#something something you could literally auto-generate my taste in media

[pensivetense]

I have just realised that the past two series I’ve consumed have had identical endings

#a man who’s a bit of a scoundrel and whose chequered past includes making one giant mistake that ruins his relationship with #and severely impacts the life of a family member #defeats his enemy by trapped them in his mindscape while they’re searching for a secret that will doom humanity #and allowing someone he’s close to whose past with said antagonist includes being taken over and controlled against their will #to erase both their memories entirely #a weirdly specific scenario to happen twice in a row #something something you could literally auto-generate my taste in media #i guiltily side-eye 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle *you did this to me* #at least I KNOW house of leaves doesn’t end the same way

[marvelmusing]

HYDRA Hunter

Helmut Zemo x Reader

Part 1

You worked at SHIELD for your entire life, inspired by the likes of Peggy Carter and Captain America, wanting to do the right thing and protect people.

You worked hard, rising up through the ranks. Becoming a Colonel. Spending your time ensuring that you could help people.

Then SHIELD falls, along with HYDRA. And you find out that the organisation you’ve dedicated your life work to was not what you thought it was.

You spend the years after the fall of SHIELD finding old HYDRA bases and employees and ensuring they’re brought to justice.

This has caused you to bump into the Avengers quite often. Steve Rogers often asks for your help with intel.

You earn the quite the reputation as you track down a large number of old HYDRA operatives.

You’re soon known as the HYDRA Hunter. A name you aren’t too happy with but it seems to have stuck with you.

One day Steve asks you to help him and Sam with their search for Steve’s friend, Bucky Barnes. The former Winter Soldier. You agree to help them.

Although, now that you’re occupied by your search for Bucky you don’t notice there’s another person hunting HYDRA’s people.

You don’t notice when Vasily Karpov, the Winter Soldier’s handler, is found dead.

You don’t notice that a certain red notebook has been stolen.

Then Vienna happens.

And the entire world has joined in with your search for Bucky Barnes.

And that grainy photograph is plastered across every newspaper, news show, social media site. It’s everywhere.

You can’t it out of your head. That the ghost of HYDRA could be so obviously spotted like that.

So you go back to your research. Noting down as many HYDRA names as you can find. Then you spot one. Vasily Karpov. And his obituary.

You read the police report. That he was hung by his ankles over his sink and drowned.

Someone else was after the Winter Soldier.

Your discovery is too late though. Steve, Sam, and Bucky are missing by the time you’re in Berlin.

Then Tony sends you some files. The reported death of the UN psychologist sent to assess Bucky. And the identity of the man who impersonated him. The man who found the Winter Soldier.

Baron Colonel Helmut Zemo.

If you weren’t so frustrated that you missed this you would have been impressed with his work.

In the aftermath of the Avengers splitting up you’re busy trying to stay under the government’s radar.

Then Thanos happens, and you’re dusted away. Only to return five years later.

After the final battle you stay in touch with Sam and Bucky, you’d helped Sam out during the years he was on the run.

So when he gives you a call after Bucky’s arrest you offer to help with the Flag Smashers.

Then Bucky suggests visiting Zemo.

“He knows all of HYDRA’s secrets.” Bucky reasons. Sam immediately gestures to you. You nod, agreeing with him.

“I’m literally right here, Buck.” He sighs.

“Do you have any idea where the serum’s coming from?” He’s got you there.

“Not entirely. After a couple of days of digging I might find something?”

The three of you exchange looks. You don’t have a couple of days to spare for a maybe.

“Okay. Let’s go see Zemo.” Sam says.

Then you’re in a maximum security prison in Berlin. Bucky went in to see Zemo alone, which puts you on edge.

You know the trigger words don’t work anymore. You’re not afraid of the Winter Soldier. You’re afraid that Zemo will manipulate Bucky into doing something he doesn’t want to do.

Bucky seems fine when he returns. You and Sam follow him as he leads you to a large warehouse.

“Where are we, man?” Sam asks. Bucky doesn’t answer, instead walking you through a ‘hypothetical’ jailbreak scenario.

You’re beginning to doubt how hypothetical this situation is.

Then Zemo steps into the room.

“What did you do?” Sam stares at Bucky. Though it’s pretty obvious what Bucky’s done.

“We need him Sam.” Bucky reasons.

“You’re going back to prison!” Sam demands, pointing at Zemo.

“If I may?” Zemo begins.

“NO!” Sam and Bucky yell at him. You hear Zemo mumble an apology as Sam turns to you,

“[Y/N]?” He prompts, hoping you’ll back him up. You sigh a little, considering your options,

“HYDRA was never able to successfully recreate the super soldier serum, excluding Bucky. That’s why they had to steal Howard Stark’s test serum for the Winter Soldier program. Whatever lead he has, it’s better than anything I’ve got.” Sam sighs,

“You don’t make a move, without our permission.” He warns Zemo. Zemo nods,

“Fair.” He then turns his attention to you, “I don’t believe we’ve been introduced.” Zemo’s eyes are fixed on yours as he inclines his head.

“[Y/N] [Y/L/N]. You must be Baron Zemo.”

“Baron?” You hear Sam question from behind you. You keep your eyes on Zemo.

“Or do you prefer Colonel? Some people value their military achievements over inherited titles.” You’re letting know you’ve done your research.

“Just Zemo will suffice.” You nod. Sam turns to him,

“Alright Zemo, where do we start?” Zemo heads to one side of the room, turning on the power. The lights flicker on, revealing a large collection of cars. “So our first move is grand theft auto?” Sam jokes.

“These are mine. Collected by family over the generations.” He opens the trunk of one of the cars. You glance inside, noticing the array of weaponry stored. “I spent years hunting people HYDRA recruited to recreate the serum, because once it’s out there,” he bends to reach inside another car. “Someone can create an army of people, like the Avengers.” He gives Sam a pointed look. “I ended the Winter Soldier program once before. I have no intention to leave my work unfinished.” Sam turns to you,

“So you two haven’t met?” You look away from him. Even after all these years, you’re still a little unsettled by how good Zemo was. That you never saw him coming. Zemo frowns,

“Should I know you?” You shake your head,

“Sam’s joking.” You dismiss.

“Sounds like he was doing your job for you.” Sam adds. You sigh before explaining to Zemo.

“I’ve been tracking down HYDRA personnel for the last few years. So Sam’s surprised we’ve never crossed paths.” Zemo nods, considering your explanation.

“Are you surprised?” You tilt your head at him. “That we never crossed paths?” Yes, absolutely. It still annoys you to this day. You shrug casually,

“The world’s a big place. It’s not too surprising.” Zemo looks at you, not buying how casual you are. He thankfully changes the subject,

“To do this, we’ll have to scale a ladder of low lives.”

“Well join the party, we’ve already started.” Sam tells him. Zemo heads off, his stride determined, as he calls back to the three of you,

“First stop is a woman named Selby. Mid-level fence, I still have a line on. From there we climb.” The three of you follow Zemo as he heads towards the exit.

He asks for a moment to change his clothes. Bucky paces outside the bathroom as Zemo changes.

When he emerges he’s dressed in a turtleneck, with dress trousers and shoes. He pulls a long coat with a fur collar onto his shoulders. You notice he’s also fresh faced, he must have shaved.

There’s a small walk to a local airfield where a large jet is waiting.

“So all this time you’ve been rich?” Sam gestures to the jet.

“Like [Y/N] said, I’m a Baron, Sam. My family was royalty before your friends destroyed my country.” You wince at the thought of Sokovia. What happened there is one of your biggest regrets.

