives can’t be wrong’, which position a product as the preferred choice of the majority – and therefore of the reader too. It is, of course, a non sequitur – the argumentum ad populum (‘appeal to the people’) that suggests that if lots of people believe something, it must be so.

The King deploys the argumentum ad populum on the cover of his 1959 hits compilation

A classic and much-used example is selling a product on the basis of its being the number-one seller, or promoting a company on the basis of its being the leader. The saying ‘nobody got fired for buying IBM’ encapsulates the appeal of going with the majority.

Social proof can have quite a powerful emotional sting. Recently, a door-to-door canvasser for the RSPCA told me that ‘lots of people’ in my ‘animal-loving neighbourhood’ had signed up for regular donations. The inference being that if I didn’t, I’d be some kind of animal-hating outcast. 

In the examples above, the copywriter is actually imparting the information to support their position. But in the age of Web 2.0, the consumer is much more likely to go out and find such information for themselves. If customers want to know the views of their peers, they don’t have to look much further than Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, the iTunes store or any of the myriad other channels where consumers share views and information. As a result, marketing messages have less authority and may simply be disregarded. 

However, there’s still room for copywriting based on social proof. Think about where your customers look for advice or guidance, and how you can emulate the tone or nature of that content. Testimonials and case studies are enduringly powerful, particularly in B2B marketing, and they allow the copywriter to shape, edit or subtly direct what is said so that it highlights the benefits of a product or service. In B2C marketing, there’s a clear trend towards using real or mock-real figures in TV advertising and elsewhere, or documentary styles, to give a sense that the reader or viewer is directly accessing the views of their peers.

As long as the information feels trustworthy, the audience will still respond – remember, many people actively desire the reassurance of running with the majority, so as long as your message is consistent and clear, it’s got a good chance of succeeding.

Whatever branding, design or marketing channels you use to market your business, it’s essential that your copywriting communicates benefits: the good things that your product or service does (or promises to do) for your customers.

The first and foremost benefit of a product or service is meeting a need. Don’t underestimate the power of stating this to a reader. It’s particularly important online, where people are impatiently searching and seeking to confirm that they’ve found the right thing. If your product solves a problem, make sure people know it.

Then we come to ‘hard’, concrete benefits. These usually boil down to one of three things: save time, save money or (for businesses) make money. They have tangible effects that can be measured – they’re bigger, faster or cheaper. A kettle that boils water faster than competing products offers this type of quantifiable benefit.

However, people are also interested in ‘softer’ emotional benefits such as convenience, fun, style, fashion or the sense of having made a sound buying choice. For example, when you buy jeans or trainers, you’re looking for more than the optimum cost-benefit ratio – you want to buy into a brand that feels cool and appropriate for your age and style.

Fred Perry offers customers benefits including product quality, cultural resonance and fashionability

‘Quality’ might appear in both lists, since its definition is so fluid. For example, it might apply to something as concrete as ‘build quality’ in engineering – the durability, tolerance and precision of the components used to make something. But in more subjective areas of judgement, such as graphic design, one person’s concept of ‘quality’ may be very far from another’s, and affected by a range of personal or cultural factors.

We might say, broadly, that ‘hard’ benefits are more important in business-to-business (B2B) marketing, while ‘soft’ benefits appeal to the consumer (B2C). But even if you’re marketing to a business, the buying decision will always be taken by a human. And that human has emotions. So if you know who they are (either as a specific individual, or in terms of their likely profile) you can appeal to those emotions. The need to feel that the right decision has been made is particularly strong in B2B buyers – hence the saying ‘no-one got fired for buying IBM’.

You may have heard of the marketing formula AIDA, which stands for ‘attention, interest, desire, action’. These are the four stages through which a piece of marketing should (supposedly) guide its audience en route to a sale. If we look at it again, we can see that benefits are behind every one. Simple, strong benefits in a headline or slogan attract attention, while interest is generated by adding more detail. Desire is aroused when benefits are made real in the reader’s mind, and action is elicited by giving a persuasive push to the promise of a benefit.

Whatever thought structure you use, the end result needs to be copywriting that speaks directly to your customers’ needs, desires and hopes by offering something of benefit to them. If it doesn’t, it won’t bring much benefit to you.

Once political parties have been in opposition for a while, they inevitably start campaigning on a ‘change’ agenda, almost regardless of policy. It appeals to our instinct for balance. Things have gone too far; they must be brought back into equilibrium. In the last US election, this was exploited by Barack Obama with his ‘Change we need’ and ‘Change we can believe in’ slogans.

