Perry Marshall - USP Breakthrough
You Can Continue to
Overpay For Clicks, Slog It Out In Brutal Commodity Markets, Dicker with
Customers Over Price and Delivery, Lose Orders to Competitors and Fall
Further Behind in the Rat Race.
But You Don’t Have To Do That Anymore.
Here’s Why…
Dear Online Marketing Professional:
When I was a young pup, soon after I discovered the crack cocaine of
direct marketing, I had high hopes that killer advertising techniques
would transform my dismal Network Marketing career into success.
If I could just write a few great ads, all I’d have to do was stick
money in the marketing gumball machine and get new customers out. Watch
out world, you’re about to start comin’ my way.
One of my many experiments was: “Let me find some retail customers
who will just buy this stuff every month and use it.” I sat down started
writing an ad.
I forget what product it was for, some kind of household item I
think, but I sat there for hours trying to write an ad that was
interesting.
Couldn’t manage to do it. Nothing I came up with seemed to have any pizzazz.
Eventually I did turn out a sales letter. It got what I thought to be a dismal response, 1%.
I sent it in to one of my mentors for critique. He said, “Nobody’s
lying awake at night worrying about any problem that this product
solves. Considering that, Perry, your 1% is pretty respectable.”
Fast forward 15 years and you’ve described the EXACT problem that
most online businesses have on Google: You can’t write an exciting ad
about a boring product. It’s just not possible unless you LIE.
The symptom of a boring product is, you spend hours trying to think
of something interesting to say and you can’t come up with anything.
My products at the time belonged to somebody else, a big dumb
company. Me-too products, not all that different from anything at the
grocery store. Because they weren’t mine, I had no power to make them
more exciting.
I switched on my brain and started watching for something better, something more interesting that I could sell.
At the time I was working at a high-tech company. Fast forward a few
months, and even though we were small and struggling; even though some
of our products were from other companies, we still had cool stuff of
our own. I decided to start a training course called DeviceNet Boot Camp
which was unlike anything else that anyone had ever offered in our
marketplace.
One night at about 11pm I sat down to write a sales letter. To my
surprise, that mailer almost wrote itself. We were offering about a
dozen advantages that this market had never seen before, all worthwhile,
all interesting. All I had to do was tell the story.
By 3am that night, that sales letter was smokin’!
We printed it. Every time we mailed out that letter, we got $8 in registrations for every $1 we spent on postage.
That particular product only added maybe 5-10% to our sales. It
didn’t carry the entire success of our company. However… it did
radically reposition us and gave us huge visibility. A major trade
organization private labeled our course and sold it to their members.
Most importantly, I discovered something that I have never, ever forgotten:
When you have a great Unique Selling Proposition, or USP, your ads
almost write themselves. Your messages slice through huge amounts of
clutter in the marketplace. You solve the “Me Too” problem in your war
against competitors.
In MLM, I had no control of the product I was selling. I was living
in a prison of my own making, believing that I needed somebody else’s
Big Idea to make me successful.
The second time around was different. I didn’t own the company and
had very few assets to work with. But with some creativity and
resourcefulness, and a little cooperation from another company we knew,
I could create a great USP.
Most Planet Perry customers are very much like I was then. You only
have so much to work with, you don’t have lotsa cash to throw around,
but you have flexibility and you do have ideas. In all likelihood you
have more control of your destiny than I had in my Dilbert Cube job.
You probably do own your product, service, consulting firm, or intellectual property. If not all, at least part.
You also have the ability to easily source things from other people –
in fact the world may even be banging down your door trying to get you
to sell their stuff to your audience. And…. odds are, your products DO
solve a problem that somebody is lying awake at night trying to solve. I
bet they’re more interesting than what I was trying to sell in MLM.
Odds are 10 to 1 that what you really lack is simply a great USP.
It’s not that you sell the wrong product (though it might need to be
changed a little bit). It’s not that you’re selling to the wrong people –
you might already be knocking on all the right doors.
And the problem isn’t you. You’re just as good as anybody else who’s trying to sell to your customers, believe me.
No, the problem is that people do not understand the unique and
special way that YOUR company is going to help them rest peacefully at
night.
Is Your Current USP Flaccid?
