Know-How Exchange : Advertising/PR

Your Positioning Statement is the Single Most Important Sentence In Your Marketing Arsenal. Your company has a Mission Statement, and maybe a Vision Statement, a Positioning Statement is a one to two sentence statement that conveys what you do for whom, to uniquely solve an urgent need.
Steps to a Winning Positioning and Positioning Statement

Begin by reviewing your company's Mission and Vision Statements and keep these in mind throughout the process. Your positioning statement should bring your vision to life.
Make a list of your audiences and prioritize them.
For each customer type, figure out what their urgent needs are. Don't assume you know what your customers' needs and pains are. Get out and talk to customers to get an in-depth understanding of their wants and their needs. Categorize the customer needs into three categories: Urgent, Important, and Useful.
Make a matrix with the Urgent and Important Needs of customers across the top. Down the side, make a list of key features of your product/service. In each box where there's a match between a customer need and what you offer, jot down how you solve that need.
Make a similar chart for each of your competitors. In addition, gather information from their website, printed materials and other sources, how they are positioning themselves and what their key messages are. Write this all down.
Now you have all the necessary information to identify your distinctive positioning. Using your company's matrix, focus on how you meet the most urgent need, or top two if there's a close second. In solving those needs, what do that is unique compared to the competition? Identify the one most compelling reason for customers to do business with you. It's important to be focused.
Write a sentence that gives you a distinctive advantage, not just presents your value as a superlative claim. Keep honing it until it's clear and feels right. Check it out with some customers for confirmation that it conveys the compelling reason to do business with you.

The Unique Selling Proposition is a marketing concept .It states that such campaigns made unique propositions to the customer and that this convinced them to switch brand.
1. Each advertisement must make a proposition to the customer: "buy this product, and you will get this specific benefit."
2. The proposition itself must be unique - something that competitors do not, or will not, offer.
3. The proposition must be strong enough to pull new customers to the product.

Hi Samia,
The info shghosh gives you is excellent on developing your USP & Position. I think your question was when, how & where do you use them.

Use the position statement in all your marketing. Some companies turn their position statement into a tagline.
"We Try Harder", The Quicker Picker Upper", etc. It tells the customer what to expect from you.

The USP is the 'closer'. Not in the sense of asking for the sale (i.e.) "Lets get you a delivery date." More in the vein of why they would choose you over competitors. It tells them how you are different (unique) and its the wrap up that makes them decide to buy. For example, if you need brain surgery would you go to your family doctor or to a brain surgeon? Brain surgeon of course. What if you find out the brain doctor charges $20,000 more than you expected? What if you discovered the brain doctor had a 0% failure rate. Would you go back to your family doctor? Hopefully not! The brain doctor didn't close on you, her USP did.
Hope this helps,
MajorHal

Hi Samia,
Please elaborate on what you mean by "safer" in your position statement. I can't get a grip on that. Will you treat customers' stuff better than they would? I will try to shorten it up and make it quirky.

If I can ask, why classified ads? In how many newspapers will you advertise?
MajorHal

Samia

Elaborate on safer by doing the "so what" test. Don't people who hire movers expect their stuff to be safe? How is that different than competitors?

Carol
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Samia,
The length of an USP is not critical like a tagline. The idea is to present the problem the customer has, bring it to the forefront of their brain and then show them why you are the solution. An ad can be nothing but the USP as long as it gets business.

For example, Stressed out over your moving day? Let us take the hassle out of your move. We will come and pack your treasured belongings like they are ours. Then gently load, move and unload them when you need them.
All safe, sound and stress free.

If you are going with newspaper ads I recommend you contact a professional ad placer. They can get you a 1/4 page ad for the cost of a classified. That is if you are going to advertise in more than 1 local paper.
Good selling,
MajorHal

Hi Samia,

I like all the above answers and I just wanted to throw in something else I have found very useful for crafting positioning statements. It is from a Harvard Business School paper called Note on Marketing Strategy which I really like.

I literally sit down with a clear piece of paper and fill this in:

_________________ is ______________________
(Our product/brand) (single most important claim)

among all __________________________
(Competitive frame)

because ___________________________________
(single most important support)

Than just write the positioning statement.

Here's one example I worked with several years ago that actually worked well.

(XX Company Name) Ethernet switch is the cheapest most reliable switch in the Level 1 and 2 Ethernet switch market, because it has developed a break through technology that can be built at 1/10 the cost of the competition.

Good luck to you. This stuff is a lot of fun.