There’s an old man stood at the stairs into the jet. Zemo greets him in Sokovian, kissing each of his cheeks affectionately. He welcomes the three of you and you reply with a polite,

“Thank you, sir,” in Sokovian. Zemo glances at you for a moment, no doubt surprised that you speak Sokovian.

The four of you get comfortable on the plane. You’re sat opposite Zemo, with Bucky next to you.

The atmosphere is rather tense, particularly after Zemo stole Bucky’s notebook, causing Bucky to threaten Zemo.

Then Zemo tells you where you’re going.

Madripoor. That’s just great.

As the plane gets close to Madripoor, Zemo suggests that the three of you should change your clothes. He explains each of your roles. You roll your eyes when he tells you that you’d be playing the part of his lover.

You head to the room at the back of the plane with you bag in hand. The outfit Zemo’s bough you is lying on the bed.

You close the door and get changed into your tact gear. People in Madripoor know you, they know there’s no change of you dating a Baron. You push open the door as you finish getting changed. You’re busy securing your weapons when you hear Zemo approach,

“Is my selection not to your liking?” he asks. You look up at him. He doesn’t seem mad that you’re refusing his gift, just curious.

You glance down at the outfit. No doubt it was expensive, and it’s very tasteful.

“No offence intended, Baron. But if we’re going to Madripoor I’m going as myself, not as your arm candy.”

“You couldn’t be both?” He asks. You stop and look back up at him, he returns your gaze, his thoughts a mystery to you. Then Sam interrupts,

“Damn, you think you’ve over done that a little?” He asks you, gesturing to the array of knives along your belt, and the holsters across your thighs and calves. You laugh a little,

“Walking into Madripoor unarmed is pretty unconventional. You three will stick out without any noticeable weapons.”

“You’re forgetting, we have one of HYDRA’s most notable weapons.” Zemo nods his head towards the other end of the plane. No doubt referring to Bucky. You’re quick to press a knife to his throat,

“Refer to him as a weapon again, Baron, and I will ensure you regret allowing me on your plane.” You trail the knife along his jawline, watching it trace against his skin. “Understood?” His gaze doesn’t stray from your face, but he swallows hard and provides a minute nod.

“Of course, Colonel.” You tilt your head aside. He knows more than he lets on. You pull away from him, feeling suddenly aware of how close the two of you are.

Bucky leans his head though the doorway,

“We’re landing.”

A/N: This is a lot longer than I thought it was going to be so there’s going to be a few more parts to this.

If you’d like to be tagged for this series just let me know!!

#zemo x reader #helmut zemo x reader #baron zemo x reader #baron zemo x y/n #baron zemo #helmut zemo #baron helmut zemo #tfatws #tv: fatws #fatws #zemo x you #zemo headcanons #zemo x y/n #zemo fanfic #zemo imagine

[carols-review-box]

My Thoughts on Ginny & Georgia: Season 1 

These are my thoughts.

Right off the bat, I want to address that this is, by no means, a comprehensive review. I’m not even sure if it can be called a review. These are just my thoughts on the show, and it may or may not cover everything (in fact, it most certainly won’t cover everything), and I’ll try my best to write it out in an organized manner, but I can’t make promises. (Though, in all fairness, this is just a blog for my own entertainment, and I don’t expect anyone to actually read it.) 

Now, moving on. Ginny & Georgia, season 1. Where do I begin? 

First Impressions 

I first encountered Ginny & Georgia on Netflix when the website decided to auto play its trailer while I was scrolling through it. I watched--almost begrudgingly-- a short, 1 minute clip of Ginny complaining to her teacher about how all the books on the curriculum were written by white men. While I understand where Ginny was coming from, and while I understand that a lot of high school literature is written by authors who sometimes are not representative of their audience, Ginny’s introduction just came off as obnoxious and annoying. I thought, “Imagine moving to a new school, and that’s the first thing you say to the teacher.” I rolled my eyes, wrote the show off as another try-hard feminist woke piece (or something like that), and didn’t think I’d watch it. 

Well, at some point, I obviously decided to give the show a try. And by the middle of the first episode, I was actually really surprised when Ginny didn’t turn out to be insufferable in the beginning. I say in the beginning-- because her character really slides downhill past a certain point.

Plot 

Throughout the entire show, I was probably a thousand times more interested in Georgia’s plot than Ginny’s. 

It makes sense-- Ginny’s plot is... well, pretty much a generic teen soap opera that I’ve seen hundreds of times before. There are some unique themes to her story that I’ve rarely seen portrayed in other shows, like her experience as a biracial person, but other than that, it seems to be your run-of-the-mill drama. 

On the other hand, Georgia’s plot is fresher. I haven’t personally seen any black-widow narratives (if Georgia could be called that), so I was intrigued and curious by how her story would play out. Not to mention, I liked Georgia’s love interests far better than Ginny’s, but maybe that’s just my personal taste.

In comparing these two plots, I do feel like the writers did Ginny wrong. Georgia is given an interesting storyline with a relevant backstory and plot points that actually make sense, whereas Ginny’s story is mediocre, we rarely get to see her side of the past, and half the stuff that goes down in her life is either unrealistic and overdramatized or it just makes no damn sense. 

Characters 

I could probably talk a great deal about the characters in this show. I have the most to say about Ginny (75% of it is criticism, honestly), so I’ll dedicate an entire section to her later. For now, I’ll start with these characters:

Georgia: Georgia, oh Georgia. To put it simply, Georgia is a psychopath hidden behind a large smile and a buzzing Southern accent. For the first 5 episodes, I was so fooled by her act (and her beauty) that I forgot she’s a literal murderer and most likely not a good human being. But I guess that’s, in part, what makes her very interesting to watch. 

Hunter: I literally felt nothing but a mixture of boredom and pity whenever Hunter was on screen. For the first 8 episodes, he is just an extraordinarily boring character-- and his boringness is used as a justification by Ginny to cheat on him (that’s where the pity part comes in). I enjoyed how how he got more character in the ending episodes, and I could understand his struggles when he fought with Ginny (in that scene). But if he wasn’t dating Ginny, then he would’ve been a completely forgettable character.

Marcus: Marcus ALWAYS looks like he’s high. I don’t think there’s a single scene in the show where he doesn’t look like he just smoked something. He also has little personality, other than being the “bad boy.” I guess his hotness makes up for it, or something?

Maxine: While I enjoy Max overall, I think she can be really annoying, talkative and insensitive at times. Emphasis on the last part, because she does this irritating thing where she says something racist, and then asks if she just said something racist. 

Abby: Out of the friend group, I feel like Abby is the most dramatic without being overdramatic. She experiences things that a regular teenager would. However, she can be a bad friend at times, and I don’t like how the characters gives her a pass on some questionable choices she makes. 

Paul: I like Paul. It is a little bit hypocritical of me to say Paul is a good character when he basically has the same exact personality as Hunter, but I’m going to say it: He’s a good character.

Zion: Zion is smooth, and I enjoy his little wisdom bits with Ginny. But he was introduced too late into the show, and I can’t see him being a good fit for Georgia. 

Joe: I love Joe. Just like some of the other characters, he is kind of plain. Kind of vanilla, daresay boring, but for some reason, I love him. Maybe it’s because of his adorable connection with Georgia. Maybe it’s because he offers some much-needed comedic relief in this overdramatized show. Maybe it’s because he has attractive qualities, like running a “successful” business, or maybe he’s just my type. For many, many episodes, I wanted Georgia to get together with Joe the most. 

Austin: I forgot Austin existed for half the time. Like, I know the kid stabbed someone, but in the grand scheme of things, he’s just so forgettable.

