Let’s compare the importance of USPs (Unique Selling Point) to something we are ALL familiar with. A box of chocolates! What is similar between all these individual chocolates? Well, they are chocolate, they are edible, and they all look the same.
How do we differentiate them without becoming the person that takes half a bite and places it back in the box? Usually, we do this from the lovely little leaflet you get, explaining the USPs and characteristics of each choccie. That USP is a simple description of what makes an individual chocolate different to the rest.
Identifying Your USPs
Moving on from chocolate (unfortunately), how do we identify your company’s USPs amongst an ocean of other companies trying to win the same business? Here are some simple steps to get the ball rolling:
- Who is your target audience?
- What service/product do you offer that others do not?
- What makes you qualified?
- What processes do you take?
- What key points differentiate you from the crowd?
Once you have garnered this information, it will be a great foundation for developing what your companies USPs are and being able to share this with you audience. This will enable your customers or clients to immediately know what you offer and what distinguishes you and makes you better than your competitors.
If your company is part of an extremely competitive market, your chosen USPs will make or break the overall success and to ensure it’s the former, you need to make sure the USP is the cornerstone of your overall Pay-Per-Click (PPC) strategy.
PPC (Pay-Per-Click) Strategy
Entwining the USPs within your PPC strategy is vital for a successful campaign. You need to go back to the basics of marketing. Even more so than other online marketing strategies. The most important step is to re-examine the product/service through fresh eyes and determine its benefits, features and unique selling points and make these are clear and obvious at first site within your PPC advertisements. Having a clear understanding of your USP will enable you to write enticing ad copy for your PPC advertisements.
Now let’s take a look at how you can play on your USPs through each individual aspect of a PPC advertisement. For more on the basics of PPC in general, check out this previous blog.
Headline One
This is a 30-character section which is essentially the title of your advertisement. To ensure you stand out against other competitors that are bidding on the same keywords, and maintain relevancy to potential customers, your Headline One should mirror the keyword category of the assigned Ad Group. As well as sustaining relevancy, this will also encourage a high Quality-Score which is an important aspect of bettering your position on a search engine results page (SERP).
Headline Two
The rule of thumb when writing your PPC ad copy is to always assign your USP to Headline Two. This is a prominent 30-character section of your ad that ensures your USP is kept short, snappy and highlighted. This Headline Two can be moulded to each Ad Group to ensure your USP is relevant to the traffic you are targeting through your keywords, essentially ensuring your USP is keyword rich and focused.
Description
When you move on to writing your ad copy description, which is an 80-character section of your advertisement, avoid ranting about the product/service features. Instead emphasise the benefits of using your product/service as this will place greater value in the emotional payoff and will appeal to your visitor’s desire to solve their problem or pain point.
Call Out Extensions
This is an added way to jam all the diamonds and gems you offer into a single PPC advertisement. A call out extension is essentially a place to include added USP’s, each being 25-characters long. Personally I would advise on including just three call outs, as again, we don’t want to rant. But using this extension is a great way to include extra information that you believe will encourage your service or product to stand out.
So, USPs are like a box of chocolates. You wouldn’t want to try and sell a Strawberry Cream to someone who wanted a Toffee Crunch – so tell them what it is you’re selling and why it’s better than the rest. Always remember to lead with the benefits for them as well – no one is interested in your fancy manufacturing process, they want to know if the chocolate tastes better!