10 Warning Signs of an Impotent Sales Story:
Flaccid USP Warning Sign #1. You pile on new features, freebies, and customers respond with more dissatisfaction.
I had a customer who consulted in the transportation industry, helping
companies with safety violations become compliant before the government
came and slapped them with fines.
My customer, Dave, was extremely frustrated because even though 95%
of his prospects clearly and demonstrably were in peril of paying steep
fines, he struggled to get anyone to pay attention. He and his wife
would somehow manage to get a few $1,000 to $2,000 gigs every month and
pay their bills. But maddeningly, the harder he bent over backwards
offering them fixes and advice, the more they would pedal away from him.
He came to a 4-Man Intensive in a last act of desperation.
After about an hour, I saw that he already had a great USP, a great sales story, and huge potential.
It was just BURIED. Nobody really understood why they needed to buy from him.
He couldn’t see the forest for the trees. He didn’t quite know how to
express it. And the harder he tried to tell them about the nuances of
his product offering and the extent of his knowledge, the worse it got.
I asked to see his sales pages. He had a FAX he’d been sending out and I looked it over. “You mind if I fix this?”
“Go right ahead,” he replied.
I re-wrote his fax. His old one had been about the laws companies
were violating and how he was going to work to get them back into
compliance. The new one got straight to the point. Just to give you an
idea, here’s the part we added at the end:
P.S.:
The worst possible outcome is if someone gets killed in an accident. If
that happens and your machine shouldn’t have been operational, you go
to prison. Blackburn Correctional Complex. Right beside Interstate 64.
Ever been by there? You can spend up to 3 years behind bars. You see the
highway from a brand new perspective.
To
date, the hammer has dropped on three operators. Kentucky is prosecuting
companies under Section 35. They’re looking for their next victim. Is
it you?
Dave blasted the fax.
15 minutes later, his wife Melissa calls him. She is MAD AS A HORNET.
Why? Cuz the phone is ringing off the hook and prospective customers
furious. They wanna know why they got this terrifying fax, what she
knows that they don’t.
Dave talks her off the ledge. We give her step by step instructions
on how to handle these calls, and convert them into consultations.
Fast forward a few hours. It’s dinner time and we’re driving to the
restaurant. Dave gets a phone call from Melissa. She informs him that
they got a phone call from the Safety Commission in Kentucky, stating
that they received complaints and will be conducting a thorough
investigation of his consulting firm.
Dave’s face is white as a sheet, like he’s tumbled out of an airplane
without a parachute. He desperately needs brown pants because he looks
like he’s going to soil his jeans.
(And I have to admit, I’m wondering if maybe I’ve finally pushed things too far this time.)
Next morning, I give Dave instructions: “I want you to call Jeff
Cramer’s office at the Safety Commission and request a personal
appointment with him, right now.”
He’s never talked to this guy, but he leaves the room and complies.
Gets on the phone, talks to the guy. Everything’s OK for now, nobody’s
in big trouble. Jeff does warn him to never scare people like this
again. (By the way, everything in that fax was true.)
The morning of Day 2, a paying client signs up with Melissa for a hefty sum of money, funding the whole expedition.
A week later, he meets with Jeff. Jeff has been overwhelmed with
educating manufacturers about the rules, so the state of Kentucky begins
sending Dave clients.
With this new cooperation from the state of Kentucky, Dave’s business has been BOOMING ever since. His marketing problems are
over. Now he’s trying to deal with the volume of new customers.
You might think this was the work of a clever copywriter. To a degree it is of course, but that’s not what
really happened. What I really did was simply uncover his true USP.
From that point forward, even an amateur copywriter could pull it off, no problem.
Dave’s USP was there all along. Literally from day one. He just
couldn’t see it. And the harder he tried to add better salesmanship to
what he thought his USP was, the deeper he dug the hole he was in.
Once we uncovered it and strengthened it with appropriate guarantees
and conditions, he ceased to have a sales problem. In fact the state of
Kentucky began to send him customers so they wouldn’t have to start
putting people in jail.
His marketing problems went away. Now Dave had a capacity problem.
Flaccid USP Warning Sign #2: Customers can buy what you sell by the pound and know how much things “should” cost. This is
deadly. The world is swirling around the commoditization drain.