Character: Ginny

Ginny. Ah, where do I even begin with Ginny? 

First, I’m just going to say this: I know the writers intended to depict a biracial person’s experience in America through Ginny. I’m not biracial myself, and I don’t fully understand the issues that biracial people go through, so I’m not going to comment too much on how the authors managed to fuck up. I say “how” and not “if,” because a lot of biracial people have said that Ginny & Georgia is kind of a bad example of their life, and also because even I can see the problems with the show from a mile away. 

Getting that out of the way, I’ll start with Ginny’s overall character. 

One would think that a character who is depicted as-- for a lack of better words-- as “woke,”... as in, a character who is supposed to have better moral values than others (the definition comes from the word’s general connotative interpretation from leftist media), would be a good human being. But time and time again, we see that Ginny is everything but. 

These are my biggest issues with Ginny’s character:

1) She acts like she’s better than everyone else, but also like she’s super oppressed. I know these two personality traits aren’t mutually exclusive, but they’re not a good combination either. 

2) She thinks she’s the only person in the entire town who has real issues. Other characters confront her about this, and she eventually mellows down, but it’s astounding to me the amount of people she had to offend before she got the point.

3) She can be really ungrateful and rude towards her mom. I know Georgia is not a perfect mother-- not even close-- and she can be genuinely crazy at times, but Ginny is very rarely appreciative of her mom’s efforts. 

4) Despite Ginny’s intelligence, she is not smart. She commits a bunch of dumb mistakes. Now, some of these can be attributed to her just being a teenager-- like having unprotected sex, sending nudes, being peer pressured into stealing, etc. Whereas other choices-- most notably cheating on her boyfriend-- are just a product of her shitty personality.

5) There is a really bad implication concerning Ginny’s views on race. I can probably talk a lot about race in this show, but true to my word, I’ll keep this short and talk about the one thing that really bothered me: Ginny ignores the black kids. There’s a line in the show where Ginny says she’s too white for the black folks and too black for the white folks... and she uses this to justify never having any friends or not fitting in. But when she gets to Wellsbury, she’s accepted by everyone, including black people, yet she chooses to ignore them. She only sits with them near the end of the show when her friend group kicks her out. And she looks miserable. 

Ginny likes to complain a lot about her white side, but all things considered, I think she has an issue with her black side instead. I don’t know if this is representative of the biracial experience, but I imagine this can’t be a good thing to portray on screen. 

I know it’s crazy of me to say this right after I just ripped Ginny apart. However, despite everything, I actually like Ginny as a character. Do I like her as much as I like Georgia or Joe? No, but she swings more good than bad. What can I say? She’s entertaining (in the same way that Cheryl from Riverdale is entertaining). She’s at least somewhat relatable, and I wouldn’t have watched the entire season if I truly found her to be unbearable. 

That being said, Ginny does have a lot of potential to grow, and I sincerely hope the writers do her better in the next season. 

Themes 

*At some point in the future, I may add more to this section.  

Family: Despite a significant portion of this show being terribly unrealistic, I appreciate the show’s overall depiction of family and separation. For one, the show represents families who aren’t stereotypically nuclear. Our main protagonists are a single mother-daughter combo. The Bakers next door have a deaf father and a mother who doesn’t fit into a perfect mold. There’s a biracial family (Hunter) who connects far more with their American side than their Taiwanese-- so much that Hunter and his sister don’t even speak a lick of Mandarin. The small details and nuances which are added into the show makes them far more representative of the general American population. 

Conversations: This show gives conversations that are far overdue in media. While Hunter and Ginny’s fight scene is 98% pure cringe, the remaining 2% of it is an important reminder on being biracial (or a person of color) in America. Many of us struggle with our racial identity, and it’s unproductive to compare who has it worse. 

Overall + Rating 

To me, the first season of Ginny & Georgia is a 6.5/10. (Five being the average; so this would be a little better than average). While it showed a lot of potential at the beginning, the show eventually devolved to nothing more than a standard melodrama-- even on Georgia’s part. It tried hard to be another Gilmore Girls but ended up falling quite short. I am looking forward to its second season though; and hopefully, it’s much better than the first. 

#shows #netflix #7 #ginny and georgia #ginny & georgia #ginny&georgia

[zimboxl]

Jargon Tourettes

Top 10 Overused Jargon 2018*

Overused Jargon (OJ) tells us what the media savvy think is relevant, useful, and popular. In some ways jargon is a gatekeeper, a cliquish code to separate those who get it from those who don’t. My selection is indicative of general trends with a bias towards the African arts and development worlds. These words are not sacred, and they need to be satirized and tested so that they don't become enshrined, unconsidered, shallow symbols of in-group identification. Perhaps this can help to prevent the alienating and misleading effects jargon can have. Consider this a satirical vaccination against sophistry and let’s hope for a better tomorrow where cryptic condescension gives way to shared comprehension.

Innovation

The elder states-person, the OG of OJ. 'Innovation' has somehow managed to remain atop the charts in spite of becoming a caricature of itself over the years. It also feels like we've been innovating for decades now, we might be due for some consolidation and refinement. Innovation's longevity is a product of its flexibility (it can mean many things), its vapidity (it can mean nothing), and the novelty-chasing tech-centric culture du jour.

Eg. “The Innovation Initiative was initially based on the premise that all change is good. It later became The Department of Unexpected Consequences.”

Engagement

Whether it's measured in links clicked, or viewing time, engagement is usually a euphemism for 'keeping an audience's attention more deeply for longer periods of time'. There's nothing necessarily wrong with this in itself, any creator wants their work to be engaging. Unfortunately, truly valuable engagement is about quality of experience, not just stats. It also turns out that trolling, click-bait, bot-baes, and other tricks work just as well, if not better than creating compelling, meaningful content - assuming that pure statistical engagement is the goal here. Even eliciting hate and outrage in the audience is preferred to eliciting the dreaded indifference.

Eg. “Once middle-aged super-users started gouging their own eyes out the e-ghetto slum lords sought to maintain high levels of user engagement by injecting digital crack directly into user’s blood streams via a fleet of nano-drones.”

Unpack

It's not mansplaining if you preface your long-winded speech with, “let me just unpack that before we move on...”  Poetic allusions to heavy baggage give this bit of OJ an ironic edge. Have you ever felt burdened by verbose unpacking? I have.

Eg. “As the morning's first speaker, I unpacked the topic of discussion at such length the moderator had to stop me so we could break for lunch.”

Girl Child

A steady climber over the years. Indicative of gendered global SJW trends, the Girl Child™ is now the holy grail of target demographics and beneficiaries. The term is particularly popular in development circles where its feminist paternalistic slant strangely fits the industry-wide vestigial-colonial vibe. Besides, 'Starving African' just feels so 1900s.

Eg. “Emergency! The ship is sinking! All women, girl children, and gender-non-binary-human-meat-sacks may board the life rafts first! The rest of you can fuck off.”

Decolonization

An up and coming term with the potential to rise even further in the charts. Its ceiling depends mostly on whether or not it remains a trophy word spoken in seminars and galleries. If it matures into active programs that directly enact de-colonial agendas the word may have to share the stage with other relevant but unsexy terms like 'supply chains', 'resource redistribution', 'local staff', etc. It also has immense potential as a linguistic camouflage for bad art. Those who criticize 'de-colonial art' may easily be shamed and dismissed as colonists, apologists, or sympathizers. The thoughtful critical landscape is pretty thin so similar strategies may be applied with other identity-centric words to shield questionable work from honest criticism.

Eg. “The former farm invader liberator had diversified his portfolio to include decolonizing luxury resorts, one free vacation at a time.”

