Writing Compelling Copy - What's Different?

We saw in the last post that one of the most essential aspects of writing compelling copy - if not THE most essential - is to answer the customer's question "What's in it for ME?"  This question is answered by BENEFITS, not features.

But there are other questions that the prospective customer will ask, and which you have to answer, to achieve copywriting in marketing power.  Probably the foremost of these is "What's different?"

No matter what product or service you are offering, there will be dozens or even hundreds of similar products or services on the market.  If you are offering it on a web site, there will be dozens or hundreds of sites offering something similar - sites which the visitor can click away to in an instant.  They want to know why they should be interested in your product rather than any of the others - what gives it the edge over the others. 

In other words they want to know the USP (Unique Selling Proposition) - or ESA (Essential Selling Advantage) as some call it.

So - how do you identify a Unique Selling Proposition to distinguish a product from its competition, when all the products are apparently identical?


Well, they are only identical if you can’t find a unique selling point. And finding a unique selling point is your job as a copywriter.

First and foremost you need research. Research the product. List ALL its benefits. Research the competition. Spot a benefit that hasn’t been focused on.

A famous copywriter called Claude Hopkins was asked to do an ad for Schlitz beer, which at the time was the no.7 seller. While researching he was taken through the plant, and was shown a steam room where they steam-cleaned the bottles and got rid of the bacteria.

“This is fascinating!” he said. “Why don’t you feature this in your ads?”

“But all beer manufacturers do this,” they said.

He said “Well, they may do, but I didn’t know about it!”

So he built an ad campaign round the steam room, and Schlitz shot to the No.1 seller.

What kind of thing can a USP be?

A USP can be anything.  It can be price. Volkswagen once had a series of TV commercials in UK for their Golf and Polo cars, focusing on price and nothing else - and it was very successful.

Target was able to build a store right next to Wal-mart because Wal-mart focuses on price and appeals to one sector of the population, while Target build a nicer store, sell nicer stuff and appeal to a different sector. So your USP can be your target consumers.

Colgate Toothpaste some years ago had an ad campaign centred on its effectiveness in getting rid of bad breath.  ALL toothpastes do that.  But Colgate was the only one to focus on it in its ad campaign, and this made it a top seller. 

You have to find a key benefit that is unique to the market and make sure you hammer it home.  And make sure your customers or visitors see it IMMEDIATELY.

This is just one of the secrets of writing compelling copy which you will find on our Bizwrite site!  Visit us for plenty more!