If
any person can reasonably and accurately compare what you sell to
offerings on Amazon (for physical products or information products) or
Fiverr (for services), you are a dead man walking.
The Amazon Problem: People can buy Kindle books all day long for
$9.99, sometimes 99 cents and occasionally free. If they can buy yours,
and that’s the end of the line, this is
bad bad bad. If they
can search a bunch of products and yours comes up and they can directly
compare yours to others, read the reviews and “neatly categorize” you,
then your throat is getting sliced as we speak.
The Fiverr Problem: Fiverr is a place where people do stuff for you
for five bucks. If you’re a buyer, it’s fantastic – it’s unbelievable
what you can get done, by competent professionals, for the price of one
latte. Just in the last 2 months, I’ve had people successfully research
conference rooms and furniture purchases; I’ve found people who did
transcriptions, graphic design, found obscure research papers on botany,
all for five bucks.
One lady I hired was a linguistics professor, an outstanding
professional who gave me extensive comments and corrections on an
important document I was writing, just by ordering multiple gigs. All of
this was CHEAP.
Great for me. But… if you’re on the receiving end of the five bucks,
Fiverr is the world’s hot new sweat shop for knowledge workers. A 21st
century Brave New World nightmare.
Can you go on Fiverr and find someone doing almost the same thing you
do, for five bucks? Are you swirling down the Fiverr drain? If you can,
then don’t say you haven’t been warned.
THE one-word solution to this problem is:
USP.
USP is when you have a truly great answer to these questions:
Why should I read or listen to you?
Why should I believe what you have to say?
Why should I do anything about what you’re offering?
Why should I act now?
What can you guarantee me that nobody else can?
When you don’t have good answers to these questions, your ads are
hard to write, your clicks are expensive, and you’re swirling down the
Amazon/Fiverr drain.
When you don’t have good answers to these questions, your ads are
hard to write, your clicks are expensive, and you’re swirling down the
Amazon/Fiverr drain.
When you have great answers to these questions, your ads are easy to
write, your traffic cost is cut in half, and you can even source your
parts and labor from Fiverr and Amazon and still make great margins.
Which way do you want it?
In
2014
, Will You Be a USP King
or a
Fiverr Slave?
In the 21st century, you will be proving your
abilities for five bucks and hoping the person turns into a client. Or
you’ll be the USP Alchemist and King, the one who doles out $5 jobs to
eager supplicants.
You get to decide right now: Which one are you going to be?
If you haven’t decisively chosen to be the alchemist, your decision is already made.
Flaccid USP Warning Sign #3: Your customer is more in control of the transaction that you are – they demand terms, concessions, price and delivery.
Do people call you up or email you and say, “I want this list of
products, these services, these delivery dates and this list of quality
assurances, and X is what I’ll pay” ? If so, that’s more nails in the
coffin cuz it ain’t going to get any better.
The Internet is a serial killer – you never know who it’s going to
take out next. If mass availability of information or connections makes
you redundant, then your only savior is a killer USP.
Look at the price of ebooks over the last 10 years. In 2003-2005 it
was commonplace for authors to get $29 to $99 for a reputable ebook on a
good topic. It’s become rare to command such prices today, as Kindle
books have chewed up the margins and spit them out.
People walk into retail stores with iPhone apps that do instant price
comparisons, based on UPC symbols and barcodes. Insiders call this
“showrooming” – where physical stores only serve the purpose of
demonstrating the product to online buyers. Young adults under 30 think
nothing of going into an electronics store, spending an hour looking at
all the LCD televisions, sampling the wares at the generous local
owner’s expense, then buying it online (with in-home delivery) for
nineteen bucks of savings.
That’s mass commoditization, baby. First the manufacturing jobs went overseas, then the retail service jobs got plundered by iPhone apps.
It’s GREAT if you’re a consumer.
It sucks when you’re the producer.
Doing five dollar tasks on your computer may be more humane than
dragging cement blocks over stone rollers to build the Egyptian
pyramids, but it’s still brutal and merciless.
Despite all this, the well of human desires is still bottomless.
No sooner do they can buy the LCD television at the lowest possible
price, than they want something they CANNOT get at Best Buy or on
Amazon. Humans
always want something else, and you can easily be the person they buy it from –
but it’s gotta be unique.
