For decades, marketers and businesspeople have focused on developing their USP, or Unique Selling Proposition.

The idea was that each and every product has something unique about it that differentiates it from other, similar products.

The problem is that very few products are unique. Just ask people who sell aspirin or gasoline or any other commodity product.

So where does that leave us? It leaves us with something Jeanette McMurtry of e4 Marketing mentioned in a recent seminar — the Emotional Selling Proposition. An Emotional Selling Proposition focuses attention on the emotional connection consumers have with your product or service.

So, for example, if you’re Coca-Cola, your Emotional Selling Proposition revolves around History/Classic/America. But if your Pepsi, your Emotional Selling Proposition revolves around New/Trend-Setting/Active.

This works for just about any product. Take Starbucks, for example. Their Emotional Selling Proposition revolves around the feeling of comfort, peace and soothing satisfaction that washes over you when you walk through their doors. If you were stopping by McDonald’s to get a cup of coffee from them, the emotional experience would be completely different.

The Bottom Line:

As a marketer, you should be aware that people buy many products for emotional reasons and then justify that purchase for logical reasons. Get inside the mind of your consumer and try to figure out the hidden motivators for buying your product. Once you’ve got a handle on those, be sure everything you do — everything — taps into that emotion in one way or another.

Wednesday, June 17th, 2009, 5:55 am   |   General Marketing  |  RSS feed |  Respond  |  Trackback