Afro-Futurism

This once exciting term is at risk of becoming nostalgic dross due to how much it's been bandied about in African arts circles. It's a victim of its own success. A tell-tale marker of when a term becomes OJ is that it inspires satire of a higher quality and awareness than sincere works.

Eg. “Afro-futurism enables us to imagine a future where our collective conscious, aka Wakanda, has morphed into a touch screen cell phone that purifies drinking water, and cures HIV.”

Beneficiary

If a heroine feeds a starving village and no one sees it, did they all just starve instead? There can be no benefactors without beneficiaries and they must be documented, preferably smiling in situ despite the squalor that surrounds them. As a citizen of a country where most adults are unemployed I'd argue that employed development professionals should also be counted among the so-called beneficiaries. There's no shame in getting paid if you do a good job.

Eg. “As I saw the tears of unrestrained joy flow from the beneficiaries' eyes I knew my genocidal ancestors' crimes had been forgiven in full. If anything, I'd earned some extra credit for future generations.”

Toxic Masculinity

The shortest way to describe a Tarantino movie. Some people seem to believe that all masculinity is toxic, but we unfortunately don't have a popular catch phrase for them yet. Many men try to camouflage themselves by borrowing the props, costumes, and behaviors of their perceived superiors, essentially flaunting their overseer's whip. You know it when you see it.

Eg. “The game show host gave Chloe a choice between experiencing an unspecified act of toxic masculinity and ingesting mercury; Chloe chose mercury.”

Curate

Curating used to happen in museums and galleries, ideal environments for  showing others you have better taste and ideas than the unwashed masses. Now it's everywhere. Seemingly overnight the jargoneers stopped simply 'choosing things to sell in their shops' and started 'curating bespoke collections for their boutiques'. It’s the same thing, but with bougie overtones.

Eg. “The fuel station manager curated a collection of limited edition off-white sequined jerrycans for his most discerning customers.”

Interactive

I know what this word means to me, but after being assaulted by many misuses, and making many concessions for the sake of conversation and civility, I no longer have a clue what it means to the general public. I do know that in digital art circles it signifies 'cool', 'cutting edge', and 'dynamic'. At worst I've seen it used to describe a fixed work that people looked at without influencing in any way.

Eg. “The curator  of 'The Bricks are Present' was puzzled when the audience didn't transform into pro-bono builders despite the presence of the interactive bricks in the space.”

Conversation

Habitually misused by talking heads who would have you believe their one-sided monologues somehow constitute a conversation.

Eg. “Popular Instagrammer @Philosothot69 had an ongoing conversation with her thirsty horde of male fans wherein she mused about being more than just her looks while they sent her flaming eggplant emojis and tagged their friends.”

Problematic

Increasingly just a trendy way to add an air of faux-academic objectivity to ones' personal opinions and preferences. A newb might say, 'I didn't like District 9', but a true OJ guzzler will declare that it was problematic. Like many such words its rise began sincerely within relevant contexts, but it has since been taken up cynically in other contexts. In a few years it may just be something glib people say about petty things in the ceaseless quest to sound woke.

Eg. “When eventually Phil voiced his critical opinions about the concept sketches for the mural, Kuda quickly shushed him, reminding him that, generous funding aside, his uppity whiteness was problematic. Thus Kuda attained her black belt in the dark arts of juggling feminism and racial politics.”

Triggered

Triggered once referred to panic attacks that traumatized war veterans suffered after hearing loud noises or other shocking stimuli. Originally rooted in early studies of Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), or shell-shock as it was known then, triggered can now be trotted out to describe how you feel when someone is wearing the same outfit as you at the grocery shop.

Eg. Overzealous auto-correct and my aversion for proof-reading ruined my broadcasted Annual Christmas Party invitation message. I got so triggered I like literally died.

* by 10 I meant 13.

#jargon #writing #africa #arts #satire #development

[lakelandseo]

How to Create Your Local Business USP with QUAAAC + UGC

I’m new in town and have never heard of your business before. I’m looking for an explanation that’s as quick and easy to read as a street sign.

You have just a few seconds to convey to me what your local business offers and why customers like it. Then I’ll take a few seconds to determine whether what you’ve said matches my needs.

From this moment forward, we either walk the next steps of the consumer-brand journey arm-in-arm, or I wing off in another direction looking for a better match. I could become a loyal customer for decades, or I might never think of your business again.

That’s how important and fleeting the moment of opportunity can be when a customer encounters a unique selling proposition (USP) highlighted by a local business. In Chapter 3 of The Essential Local SEO Strategy Guide, we reference how a clear USP underpins SEO, and it’s a topic that deserves a deeper dive. For new neighbors, travelers, and residents in search of new goods and services, the USP is a sign you can hang in many places.

In this article, we’ll actively practice writing compelling USPs for real-world local businesses based on six simple components. Further, I’ll teach you to see a brand you’re marketing from the viewpoint of customers on the basis of user generated content (UGC).

First, what’s a USP?

A unique selling proposition in marketing is a brief statement that’s typically defined as distinguishing a brand and its offerings from its competitors. It’s not the same thing as the catchphrase found in slogans and jingles (e.g. “Reach out and touch someone” or “Just Do It”), which, while memorable, may only vaguely hint at what a business is or does. Instead, a USP should clearly define whether what a business is, does, and has matches the intent of the customer, and the art involved is in learning to convey a lot of meaning in very few words.

If you learn best from real-world examples, here’s an independent grocery store that has put its slogan and mission statement on its website homepage:

If we were tasked with creating a USP, just from this information, we would write something like this:

Shop the oldest and largest organic grocery store in Marin County to actively support our community’s health and sustainability.

If I happen to be looking for a market with a big selection of organics that’s been trusted by locals for many years and I want my dollars to work towards sustainability, my intent will have been perfectly matched by this USP.

Local businesses have an advantage over virtual competitors in that circumstances auto-generate one of the “unique” aspects of the company message: being present in a specific town or city makes your brand a unique resource for people there, as opposed to selling to the world at large. Pair locale with local rarity for a smart combination. The “selling” aspects of this type of content should inspire actionable language on your part; words like “shop”, “experience”, “visit” are mini calls-to-action embedded in the USP. Think of the “proposition” as making an offer you hope the right potential customer can’t refuse because it ideally matches their intent.

There are just 19 words in our sample USP, but it contains multiple intent signals, and now we need to learn how to break those down by type so that you can develop your own messaging for the local brands you market.

Surface QUAAAC components for your strongest USP

Image credit: Hedera Baltica

I recently learned that one of the great secrets to QVC’s multi-billion-dollar success is to get shoppers to ask the question, “Is this me?” and then answer with a, “Yes”. USPs should work just like this! You’ll have noticed that we turned the slogan and mission statement toward the customer in our example USP above, in hopes that they will see themselves in the details. In other words, we’re hoping the customer will ask, “Is this me who wants to shop for organic groceries at a time-honored store, and contribute to sustainability?” and find themselves saying, “Yes”.

Choosing the right details to highlight, when you have a limited amount of space, really matters! Let’s get our ducks in a row with a practice session of writing USPs together, breaking down our options into six basic components:

Quality

If our example grocery store decided that it was the high quality of their inventory that should star in their USP, based on what they’ve learned matters most to their customers, we could write a proposition like this:

Shop all-organic groceries, many sourced locally from our community’s best farmers, for peak quality you can taste!

In other instances, customers’ search for value underlies their quest for quality. They want to know what the highest quality is that they can afford on their budget. In that case, a USP might emphasize cheapness, deals, discounts, or specials. Brands like Imperfect Foods aim to deliver inventory that’s of good quality, if not flawless, and that’s easier on wallets, as made clear by their USP:

Get sustainable, affordable groceries delivered weekly to your door.