It is absolutely impossible for Amazon or anyone else to erase the
unmet needs that lurk in the hearts and minds of your customers. New
opportunities are eternally there. You just have to know how to find
them and position them.
Flaccid USP Warning Sign #4: When it’s almost impossible for you to rank on the 1st page of Google AdWords.
The #1 problem facing small advertisers is,
big dumb money from big dumb companies. They drive the bids up and up and up.
It’s actually a mistake to think of them as “big and dumb” because
they are, after all, bigger than you. But the point is, it’s not that
their products are better. It’s just that they have deeper pockets and
can spend more money than you.
They can afford waste. You can’t.
A killer USP cuts through the clutter like a diamond-tipped saw blade. But if you don’t have it, forget it.
Flaccid USP Warning Sign #5: You’re constantly in head-to-head battles with competitors. You know who they are, they know who you are, and every major customer chooses either you or them. You’re always keeping score.
When I created DeviceNet Boot Camp, my company was in a dogfight with
a firm called SST. They were larger and prouder, and had a 2-year head
start in the marketplace.
Then we rolled out DeviceNet Boot Camp. They could have done it too,
they had more staff and equipment than we had… but we were first. They
didn’t see it coming. Then when the trade organization licensed our
class… they were HACKED OFF. They threw a fit.
But there was nothing they could do about it, and we walked all over
them. Then we rolled this into back end offers and co-sponsorship
opportunities with other companies.
We sharpened our other USPs, too. We focused on machine builders in
places like Detroit and Silicon Valley, where our product had a decisive
advantage over theirs in a non-obvious area. Three years later we had
rolled that same advantage into a chip, which itself was a brand new,
category-breaker USP. We sold our company for $18 million.
Much of the time, you create a better USP by taking what you already have and take for granted and putting it together in a new, exciting way.
The other way we do that is by completely redefining what problem
you’re trying to solve, and positioning the product as though it never
existed before.
Often this requires little or no modification to the original product – just a change in your
messaging.
Many times different groups of people will now be buying the same
product from you for very different reasons, taking no notice of each
other, and perhaps even paying very different prices.
Flaccid USP Warning Sign #6: Look-alike ads running down the right side of Google. This is good for you because it’s a sure sign of an industry ripe for the wrecking ball. Here’s an example:

In a market like this with me-too, mediocre messages (
most markets are like this, by the way), a host of mediocre advertisers are
begging to get their heads handed to them.
The value of a Breakthrough USP easily exceeds the present value of your entire company.
A service company that does $1 million per year in sales probably has
an equity value of $500,000 to $1 million. One breakthrough USP can add
hundreds of thousands to over a million dollars of value and drive
six-figure impact to the bottom line.
Flaccid USP Warning Sign #7: You’re
frustrated because all kinds of people who “should” buy from you are
shrugging their shoulders and shuffling along to the next guy, or doing
nothing. That’s precisely the problem all those marriage
counselors above struggle with. They probably can’t throw a paper
airplane in a shopping mall and not hit somebody who has horrible
marriage.
But are any of those people paying attention?
Nope.
They’re not gonna, either, until someone hits them where they live.
And a string of letters behind the professional’s name, like LCSW or MS,
ain’t gonna do a lick of good.
One of the most exciting benefits of a Breakthrough USP is that advertising media that used to not work for you, suddenly pulls like gangbusters.
A lot of people can get affiliate offers to work, but can’t get Google
ads to work. They get traction with Google ads but not banners. Banner
ads work but solo emails bomb.
Relentless testing of Google ads and landing pages with a lame USP is just polishing turds.
Most of the time it’s your USP that’s to blame. And it’s what I always
start with. People come to 4-Man Intensives and sometimes they think I’m
going to wave a magic wand over their Google account and make
everything perfect.
Well sometimes I can do that, but when I do
that it’s not
magic. The real magic is – after an hour or two of reverse-engineering
their offering and their customers’ wants, needs and desires – we’ve
completely repositioned the entire product to be immensely more
appealing.
Richard Jacobs is a consultant who generates leads for attorneys, in
some of the most expensive keyword categories on the internet. When he
came to 4-Man, he complained that a lot of his clients treated him badly
– even though he was putting money in their pockets.