Cheers,
Ani Luxner
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Hi, Samia,
RE: the 'so what' test:

The 'so what' test consists of YOU questioning every word or claim in your USP. It's the initial question you ask in an exercise to get past the obvious and non-unique elements. It would go something like this:

[you thinking to yourself]
Hmmm..I've made the claim our moving is safest.
So what? Well, it's safer than moving everything yourself. So what? All moving companies can make that claim. Is it enough to make people call us rather than one of our competitors? What is it about OUR approach to safety that is different or better than theirs, and why would customers care about this difference? etc.

Good luck,
Paul

Right now, your USP statement does NOT pass the 'so what' test because it fails to differentiate you from your competitors.

Your USP must, by definition, be the difference that gives you an advantage over your competitors. What do you do that they do not? Or, what do you do better or differently that confers an advantage to your clients?

Obviously, you must be able to substantiate any such claim. In fact, the evidence of your claim is a powerful part of your marketing materials.

For example, in your instance, you might say something like:

Moving Help - The World's Safest Mover

But only if you can back that up with evidence.

If you don't have something statistical to fight with, do you offer a unique service?

Moving Help - The Only Mover With Iron Box Technology

The other alternative is to make your level of service, dedication, safety, etc. your USP by branding it as something different and special:

Moving Help - The 'Soft Hands' Movers
Only Moving Help offers the 'Soft Hands' guarantee - our movers will use only the best packing materials, safest methods and utmost care in handling your important possessions.

Hope this helps. The main point is that bragging that you are a safer alternative than moving yourself does nothing to separate you from the pack; it is NOT a USP.

~ Ghost Writer ~

Have you ever had a customer that seemed to reject nearly everything that you were presenting? We all have. Our research on the customer's buying decisions has revealed that a customer's resistance may not be caused by what you present. It could be the sequence of your presentation. When asking about When, How and Where you use your USP and Positioning statement, first consider the following.

Our research has shown 76% of sales presentations are out of sync with buying decisions. When making a major purchase decision, your customer goes through a process of the following five sequential decisions.

1. SALESPERSON. Customers decide if they like and can trust you.
2. COMPANY. What is your company's reputation? Is your company a good match for them?
3. PRODUCT. Is your product the right solution for their needs?
4.价格。是your solution competitively priced? Is it a good value?
5. TIME TO BUY. Is now a good time for them to move forward with the purchase?

Customers will find reasons not to buy when your presentation is out of sync with their buying decisions. To increase your chances of success, you must sequence your presentation to follow the decisions of the customer. When you do, you'll sell the customer on each buying decision. This is exactly how professional salespeople orchestrate their sales calls.

While sequencing your presentation with the above Five Buying Decisions, there are Five Critical Sales Skills to use.

Critical Skill #1 – Building the buyer/seller relationship. Salespeople need to develop a better understanding of the buying process that customers actually follow—the real decisions they make, and when they are made. Then salespeople need to match their sales process with the customer’s buying process. When this is done, salespeople begin to walk arm-in-arm with the customer as they arrive at the best possible solution.

Critical Skill #2 – Sales call planning. Most companies today lack a well-defined sales process. Very few have documented the Best Sales Practices that lead to strong commitments from customers. As a consequence, salespeople are not coached on how to plan their sales calls properly. For instance, every call should end in some kind of commitment from the customer—an agreement to do something that will move the process forward. This just isn’t happening.

Critical Skill #3 – Questioning skills. Most salespeople do not ask the right types of questions. And nearly all salespeople fail to ask the best questions. This happens even if they prepare questions prior to the sales call, which most don’t. The impact of poor questioning skills is enormous. It leads to resistance in the form of stalls and objections, bad presentations that offer improper solutions, failure to differentiate from the competition—and missed sales opportunities.

Critical Skill #4 – Presentation skills. Most salespeople claim that this is the skill they are best at. In fact, we as managers tend to hire people who have “the gift of gab.” In reality, quality is far more important than quantity when it comes to making presentations. When salespeople zero in on presenting only specific solutions to previously agreed-upon needs, they rarely fail.

Critical Skill #5 – Gaining commitment. If you really think about it, the only reason to employ salespeople is to gain commitment from customers. Yet, when asked, most salespeople admit that this is their weakest skill. Research bears this out as well: 62% of salespeople fail to ask for commitment on sales calls. Any effective sales training program must have a solid solution for this problem.

We teach salespeople an easy to follow process that utilizes the skills above. It's called Action Selling and it will answer all your sales questions helping you achieve dynamic sales growth and business development.

Thanks for reading. 1-800-232-3485

Hi, Ghost Writer said it well. Whatever statement you make, say after "so what". And as WMMA said, if you were looking at the ad, (or the mirror) ask, why would someone buy from you. I'm safe (so what), another way is to substitute "so you can". I'm safe, so you can....

Then think, opening a phone book, what makes you different (safer maybe) than anyone listed here.

Don't worry about the presentation yet-- you aren't there yet!

Good Luck, Carol
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