How to Make Sales and Marketing Easy [Free]

I’m about to commit a sacrilege.

Because I’m a copywriter. I earn a living from words. And I’m about to tell you use more pictures in your marketing.

Here’s why: We humans have been looking at images for as long as we’ve been humans -- about 200,000 years. But we’ve only been reading words for about 5,000 years. Big difference. And in the book Brain Rules, Dr. John Medina writes: “We learn and remember best through pictures, not through written or spoken words.”

So, pictures trump words. As a copywriter I say, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. Because a picture is worth more than 1,000 words. It can be worth millions of bucks.

Enter the unique selling proposition, or USP.

First described in 1961 by Rosser Reeves in his book, Reality In Advertising, a USP is your answer to this question: “Why should I buy only from you, at the price you’re asking, now?”

Advantages of a USP include clear differentiation, easier selling, increased revenue and loyal clients.

Early USPs were doubly powerful, because they combined pictures and words. One reason? Television. Most people saw advertising at night, when the stores were closed. A USP had to be memorable, so viewers wouldn’t forget the product between the time they saw it on TV and went shopping the next day.

That’s why Reeves’ USPs were so good. He understood that we remember more of what we see than what we read. Below is one of his powerful “visual” USPs that combines words and pictures:

You see, at a glance, why M&Ms are different and better than ordinary chocolate. In 1950, Reeves came up with slogan, “Melts in your mouth, not in your hands,” and began running ads like the one above on TV shortly after. Within four years, M&Ms was the #1 candy in America.

Now. Here’s how you can use a simple “word picture” to create a unique selling proposition (USP) that brings you more new clients, without spending a penny more on advertising …

The Visual USP

First, here’s a Visual USP I created some years ago for a business I was a partner in:

That graphic did more than almost anything to boost sales for our business. It was simple, engaging, convincing, and clearly showed how our service worked. None of our competitors had anything like it.

To create it, I simply listed out the 7 steps each of our clients went through to find a job using our process. Next, I picked a verb for each step (Choose, Create, etc.). Then, I gave each step a unique name (The Career Clarity Formula, The Guerrilla Resume and Cover Letters, etc.). Finally, I asked a graphic designer to put the 7 steps on an arrow, to show smooth progress (cost: about $50 on Fiverr).

A few years later, I created a similar Visual USP for a client as part of a $78,000 project. He loved it. And he’ll use it to get more new clients from the same advertising he’s doing right now. So, I thought you should see this simple tool, which does the following for you:

1. Shows, at a glance, exactly how your business does what it does
2. Offers visual evidence that your business is different
3. Improves all your sales and marketing, by helping you get noticed in any market

How to Create Your Own Visual USP

You can do it in about 30 minutes. There are 5 steps:

Step 1: Define how you achieve results for clients. Whether you know it or not, your business has a process. What are the steps in that process? Write them all down. Be exhaustive; you can edit later.

Example: If you do search engine optimization (SEO) for clients, your process might be the following:

1. We interview the client by phone to gauge their needs
2. We come up with a plan to help them rank higher in Google
3. We put the plan into action by making changes to their website
4. We continually make changes to improve their rankings in search
5. We monitor their website every week to maintain their higher search rankings

Step 2: Name each step with one verb. The five steps above can be named as follows:

1: LISTEN.

2: BUILD.

3: LAUNCH.

4: IMPROVE.

5: PROTECT.

Step 3: Expand on each verb. Simply add a “method” or “tool” after each one, like this:

1: LISTEN. The SEO Conversation

2: BUILD. The SEO Blueprint

3: LAUNCH. The SEO Deployment

4: IMPROVE. The SEO Gain Maker

5: PROTECT. The SEO Progress Lock-In

Step 4: Name the process in your Visual USP. It can be as simple as these:

• 7 Steps to Success
• 5 Steps to SEO Success
• 7 Steps to Higher Profits

Step 5: Hire a designer to put your Visual USP on an arrow. Why? To show easy progress, at a glance. You can find a designer on Fiverr for cheap, or do it yourself. I did the one below using SmartArt in Microsoft Word, just to show you what I mean:

Want more examples?

Here's a Visual USP created by one of my readers:

And here's one I just created for my own business ...

Action Step: Do this!

The cost? It's free. Just a few hours of creative brainstorming.

The benefits? Your marketing and sales become more effective, without spending a penny more on advertising.

One more thing. To learn more about how to grow your business with The CRx3 Process in that last Visual USP ... Click Here Now