The skill required here is to match the economic realities of your customer base to the best quality their money can buy. Whether the inventory is luxury goods or the most affordable deals, nearly all customers want good value.

Uniqueness

If your business model relies on providing something rare, uniqueness might deserve emphasis in your USP. For our grocery store, we might say:

Tired of reading labels? Shop trustingly at Marin County’s only 100% organic grocery store.

Perhaps my favorite example of a USP based on uniqueness comes from Redwood Yurok Canoe Tours, which reads:

Come and explore the powerful Klamath River on a spiritual adventure that will take you back in time, hearing only the quiet chatter of wildlife as you glide along the water’s surface.

This Indigenous-owned business is offering an experience you literally cannot get anywhere else in the world, and it’s a great illustration of building romance around rarity.

Availability

Simple availability can be an easy USP starting point for almost any business, because so many customer searches begin with the question, “I wonder if X business offers X good or service.”

I often recall seeing storefront signage for a business that had started out as “Pens Unlimited” and then presumably appended the slogan “More than just pens” to its messaging as they expanded, leaving me guessing about what the company actually offered. If your inventory is highly varied, it can be a challenge to fit it all into a business name or slogan, but a slightly longer USP can help. Our grocery store might highlight availability like this:

Shop organic produce, dry goods, supplements and award-winning prepared meals at Marin’s largest natural foods store.

As another example, the website of this SMB shoe store may not be state-of-the-art, but their USP immediately answers the question of “I wonder if they have X?”:

Shoe store offering fashionable dress, comfort, boots, and athletic shoes for men and women.

If a potential customer wanted to know if this particular shop had comfort footwear, this USP does the job.

Authority

This is a proposition that works well when customers need a resource they can trust based on the availability of expertise or the proof of longevity. Our grocery store might say:

Shop Marin’s only grocery store owned by a sitting board member of the Organic Trade Association — locals have trusted our organic commitment since 1969.

Certifications can go a long way towards conveying authority. I found information of this kind buried deep in the loam of a Washington plant nursery, which could be brought forward to their homepage as an authority-based USP like this:

Shop plants with three Master Gardeners and two Certified Professional Horticulturists on-site to help you grow your dream garden!

Affinity

Some of my personal favorite USPs send signals of brand-consumer affinity — they convey that the local business operates on the basis of certain values shared by customers. Our sample grocery store is fertile ground for authentic proofs of community building, and could write a USP like this:

Be the change! Shopping with us benefits your whole community, from free organic meal programs for students and elders, to our Deep Green Energy commitment, to profits shared by all employees.

Meanwhile, outdoor outfitter Patagonia takes a similar approach with this USP:

Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.

And sometimes, a USP can blend more than one element. The gorgeous website of The Red Door catering company has signals of both authority and affinity that could be stirred together for an inspirational, aspirational message, like:

MBE-Certified, Women-Owned, ICA member caterers prepare local, organic feasts for your unforgettable event.

Convenience

When ease is paramount for customers, convenience-based USPs can send a good message. Our grocery store might write:

Try convenient online ordering, curbside pickup, and prepared meals, or walk in just minutes from any downtown neighborhood to our organic grocery store.

Sometimes, location is all it takes to convey convenience. I love this ultra-simple USP from Deer Valley Grocery, which happens to have a beautiful waterside destination location:

“Enjoy breakfast and lunch lakeside.”

It can’t get shorter or sweeter than that.

I hope this practice session was useful. Now, we need to determine the most effective components for a particular local business you’re marketing.

Let customer content inspire your USP

Sentiment trends in your reviews, Q&A, and social media comments can point the way to what your customers value most about what your business does. These forms of user-generated content (UGC) can be a big help in determining which elements could be most effective if centered in your USP.

Start by searching Google for your brand name so that your Google Business Profile appears on the left of the screen (if your brand name search doesn’t work, add your city to your query. If that doesn’t work, you may need to learn the basics of local SEO first so that you build enough authority for Google to associate branded searches with your local business listing). Click on the “View All Reviews” portion of your profile and look at the Place Topics Google has surfaced in the oval tabs at the top of your review display.

Place Topics are an accessible, free form of basic sentiment analysis, highlighting topics mentioned most frequently in your reviews. If we had no other information about our grocery store than this, we could write a customer-centric USP along these lines:

Done with Whole Foods? Shop sustainable, fresh produce, our scrumptious salad bar, and healthy vegan choices at our Mill Valley market.

The great thing about Place Topics is that when you click on them, they sort the review corpus to show only reviews that contain the chosen topic. For example, when I click the “produce” tab, this deepens my understanding of exactly what customers are saying about the fruits and veggies at this store:

If we decided produce was uppermost in our customers’ minds, we could refine our USP like this:

Shop “the best produce in Marin” — unlike Whole Foods, we’re 100% organic and locally-owned!

Definitely dig deeply into your reviews to find out what really resonates with your customers. Moz Local customers have the added advantage of our sentiment analysis and trend features to help you go beyond Google and understand dominant review topics across multiple platforms.

If a local business has active social media profiles, customer likes and comments can also provide insight. Looking back through our grocery store’s Facebook posts, I caught the moment early in 2020 when a simple inspirational post received an unusually high amount of likes and loves, and comments from customers saying how much they missed the store and wished delivery was available:

Happily, the business was able to utilize this moment of community interaction to announce the debut of their curbside and delivery service:

A major change in operations, which so many local businesses underwent as a result of the pandemic, could be a strong reason to temporarily alter a company’s core USP for the purpose of quickly disseminating new information. For example, the market might have publicized this message:

Your organic groceries are now available via curbside and delivery in Fairfax and San Anselmo through our new shopping cart.

Other sources of USP-inspiring UGC could include FAQs the business receives via Google Q&A, phone calls, and form submissions — very good reasons to be empowering relevant staff to actively track this type of sentiment. Meanwhile, searcher behavior (if not content) could further refine your USP messaging. Consider using Google Trends or keyword research tools like Moz Keyword Explorer to discover popular search terms related to what your business offers, and that could be effective if incorporated into your proposition.

Where should you publicize your local business USP?

Image Credit: Chris Hottentot

One you’ve put in the work of crafting a strong USP, be sure you are nesting it in as many places as make sense, including:

Website masthead

Website homepage

Website about/mission page

Website contact page

Website location landing pages

Website footer

Website title tags

Website meta description tags

Website Header tags

Alt tags (if appropriate to describing images)

Blog posts

Email campaigns

Email signatures

Google My Business description

Google Posts

Google Q&A (if it answers an FAQ)

Descriptions on all local business listings and review profiles (use Moz Local for a quick data push!)

Carefully-worded review requests in hopes that reviewers will talk about aspects of your USP that matter most to them

Social media profiles

Social media posts

Digital ad campaigns

Guest post profiles

Storefront or in-store signage

Billboards

Radio and television ad campaigns

Print news campaigns

Mailers, circulars, and other print assets

Business cards

Company vehicles

Employee apparel

Company swag

With such amazing, multifarious applications, it’s easy to see the worth of investing time and care into developing a meaningful USP. You might adjust the wording slightly, based on medium, and you might even create several propositions for different purposes, seasons, or testing periods.

What I think you’ll learn from practicing perfecting your USP is that, like so much else in marketing, it comes down to great storytelling in a limited space, with eyes firmly set on engaging customers with a message of readiness that deftly meets their needs.

[nutrifami]

How to Create Your Local Business USP with QUAAAC + UGC

I’m new in town and have never heard of your business before. I’m looking for an explanation that’s as quick and easy to read as a street sign.

