Your USP

I ended an earlier post with a quick description of USP, or Unique Selling Proposition, and I want to explain the details and why they matter for you.

Wikipedia says that a USP “is a marketing concept that was first proposed as a theory to explain a pattern among successful advertising campaigns of the early 1940s. It states that such campaigns made unique propositions to the customer and that this convinced them to switch brands. The term was invented by Rosser Reeves of Ted Bates & Company.”

Based on that definition, a USP is an actual statement or statements that will encourage customers to switch to you!

Unique

I’m a big fan of USPs for musicians because of this word. Understanding and working with your uniqueness is central to building a successful career. Two points to remember:

1. Your music is not what makes you unique, at least not by itself. What makes you unique is the combination of your music and what I call “the personally invested artist you are.” In other words, the whole package.
2. Your degree of success will be directly related to your ability to connect with fans/customers as “the personally invested artist you are.” Simply put, they can find talented musicians anywhere and everywhere, but they can’t find YOU!

Make sure EVERYTHING you do communicates not only what you do, but who you are. Which brings us to:

Selling

Yes, you want to sell yourself but remember that what you really want to do is market yourself. If you do that well, sales will happen.

Proposition

More from the Wikipedia entry:

In Reality in Advertising, Reeves gives a precise definition in three parts:

1. Each advertisement must make a proposition to the consumer. Not just words, not just product puffery, not just show-window advertising. Each advertisement must say to each reader: “Buy this product, and you will get this specific benefit.”
2. The proposition must be one that the competition either cannot, or does not, offer. It must be unique—either a uniqueness of the brand or a claim not otherwise made in that particular field of advertising.
3. The proposition must be so strong that it can move the mass millions, i.e., pull over new customers to your product.

I encourage you to think about your USP. Get a piece of paper and sketch out thoughts, connections and ideas. Say them outloud and hear how they sound. I’ll cover what to do with your USP in an upcoming post. For now, I’d be interested in seeing what you’ve come up with in the comments.

So what’s your USP?