Obama and Bush both know how to exploit our instinct to balance things out

This instinct is a double-edged sword for marketers. On the downside, it can lead to losing business if your customer decides they want a change. During my stints at a contract publisher and a design agency, we often found that long-standing, apparently satisfied clients would suddenly switch to another supplier ‘for no reason’. Of course, there was a reason: they fancied something new and different, and there was nothing we could do about it.

For B2B service providers, this is a very real hazard. First you identify what works (or what the client likes). Then you repeat it, refining your approach and maybe delivering economies of scale. But then, after a while, you come to be seen as staid, uncreative or inflexible. You’re their best friend, but they’re looking for a bit of romance. So you’re left weeping softly while they ride off into the sunset with a dashing new supplier.

But the same thing works for you if you’re drumming up business. The marketing copywriter can provoke, cultivate and exploit the customer’s restlessness simply by positioning a product or service as an alternative to something: the customer’s current choice, the default option or the market leader.

In NLP this is called ‘contrast reframing’: asking the question ‘what if things were different?’ or ‘how could they be different?’Your product (you say) is great; theirs (you imply) is dull, outmoded or inferior. Simply by offering an alternative to what has become familiar, you can generate interest in the reader’s mind.

For example:

Ordinary kitchen roll is great for little spills. But Soakitup is completely different. It effortlessly mops away just about anything, from juice and wine through to sticky stuff like oils, sauces and even ink – without leaving a stain!

The alternative you offer needn’t even be better, just different. Many people will still respond sympathetically, as George W. Bush knew when he suggested that US students should ‘hear both sides’of the science v intelligent design debate. The urge for balance can be stronger than reason.

A pitfall of writing ad copy is to try and grab attention. The idea is that once people are attracted or intrigued, they’ll read the rest of the message and buy the product.

Unfortunately, this just isn’t the case. If it was, we’d all be buying random goods against our will because we’d seen them advertised on buses or the internet, emerging later from our trance with yet another unwanted pair of shoes.

If we’re honest, we all know from our own experience that momentary distraction doesn’t translate into a purchase. But somehow, when it comes to writing our marketing materials, wishful thinking or delusion sets in and we fall into the trap of trying to get attention.

Not really anything to do with clothes

A few months ago I walked past a clothes shop, outside which was a model skeleton sitting at a table and a sign saying ‘clothes to die for’. It raises a smile, which is nice, but would it actually make you want to buy clothes? The slogan links the skeleton and the clothes, but only through a play on words; there is no real connection. So it functions as an attention-grabber, but nothing more.

What really draws the reader in? In a word, benefits: the good things that will happen as a result of buying what you’re selling. Even something as lame as ‘look hot this summer’ would be better than the skeleton, because it communicates a benefit, however generic.

A product as sensually rich as clothes will sell itself – the product should have been out on the street in place of the skeleton. But it’s tougher when your subject can’t be touched or even seen – because it’s a service, for example. Many print ads for B2B services get stuck at this point. Feeling that they should include some kind of visual content, the advertisers lose the plot completely, opting for jokey, obscure or downright irrelevant picture/headline combinations that say nothing about what’s being sold.

It would be far better for them to choose a headline that communicates a key benefit and use images purely as illustration or decoration – if at all. A strong benefit, simply expressed, will always sell better than an attention-grabbing stunt. It might not be arresting, but it will attract the right kind of readers – those who are interested in buying. 

It may also be worth considering a simple positioning statement – ‘IT support services’ or ‘Facilities management’ at the top/beginning of the ad. This orients the reader and tells them what the ad’s about, while freeing you up from having to use such clunky language in your main headline.

Rather than trying to ‘convert’ readers, remember you can only sell to people who are interested. There’s no point grabbing irrelevant attention that can’t be converted into sales. If you believe that willing customers are out there, your task is simply to reach them with the right message.

Does your marketing sell? When did you last ask the question?

Sometimes, those involved in marketing campaigns (both buyers and providers) get lost in a sort of creative love-in, congratulating themselves on a great job and forgetting the core aim.

It’s only natural – it’s great to feel like an expert. But there’s no harm in throwing in some really basic, almost stupid questions, such as ‘why will this ad touch customers?’, ‘why will it sell?’ or even ‘why are we doing this?’