You have just a few seconds to convey to me what your local business offers and why customers like it. Then I’ll take a few seconds to determine whether what you’ve said matches my needs.

From this moment forward, we either walk the next steps of the consumer-brand journey arm-in-arm, or I wing off in another direction looking for a better match. I could become a loyal customer for decades, or I might never think of your business again.

That’s how important and fleeting the moment of opportunity can be when a customer encounters a unique selling proposition (USP) highlighted by a local business. In Chapter 3 of The Essential Local SEO Strategy Guide, we reference how a clear USP underpins SEO, and it’s a topic that deserves a deeper dive. For new neighbors, travelers, and residents in search of new goods and services, the USP is a sign you can hang in many places.

In this article, we’ll actively practice writing compelling USPs for real-world local businesses based on six simple components. Further, I’ll teach you to see a brand you’re marketing from the viewpoint of customers on the basis of user generated content (UGC).

First, what’s a USP?

A unique selling proposition in marketing is a brief statement that’s typically defined as distinguishing a brand and its offerings from its competitors. It’s not the same thing as the catchphrase found in slogans and jingles (e.g. “Reach out and touch someone” or “Just Do It”), which, while memorable, may only vaguely hint at what a business is or does. Instead, a USP should clearly define whether what a business is, does, and has matches the intent of the customer, and the art involved is in learning to convey a lot of meaning in very few words.

If you learn best from real-world examples, here’s an independent grocery store that has put its slogan and mission statement on its website homepage:

If we were tasked with creating a USP, just from this information, we would write something like this:

Shop the oldest and largest organic grocery store in Marin County to actively support our community’s health and sustainability.

If I happen to be looking for a market with a big selection of organics that’s been trusted by locals for many years and I want my dollars to work towards sustainability, my intent will have been perfectly matched by this USP.

Local businesses have an advantage over virtual competitors in that circumstances auto-generate one of the “unique” aspects of the company message: being present in a specific town or city makes your brand a unique resource for people there, as opposed to selling to the world at large. Pair locale with local rarity for a smart combination. The “selling” aspects of this type of content should inspire actionable language on your part; words like “shop”, “experience”, “visit” are mini calls-to-action embedded in the USP. Think of the “proposition” as making an offer you hope the right potential customer can’t refuse because it ideally matches their intent.

There are just 19 words in our sample USP, but it contains multiple intent signals, and now we need to learn how to break those down by type so that you can develop your own messaging for the local brands you market.

Surface QUAAAC components for your strongest USP

Image credit: Hedera Baltica

I recently learned that one of the great secrets to QVC’s multi-billion-dollar success is to get shoppers to ask the question, “Is this me?” and then answer with a, “Yes”. USPs should work just like this! You’ll have noticed that we turned the slogan and mission statement toward the customer in our example USP above, in hopes that they will see themselves in the details. In other words, we’re hoping the customer will ask, “Is this me who wants to shop for organic groceries at a time-honored store, and contribute to sustainability?” and find themselves saying, “Yes”.

Choosing the right details to highlight, when you have a limited amount of space, really matters! Let’s get our ducks in a row with a practice session of writing USPs together, breaking down our options into six basic components:

Quality

If our example grocery store decided that it was the high quality of their inventory that should star in their USP, based on what they’ve learned matters most to their customers, we could write a proposition like this:

Shop all-organic groceries, many sourced locally from our community’s best farmers, for peak quality you can taste!

In other instances, customers’ search for value underlies their quest for quality. They want to know what the highest quality is that they can afford on their budget. In that case, a USP might emphasize cheapness, deals, discounts, or specials. Brands like Imperfect Foods aim to deliver inventory that’s of good quality, if not flawless, and that’s easier on wallets, as made clear by their USP:

Get sustainable, affordable groceries delivered weekly to your door.

The skill required here is to match the economic realities of your customer base to the best quality their money can buy. Whether the inventory is luxury goods or the most affordable deals, nearly all customers want good value.

Uniqueness

If your business model relies on providing something rare, uniqueness might deserve emphasis in your USP. For our grocery store, we might say:

Tired of reading labels? Shop trustingly at Marin County’s only 100% organic grocery store.

Perhaps my favorite example of a USP based on uniqueness comes from Redwood Yurok Canoe Tours, which reads:

Come and explore the powerful Klamath River on a spiritual adventure that will take you back in time, hearing only the quiet chatter of wildlife as you glide along the water’s surface.

This Indigenous-owned business is offering an experience you literally cannot get anywhere else in the world, and it’s a great illustration of building romance around rarity.

Availability

Simple availability can be an easy USP starting point for almost any business, because so many customer searches begin with the question, “I wonder if X business offers X good or service.”

I often recall seeing storefront signage for a business that had started out as “Pens Unlimited” and then presumably appended the slogan “More than just pens” to its messaging as they expanded, leaving me guessing about what the company actually offered. If your inventory is highly varied, it can be a challenge to fit it all into a business name or slogan, but a slightly longer USP can help. Our grocery store might highlight availability like this:

Shop organic produce, dry goods, supplements and award-winning prepared meals at Marin’s largest natural foods store.

As another example, the website of this SMB shoe store may not be state-of-the-art, but their USP immediately answers the question of “I wonder if they have X?”:

Shoe store offering fashionable dress, comfort, boots, and athletic shoes for men and women.

If a potential customer wanted to know if this particular shop had comfort footwear, this USP does the job.

Authority

This is a proposition that works well when customers need a resource they can trust based on the availability of expertise or the proof of longevity. Our grocery store might say:

Shop Marin’s only grocery store owned by a sitting board member of the Organic Trade Association — locals have trusted our organic commitment since 1969.

Certifications can go a long way towards conveying authority. I found information of this kind buried deep in the loam of a Washington plant nursery, which could be brought forward to their homepage as an authority-based USP like this:

Shop plants with three Master Gardeners and two Certified Professional Horticulturists on-site to help you grow your dream garden!

Affinity

Some of my personal favorite USPs send signals of brand-consumer affinity — they convey that the local business operates on the basis of certain values shared by customers. Our sample grocery store is fertile ground for authentic proofs of community building, and could write a USP like this:

Be the change! Shopping with us benefits your whole community, from free organic meal programs for students and elders, to our Deep Green Energy commitment, to profits shared by all employees.

Meanwhile, outdoor outfitter Patagonia takes a similar approach with this USP:

Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.

And sometimes, a USP can blend more than one element. The gorgeous website of The Red Door catering company has signals of both authority and affinity that could be stirred together for an inspirational, aspirational message, like:

MBE-Certified, Women-Owned, ICA member caterers prepare local, organic feasts for your unforgettable event.

Convenience

When ease is paramount for customers, convenience-based USPs can send a good message. Our grocery store might write:

Try convenient online ordering, curbside pickup, and prepared meals, or walk in just minutes from any downtown neighborhood to our organic grocery store.

Sometimes, location is all it takes to convey convenience. I love this ultra-simple USP from Deer Valley Grocery, which happens to have a beautiful waterside destination location:

“Enjoy breakfast and lunch lakeside.”

It can’t get shorter or sweeter than that.

I hope this practice session was useful. Now, we need to determine the most effective components for a particular local business you’re marketing.

Let customer content inspire your USP

Sentiment trends in your reviews, Q&A, and social media comments can point the way to what your customers value most about what your business does. These forms of user-generated content (UGC) can be a big help in determining which elements could be most effective if centered in your USP.