I showed him that by repositioning (1) his basic product offering in
order to sell results instead selling procedures, and (2) increasing his
visibility in the marketplace, he could exponentially transform his
experience as a consultant.
That, combined with a twist that he tells me about on an upcoming
Renaissance Club CD, completely shifted his entire experience as a
consultant.
Suddenly it’s impossible to compare him to any other lead generator,
any online advertising opportunity, any sales rep, because he is utterly
singular and unique. Best of all, the complete combination is very hard
to knock off and systematize the way he has.
His income spiked and he literally moved almost 100 clients to the back burner. He’s not fighting the current anymore.
Why A Great USP is Harder Than It Sounds
Everybody who allegedly knows anything about marketing is supposed to
know what USP is and have a good one. My experience is: Most people’s
USP is little more than a slogan and most do not have a good one. Most
are mediocre at best and this is sad because this costs you a LOT of
money. It’s the difference between eating steak and eating Ramen soup,
between being #1 or #5, between owning a 2
nd home in Tucson vs. struggling to pay your mortgage.
Yet I see thousands of sharp, capable, dedicated business owners
limping along with inadequate USPs. Even the above-average USP is like a
dull razor blade – it leaves stubble behind, and nicks and cuts as
well.
A while back, unbeknownst to me, Bryan Todd decided to do something
about this. He sat down and, based on his conversations with hundreds of
clients who’d scheduled 1-on-1 consultations and taken the Bobsled Run
coaching program for AdWords, created an entire system for building
Breakthrough USPs.
This “accidentally” came up in a Roundtable meeting. Aussie
Roundtable member, Brad Walker was having his hot seat when Bryan put
his finger on a lack of clarity in one of Brad’s product offerings.
Bryan opened his computer, found some notes and began grilling Brad.
One step at a time, he led Brad through an entire sequence of questions,
insisting that Brad arrive at an answer before he took the next step.
After about 30 minutes, Brad said, “I can go up to my hotel room and
write this up, and the sales page will practically write itself!”
BINGO. Precisely. That’s what happens. A dull tip had been filed to a
sharp point and suddenly it made impact on everything it touched.
That’s what happens, my friend.
Matt Gillogly was there, and said, “We’ve GOT to offer this. This is just too good!”
So that’s what we’re doing. Here’s the plan:
We’re offering recordings of two in-depth webinars. During
those recordings we will walk you through an exquisitely elegant system
for building killer USPs, unearthing the hidden story behind your
product, behind your customers’ aches, pains and aspirations.
USP Breakthrough – $499 - Includes two powerful
webinars on crafting your USP, as well as accompanying mp3s, slides, and
transcripts for the sessions. Also includes the full question resource
guide, USP marketing checklist, and idea generator.
USP Breakthrough Platinum – $1499 – Includes
everything that comes in the Basic package, PLUS a 60 Minute Bare
Knuckle USP Breakthrough Session with Bryan Todd. At then end of this
session you and Bryan will have honed a USP sharp enough to slice
through any challenge your business faces
USP Breakthrough Ninja Dojo - Sold Out
Every single person will achieve a breakthrough – I guarantee it. In fact I’m promising you five things.
If you fill in the worksheets and go through the process,
then I guarantee that by the end of the second course you will have:
- A new dimension of value that you never
realized you had, which you can immediately offer to your customers, and
which will instantly boost not only response but the quality of your
buyers
- You will be offering a performance guarantee in your marketplace that none of your competitors can give
- You will be able to apply this same
thinking process to your free offers (everything you use to generate
leads, not just sales) and experience a similar spike in results
- You won’t have to bury an ice pick in
your head to pull this off. You’ll find this easy and straightforward,
delightfully simple, and effective
I guarantee all four of these benefits or your money back. If you
want to invoke the guarantee, all you need to do is open a support
ticket and explain why you weren’t able to achieve any one of these
specific results and you’ll get a courteous refund.
“In 27 years of running an auto shop I’ve never had a USP. I’ve lost
business in the past because I couldn’t give a simple answer to people
who asked “Why should I go with you rather than somebody else?”
I bought your Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords, and I learned via
one of its bonuses just what a USP can be. I live in Salt Lake City,
Utah, and we get plenty of snow every year. So I decided I was going to
concentrate my efforts and put this whole model to work in my lifelong
snow removal business.