In reality, this rarely happens in the modern business setting

You should ask these simple questions whether you’re working with a major agency or a freelance copywriter. Don’t worry about looking stupid. It’s better to look stupid in the meeting room, when you’re appraising your new ad campaign, than in the CEO’s office when the sales figures come in.

Or maybe it’s not about sales. A very distinguished professor of marketing once told me that the success of marketing should never be measured by looking at sales. He was making the point that marketing’s most direct results are increases in brand recognition, goodwill and so on, which only indirectly affect sales (along with a host of other factors).

Nevertheless, revenue will probably be the key indicator of marketing success for most businesses, but you may also need to look at enquiries received, website registrations, average order value, market share, brand recognition and so on. And whatever you’re aiming for, your marketing needs to be oriented towards the goal.

You may be aiming for something that isn’t measurable. Scott Monty, Ford’s new Head of Social Media, noted that ‘Ford isn’t on Twitter and Facebook to sell cars’. They are, of course, but they’re doing it by building up their public profile, which indirectly leads to more sales but is hard to measure in itself. Maybe your marketing also has goals that can only be measured subjectively – just make sure you go into the campaign with your eyes open, knowing what you want and how you’ll know when you’ve got it.

This is particularly important in areas such as social media, where the current buzz can hustle you into doing something for its own sake. There should always be a reason. So fire off those ‘stupid’ questions and make sure your marketing is doing something that needs to be done.

It’s important to focus on benefits in copywriting – the good things that will happen for customers as a result of using the product or service in question. Another way to think about this is in terms of where the copy is focused: on the company, the product, or the customer.

Imagine a conversation between the company and the customer. They are talking over a table, and on the table is the product being sold. It’s a fairly one-sided conversation – the company is doing the talking, and the customer is listening. When the company has finished talking, the customer will decide whether or not to buy. This is what happens when customer encounters marketing copy.

Now imagine a line stretching from the company through the product and on to the customer. This is shown below (apologies for the terrible, terrible icons):

The self-sell continuum, from company to customer

• Purely selfish copy is all about the company: how long it’s been trading, who runs it, where it’s located, its principles and vision. Unless these points can be translated into benefits (a particular location, for example, could help customers access the product) they’ve got no place in marketing copy. This is the stuff that goes in ‘About us’ on websites, so people can easily avoid it. Some company facts do constitute indirect reasons to buy – being a market leader, for example, is compelling – but most don’t.
• Slightly less selfish is stuff on the business/product boundary – how a product was developed, the thinking behind it and so on. This might add some value, but it’s background at best.
• Material on the product itself is good, but remember that a straightforward factual description will only sell to those who are already very clear about what they want and why. However, this content is ready to be re-expressed as customer benefits in order to sell harder.
• Copy about the interface between product and customer concerns how the product can be bought, how and when it’s used, what it does and so on. This is where customer benefits begin to enter the picture, particularly if the text explains why the various attribute are good.
• Finally, and most powerfully, we come to copy that focuses purely on the customer. This content starts with customer concerns and goes on to explain how the product will help them, in words they’ll understand. Effective copywriting spends most of its time here.

Companies who produce their own copy often start with themselves and the product. That’s perfectly understandable for people who are closely involved, but it highlights the importance of getting a fresh perspective on the text. As a newcomer and an outsider, the copywriter’s job is to move the emphasis to the customer by (politely) asking questions such as:

• How does that help me as a customer?
• How does that affect my decision to buy, or not to buy?
• As a potential customer, why should I be interested?

Any points that are too company- or product-focused should be recast in terms of things the customer wants, or failing that deleted. The end result should be text that talks directly to the customer’s own priorities, linking them clearly to the product. To confirm that this is so, compare the number of times you’ve said ‘you’ as opposed to ‘we’ or ‘us’. There should be at least twice as many mentions of the customer as of the company.

Marketing may be a one-way communication, but as with any other conversation, acknowledging the other person’s point of view is more likely to get positive results.

It is not daily increase but daily decrease; hack away the unessential… the height of cultivation always runs to simplicity. (Attributed to Bruce Lee)

Writing is hard. But cutting is harder. When you’ve sweated for hours – or days – to get your thoughts down on paper, the pain of deleting your precious words again can be intense. But it’s also essential.