Start by searching Google for your brand name so that your Google Business Profile appears on the left of the screen (if your brand name search doesn’t work, add your city to your query. If that doesn’t work, you may need to learn the basics of local SEO first so that you build enough authority for Google to associate branded searches with your local business listing). Click on the “View All Reviews” portion of your profile and look at the Place Topics Google has surfaced in the oval tabs at the top of your review display.

Place Topics are an accessible, free form of basic sentiment analysis, highlighting topics mentioned most frequently in your reviews. If we had no other information about our grocery store than this, we could write a customer-centric USP along these lines:

Done with Whole Foods? Shop sustainable, fresh produce, our scrumptious salad bar, and healthy vegan choices at our Mill Valley market.

The great thing about Place Topics is that when you click on them, they sort the review corpus to show only reviews that contain the chosen topic. For example, when I click the “produce” tab, this deepens my understanding of exactly what customers are saying about the fruits and veggies at this store:

If we decided produce was uppermost in our customers’ minds, we could refine our USP like this:

Shop “the best produce in Marin” — unlike Whole Foods, we’re 100% organic and locally-owned!

Definitely dig deeply into your reviews to find out what really resonates with your customers. Moz Local customers have the added advantage of our sentiment analysis and trend features to help you go beyond Google and understand dominant review topics across multiple platforms.

If a local business has active social media profiles, customer likes and comments can also provide insight. Looking back through our grocery store’s Facebook posts, I caught the moment early in 2020 when a simple inspirational post received an unusually high amount of likes and loves, and comments from customers saying how much they missed the store and wished delivery was available:

Happily, the business was able to utilize this moment of community interaction to announce the debut of their curbside and delivery service:

A major change in operations, which so many local businesses underwent as a result of the pandemic, could be a strong reason to temporarily alter a company’s core USP for the purpose of quickly disseminating new information. For example, the market might have publicized this message:

Your organic groceries are now available via curbside and delivery in Fairfax and San Anselmo through our new shopping cart.

Other sources of USP-inspiring UGC could include FAQs the business receives via Google Q&A, phone calls, and form submissions — very good reasons to be empowering relevant staff to actively track this type of sentiment. Meanwhile, searcher behavior (if not content) could further refine your USP messaging. Consider using Google Trends or keyword research tools like Moz Keyword Explorer to discover popular search terms related to what your business offers, and that could be effective if incorporated into your proposition.

Where should you publicize your local business USP?

Image Credit: Chris Hottentot

One you’ve put in the work of crafting a strong USP, be sure you are nesting it in as many places as make sense, including:

Website masthead

Website homepage

Website about/mission page

Website contact page

Website location landing pages

Website footer

Website title tags

Website meta description tags

Website Header tags

Alt tags (if appropriate to describing images)

Blog posts

Email campaigns

Email signatures

Google My Business description

Google Posts

Google Q&A (if it answers an FAQ)

Descriptions on all local business listings and review profiles (use Moz Local for a quick data push!)

Carefully-worded review requests in hopes that reviewers will talk about aspects of your USP that matter most to them

Social media profiles

Social media posts

Digital ad campaigns

Guest post profiles

Storefront or in-store signage

Billboards

Radio and television ad campaigns

Print news campaigns

Mailers, circulars, and other print assets

Business cards

Company vehicles

Employee apparel

Company swag

With such amazing, multifarious applications, it’s easy to see the worth of investing time and care into developing a meaningful USP. You might adjust the wording slightly, based on medium, and you might even create several propositions for different purposes, seasons, or testing periods.

What I think you’ll learn from practicing perfecting your USP is that, like so much else in marketing, it comes down to great storytelling in a limited space, with eyes firmly set on engaging customers with a message of readiness that deftly meets their needs.

[bfxenon]

How to Create Your Local Business USP with QUAAAC + UGC

I’m new in town and have never heard of your business before. I’m looking for an explanation that’s as quick and easy to read as a street sign.

You have just a few seconds to convey to me what your local business offers and why customers like it. Then I’ll take a few seconds to determine whether what you’ve said matches my needs.

From this moment forward, we either walk the next steps of the consumer-brand journey arm-in-arm, or I wing off in another direction looking for a better match. I could become a loyal customer for decades, or I might never think of your business again.

That’s how important and fleeting the moment of opportunity can be when a customer encounters a unique selling proposition (USP) highlighted by a local business. In Chapter 3 of The Essential Local SEO Strategy Guide, we reference how a clear USP underpins SEO, and it’s a topic that deserves a deeper dive. For new neighbors, travelers, and residents in search of new goods and services, the USP is a sign you can hang in many places.

In this article, we’ll actively practice writing compelling USPs for real-world local businesses based on six simple components. Further, I’ll teach you to see a brand you’re marketing from the viewpoint of customers on the basis of user generated content (UGC).

First, what’s a USP?

A unique selling proposition in marketing is a brief statement that’s typically defined as distinguishing a brand and its offerings from its competitors. It’s not the same thing as the catchphrase found in slogans and jingles (e.g. “Reach out and touch someone” or “Just Do It”), which, while memorable, may only vaguely hint at what a business is or does. Instead, a USP should clearly define whether what a business is, does, and has matches the intent of the customer, and the art involved is in learning to convey a lot of meaning in very few words.

If you learn best from real-world examples, here’s an independent grocery store that has put its slogan and mission statement on its website homepage:

If we were tasked with creating a USP, just from this information, we would write something like this:

Shop the oldest and largest organic grocery store in Marin County to actively support our community’s health and sustainability.

If I happen to be looking for a market with a big selection of organics that’s been trusted by locals for many years and I want my dollars to work towards sustainability, my intent will have been perfectly matched by this USP.

Local businesses have an advantage over virtual competitors in that circumstances auto-generate one of the “unique” aspects of the company message: being present in a specific town or city makes your brand a unique resource for people there, as opposed to selling to the world at large. Pair locale with local rarity for a smart combination. The “selling” aspects of this type of content should inspire actionable language on your part; words like “shop”, “experience”, “visit” are mini calls-to-action embedded in the USP. Think of the “proposition” as making an offer you hope the right potential customer can’t refuse because it ideally matches their intent.

There are just 19 words in our sample USP, but it contains multiple intent signals, and now we need to learn how to break those down by type so that you can develop your own messaging for the local brands you market.

Surface QUAAAC components for your strongest USP

Image credit: Hedera Baltica

I recently learned that one of the great secrets to QVC’s multi-billion-dollar success is to get shoppers to ask the question, “Is this me?” and then answer with a, “Yes”. USPs should work just like this! You’ll have noticed that we turned the slogan and mission statement toward the customer in our example USP above, in hopes that they will see themselves in the details. In other words, we’re hoping the customer will ask, “Is this me who wants to shop for organic groceries at a time-honored store, and contribute to sustainability?” and find themselves saying, “Yes”.

Choosing the right details to highlight, when you have a limited amount of space, really matters! Let’s get our ducks in a row with a practice session of writing USPs together, breaking down our options into six basic components:

Quality

If our example grocery store decided that it was the high quality of their inventory that should star in their USP, based on what they’ve learned matters most to their customers, we could write a proposition like this:

Shop all-organic groceries, many sourced locally from our community’s best farmers, for peak quality you can taste!

In other instances, customers’ search for value underlies their quest for quality. They want to know what the highest quality is that they can afford on their budget. In that case, a USP might emphasize cheapness, deals, discounts, or specials. Brands like Imperfect Foods aim to deliver inventory that’s of good quality, if not flawless, and that’s easier on wallets, as made clear by their USP:

Get sustainable, affordable groceries delivered weekly to your door.