I bought a new salt spreader. And I started running AdWords. At
first everything was between $2.50-3.50/click. Expensive, poor CTRs, and
none of my visitors were spending much time on my site.
But after applying the USP principles and the other key elements of
the Ultimate Guide, my CPCs dropping like a rock. All of a sudden my
clicks were down around $0.55 per click, and my ads started showing far
more.
I went on and bought your full USP course. I now have a clear and
thorough answer on several fronts to why you should have your snow
removal done with us – including my unique 48-hour ice-free guarantee.
We’re the only ice removal company in the area that provides that in
writing!
Best part is, this method works for all of my businesses.”
Gary Madsen
MadsenSnowRemoval.com
Salt Lake City, UT
The Evolution of Modern Economic Alchemist
Let me close with a story. Four years ago, a woman named Susan Kruger
applied for Bobsled Run, but her app was rejected because her sales
weren’t high enough. She agreed to take our AdWords coaching course if
she waived the guarantee. She was attracted by my promise that she could
“Dominate her market” – be the alpha warrior – if she mastered what I
taught her.
She started out by aggressively advertising and optimizing, as we
teach Google advertisers to do. Her business caught fire and pretty soon
the book sales were rolling in.
A year later she began her 2nd Bobsled Run and signed up for a 4-Man
Intensive. The day before she came to the Intensive had been the last
day of her job as a schoolteacher, and she was now full time selling her
Study Skills curriculum.
This is when her USP began to shift – because “Study Skills” was
really just the surface-level benefit. As we peeled a few layers off the
onion, we began to see that what her schoolteacher customers really
wanted from her was an advocate in the war against the machine.
Why?
Because the Rapacious Beast was trying to consume Susan’s own children.
Susan took her son Mark with her to my seminar in Maui. In the warm
sun, and the gorgeous foliage, and the entrepreneurial environment, Mark
was flourishing. It was one of the most fun times Mark ever had with
his mom.
Susan tells the story like this: “I called home multiple times,
telling my husband, “I have my ‘Mark’ back!” It was fantastic! Since
we’ve been home, Mark has volunteered to help me with all sorts of
things in the office; he’s been sending faxes, sorting papers, and even
designed a logo for a new project I am developing.
“But, the combined total of absences did not sit well with Mark’s
principal, Dr. Claude. He berated us for our decisions and accused us of
“educational neglect.” He also claimed we had been “uncooperative” in
not providing requested medical documentation. My husband and I nearly
jumped out of our chairs…”What request!?” we demanded. “You’ve never
requested anything! You haven’t even responded to a single email we have
sent to you!” He quickly dropped that argument, but ultimately, he
threatened to take us to court over the absences.”
Soon she was embroiled in a battle with the local school district
over Mark. It got so heated that she pulled Mark out of public school
entirely, and put him in Montessori.
Dr. Claude personifies so much about “The System” that consistently
drives parents and teachers crazy! Dr. Claude was a bully. Rigid,
heartless, unforgiving, and myopic. So is The System.
Susan already knew her teachers were battling people like Dr. Claude,
but this story brought it front and center. She came to understand that
what she is really selling is weapons for winning the war against an
impersonal machine.
She also discovered a huge need for ADHD solutions, both for parents
and schoolteachers. In developing a suite of materials for ADHD, she
realized that she could simplify the work and habits of everyone not
just kids with ADHD. This is turning into an entirely new USP for
StudySkills.com.
The following year Susan and her husband Brian joined Roundtable, and
awhile after that, Brian quit his job as a schoolteacher. Now both are
free to pursue their passions.
Every step of the way, they’ve turned headaches, obstacles,
bureaucrats and red tape into selling opportunities, because every
single one has refined their USP.
Every one of those ingredients were already there – but without an
understanding that each of them contributes raw material for a
Breakthrough USP, they would never realize the benefits.
Susan saw how she could take a tool that she’s been giving students
for years and make it 10X more powerful – by identifying the personal
USP of the customer who uses that tool.
Such is the evolution of a modern economic alchemist – who started as
a full time school teacher with a part-time business on the side, and
is now not only a serial entrepreneur but a prominent national leader in
education reform.