What is the ideal length for a piece of copy? My suggestion would be ‘shorter than you think’, particularly if you know the subject well or it’s close to your heart. Whatever you’re working on – report, news article, marketing text, ad headline – there’s nearly always scope to cut without harming the message. And it’s nearly always the right move too: people rarely complain that things are too short. The key is to consider what the audience really needs to hear, as opposed to what you really want to say.

Bruce Lee had a lot to teach the copywriter

Interface Designer Mike Kuniavsky proposes six rules for web design, including ‘people hate to read’ and ‘people hate to scroll’. Although the web is essentially a text medium, it’s delivered through a format that’s hopeless for reading – a screen. We all know from our own experience how we really use the web – clicking and scrolling around at high speed, flitting between sites almost at random, only reading when we absolutely have to. So make sure you write online copy that suits these habits: make it as short as you possibly can.

Because it’s emotionally difficult to destroy your own text, I recommend saving a working version before you cut, or pasting bits you’ve cut into another document. That way you can go back to earlier versions or cut fragments later. You never will, but the backup gives you the courage to make bold cuts.

If in doubt, cut it out. Does the text still work? If the answer’s ‘yes’, you’ve got your new version.

If you’re working on something very short, like a company tagline, it’s a question of chipping away at the words until nothing further can be removed. For example, here are the last few iterations of the phrase I eventually chose to promote my own one-man company, ABC:

1. Is your message getting through to the people who matter most to your business?
2. Are you getting through to the people who matter most to your business?
3. Are you reaching the people who matter most to your business?
4. Are you reaching the people who matter most?
5. Are you reaching those who matter most?

The last few steps took several days of intermittent effort. It’s easy to turn out loads of words – it may seem counterintuitive, but shorter takes longer.

Getting the perfect phrasing is as much to do with subconscious thought as conscious effort. Often, a night’s sleep or a day away from the keyboard will allow the right solution to emerge, appearing in your mind or your notepad like it’s been there all along. And, in a way, it has – you just needed to ‘hack away the inessential’.

Your words, like your shoes, can be formal or informal - consider the impression you want to give

At university, I would sometimes help friends with their essay writing, partly because I could type and I had a typewriter (remember them?) and partly because I could write. I never had any problem getting my own ideas down on paper, although the ideas themselves were nothing special, as evidenced by my average degree. But for many of the people I knew, translating thoughts into written words was a huge challenge.

I’d often ask them to explain what they meant, and they’d reply with a perfectly clear summary of their thoughts. Then I’d suggest that they simply wrote down what they’d just said. And they would look at me blankly, or start laughing.

They were falling into the formality trap – the tendency to use jargon, long words and complex sentence construction out of a sense that the occasion demands it. Under pressure to perform, it’s tempting to reach for a tone that sounds ‘authoritative’ or ‘businesslike’. But if you’re not careful, you just end up confusing the audience – and perhaps yourself.

Do not boil or overheat as this will impair the flavour

They’ve gone now, but these words once appeared regularly on the soup tins of my youth. The usefulness of this copy depended on the reader understanding the word ‘impair’. Personally, I think that’s a big ask for the average Fine Fare customer. And why use the obscure ‘impair’ when you can use the everyday ‘spoil’? Presumably because it’s less impressive, too conversational. But who cares when there’s a risk of the customer ruining the product wrongly through wrong preparation, and never buying it again as a result?

Please enter the amount required as a multiple of £20

Once, a woman approached me near a cashpoint and asked me why she couldn’t withdraw £10. The screen was displaying these words, but the word ‘multiple’ didn’t mean a lot to her – quite understandably. Messages like this have now been replaced with something more like ‘This machine contains only £20 notes’, which is essentially what I said to explain the situation.

Often, the use of formal language is simply unthinking. The writer hasn’t stopped to consider what the audience needs. But it can also be a symptom of a kind of organisational insecurity or defensiveness – there’s a need or obligation to communicate, but a psychological incentive to stop people understanding. This is one of the key ways in which different types of work are turned into ‘professions’ – the practitioners develop a private language, or jargon, known only to them. Language is a curtain that stops outsiders seeing how the organisation works.

I recently received a letter from our local council informing me of a planning application for the ‘erection of single-storey self-contained dwelling unit’. I think this means that someone wants to build a ground-floor flat, but I can’t be sure. The effect of the language, deliberately or not, is to discourage involvement in the planning process – in theory, a social space.

The lesson for the copywriter? Use the simplest language that you can. That means short, commonly used words and short, simple sentences.