Unique selling proposition examples
During the development of Disneyland, Walt Disney would frequently arrive home late in the evenings and would often enter his house through the kitchen to see what Thelma, his housekeeper, was preparing for dinner that evening.
Walt would sometimes grab a “weenie” from the refrigerator as he made his way through the kitchen and would share the hot dog with his dog ‘Lady’. He realized that she would follow him wherever he went when he was holding the hot dog because she knew he was going to share it with her.
When doing the planning of the park layout he remembered that he could lead the dog wherever he wanted with the “weenie” which is how he coined the term “weenie’ that Walt Disney Imagineering still uses to this day to describe how to get guests to certain points places and directions.
The way it works is simple.
When you first arrive at Disneyland and walk through the gates you are in Town Square with Main Street USA stretching out in front of you. It would be terrible for the flow of the park if people hung around in the Town Square or Main Street areas too long so at the end of Main Street the USA is the first “weenie”, Sleeping Beauty’s Castle.
The castle draws you towards the hub of the park, it is big, colourful and you just have to get down there and take a photo of it. Now that the Castle has drawn you to the hub, Disney needs you to move to other areas of the park. If you are to look straight ahead you will see King Arthur’s Carousel this beautiful 1920s carousel is constantly moving and making music drawing you further into the park and into Fantasy Land. However, if you are to look to your right from the castle you have a different view, you see the Astro Orbiter.
Now similar to the carousel the Astro Orbiter spins and makes noise, drawing your attention almost like a squeak toy can catch a dog’s attention. Behind the Astro Orbiter, the massive building that makes up Space
Mountain rises from the back of Tomorrow Land drawing you again further into the park. All these things grab your attention and draw you deeper and deeper into the park. It is something that Disney does brilliantly across all their theme parks worldwide, they draw you further into their world using amazing subliminal techniques to draw you into certain areas of the park.
Now I know what you are thinking… cool story Joel but how does this help MY business. I’m not running a theme park!
The point is this. What is your “weenie”?
What is drawing customers through your door? What we are talking about here is your Unique Selling Propositions or USP. Essentially what your USP is, is what sets you apart from your competition. For example, say you are a real estate agent. There are comfortably probably 20 other real estate agents operating within your patch.
You are all fighting for the same market, all providing roughly the same thing (I will sell your house), so why should the customer base choose you over your competitors?
The key to effective selling in this environment is being able to show what makes your business unique in a world of homogeneous competitors. Discovering your USP takes some real deep soul-searching and creativity. I genuinely think that this should be one of the initial conversations people need to have when launching a business. What is our weenie? Why are people going to come to us?
A good starting point is to analyse your competitors, what are they pushing as their point of difference? Is it working? Have a look at what they are saying they sell, not necessarily what the product or service is. You can learn a great deal about how a business views itself by looking at how they distinguish themselves from their competitors.
Let’s look at some big-name brands and how their unique selling point has come across in their marketing.
Domino’s for a long time had their USP as the speed of delivery. This came through in their advertising. “We GUARANTEE fresh hot pizza, delivered in 30 minutes or less or it’s FREE” this made Domino’s stand out in a crowded pizza delivery market. They are now the market leader in this space.
This one is a little outside the box, but I absolutely LOVE it. Saddleback Leather is a large online leather product store. They have positioned themselves as products that will not deteriorate like some of their competitors might. The way they show this is twofold. Firstly they offer a 100 YEAR warranty! If that isn’t product confidence, I don’t know what is. They follow this up with a fantastic marketing slogan, “They’ll fight over it when you’re dead” They have picked their Unique Selling Proposition and then built their branding around it.
Related Article: The importance of Branding
In order to find out what your Unique Selling Proposition is you need to be able to answer these three questions:
- What are the strengths and weaknesses of your competition?
- Why do your customers like you?
- What makes you better than your competition?
If you can answer these questions you can develop your USP.
That is the next part of all this. Once you have discovered what your USP is going to be then what? The next step is to build your branding and messaging around that USP. So that your brand and your USP are synonymous with each other. How are you going to portray it to the public so that you stand out in a crowded market place?
That’s where we can help. Rebel Media is not just a media agency, we are a full-service business solutions business. We take pride in helping our clients grow and develop their businesses and we are there every step of the way. So if you are struggling with bringing in new customers, sit down and work out what your USP is.
When you work out your weenie, you’ll work out how to get people into your store and then use the weenie to upsell them and keep them excited about your business.