The skill required here is to match the economic realities of your customer base to the best quality their money can buy. Whether the inventory is luxury goods or the most affordable deals, nearly all customers want good value.

Uniqueness

If your business model relies on providing something rare, uniqueness might deserve emphasis in your USP. For our grocery store, we might say:

Tired of reading labels? Shop trustingly at Marin County’s only 100% organic grocery store.

Perhaps my favorite example of a USP based on uniqueness comes from Redwood Yurok Canoe Tours, which reads:

Come and explore the powerful Klamath River on a spiritual adventure that will take you back in time, hearing only the quiet chatter of wildlife as you glide along the water’s surface.

This Indigenous-owned business is offering an experience you literally cannot get anywhere else in the world, and it’s a great illustration of building romance around rarity.

Availability

Simple availability can be an easy USP starting point for almost any business, because so many customer searches begin with the question, “I wonder if X business offers X good or service.”

I often recall seeing storefront signage for a business that had started out as “Pens Unlimited” and then presumably appended the slogan “More than just pens” to its messaging as they expanded, leaving me guessing about what the company actually offered. If your inventory is highly varied, it can be a challenge to fit it all into a business name or slogan, but a slightly longer USP can help. Our grocery store might highlight availability like this:

Shop organic produce, dry goods, supplements and award-winning prepared meals at Marin’s largest natural foods store.

As another example, the website of this SMB shoe store may not be state-of-the-art, but their USP immediately answers the question of “I wonder if they have X?”:

Shoe store offering fashionable dress, comfort, boots, and athletic shoes for men and women.

If a potential customer wanted to know if this particular shop had comfort footwear, this USP does the job.

Authority

This is a proposition that works well when customers need a resource they can trust based on the availability of expertise or the proof of longevity. Our grocery store might say:

Shop Marin’s only grocery store owned by a sitting board member of the Organic Trade Association — locals have trusted our organic commitment since 1969.

Certifications can go a long way towards conveying authority. I found information of this kind buried deep in the loam of a Washington plant nursery, which could be brought forward to their homepage as an authority-based USP like this:

Shop plants with three Master Gardeners and two Certified Professional Horticulturists on-site to help you grow your dream garden!

Affinity

Some of my personal favorite USPs send signals of brand-consumer affinity — they convey that the local business operates on the basis of certain values shared by customers. Our sample grocery store is fertile ground for authentic proofs of community building, and could write a USP like this:

Be the change! Shopping with us benefits your whole community, from free organic meal programs for students and elders, to our Deep Green Energy commitment, to profits shared by all employees.

Meanwhile, outdoor outfitter Patagonia takes a similar approach with this USP:

Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.

And sometimes, a USP can blend more than one element. The gorgeous website of The Red Door catering company has signals of both authority and affinity that could be stirred together for an inspirational, aspirational message, like:

MBE-Certified, Women-Owned, ICA member caterers prepare local, organic feasts for your unforgettable event.

Convenience

When ease is paramount for customers, convenience-based USPs can send a good message. Our grocery store might write:

Try convenient online ordering, curbside pickup, and prepared meals, or walk in just minutes from any downtown neighborhood to our organic grocery store.

Sometimes, location is all it takes to convey convenience. I love this ultra-simple USP from Deer Valley Grocery, which happens to have a beautiful waterside destination location:

“Enjoy breakfast and lunch lakeside.”

It can’t get shorter or sweeter than that.

I hope this practice session was useful. Now, we need to determine the most effective components for a particular local business you’re marketing.

Let customer content inspire your USP

Sentiment trends in your reviews, Q&A, and social media comments can point the way to what your customers value most about what your business does. These forms of user-generated content (UGC) can be a big help in determining which elements could be most effective if centered in your USP.

Start by searching Google for your brand name so that your Google Business Profile appears on the left of the screen (if your brand name search doesn’t work, add your city to your query. If that doesn’t work, you may need to learn the basics of local SEO first so that you build enough authority for Google to associate branded searches with your local business listing). Click on the “View All Reviews” portion of your profile and look at the Place Topics Google has surfaced in the oval tabs at the top of your review display.

Place Topics are an accessible, free form of basic sentiment analysis, highlighting topics mentioned most frequently in your reviews. If we had no other information about our grocery store than this, we could write a customer-centric USP along these lines:

Done with Whole Foods? Shop sustainable, fresh produce, our scrumptious salad bar, and healthy vegan choices at our Mill Valley market.

The great thing about Place Topics is that when you click on them, they sort the review corpus to show only reviews that contain the chosen topic. For example, when I click the “produce” tab, this deepens my understanding of exactly what customers are saying about the fruits and veggies at this store:

If we decided produce was uppermost in our customers’ minds, we could refine our USP like this:

Shop “the best produce in Marin” — unlike Whole Foods, we’re 100% organic and locally-owned!

Definitely dig deeply into your reviews to find out what really resonates with your customers. Moz Local customers have the added advantage of our sentiment analysis and trend features to help you go beyond Google and understand dominant review topics across multiple platforms.

If a local business has active social media profiles, customer likes and comments can also provide insight. Looking back through our grocery store’s Facebook posts, I caught the moment early in 2020 when a simple inspirational post received an unusually high amount of likes and loves, and comments from customers saying how much they missed the store and wished delivery was available:

Happily, the business was able to utilize this moment of community interaction to announce the debut of their curbside and delivery service:

A major change in operations, which so many local businesses underwent as a result of the pandemic, could be a strong reason to temporarily alter a company’s core USP for the purpose of quickly disseminating new information. For example, the market might have publicized this message:

Your organic groceries are now available via curbside and delivery in Fairfax and San Anselmo through our new shopping cart.

Other sources of USP-inspiring UGC could include FAQs the business receives via Google Q&A, phone calls, and form submissions — very good reasons to be empowering relevant staff to actively track this type of sentiment. Meanwhile, searcher behavior (if not content) could further refine your USP messaging. Consider using Google Trends or keyword research tools like Moz Keyword Explorer to discover popular search terms related to what your business offers, and that could be effective if incorporated into your proposition.

Where should you publicize your local business USP?

Image Credit: Chris Hottentot

One you’ve put in the work of crafting a strong USP, be sure you are nesting it in as many places as make sense, including:

Website masthead

Website homepage

Website about/mission page

Website contact page

Website location landing pages

Website footer

Website title tags

Website meta description tags

Website Header tags

Alt tags (if appropriate to describing images)

Blog posts

Email campaigns

Email signatures

Google My Business description

Google Posts

Google Q&A (if it answers an FAQ)

Descriptions on all local business listings and review profiles (use Moz Local for a quick data push!)

Carefully-worded review requests in hopes that reviewers will talk about aspects of your USP that matter most to them

Social media profiles

Social media posts

Digital ad campaigns

Guest post profiles

Storefront or in-store signage

Billboards

Radio and television ad campaigns

Print news campaigns

Mailers, circulars, and other print assets

Business cards

Company vehicles

Employee apparel

Company swag

With such amazing, multifarious applications, it’s easy to see the worth of investing time and care into developing a meaningful USP. You might adjust the wording slightly, based on medium, and you might even create several propositions for different purposes, seasons, or testing periods.

What I think you’ll learn from practicing perfecting your USP is that, like so much else in marketing, it comes down to great storytelling in a limited space, with eyes firmly set on engaging customers with a message of readiness that deftly meets their needs.

[thanhtuandoan89]

How to Create Your Local Business USP with QUAAAC + UGC

I’m new in town and have never heard of your business before. I’m looking for an explanation that’s as quick and easy to read as a street sign.

You have just a few seconds to convey to me what your local business offers and why customers like it. Then I’ll take a few seconds to determine whether what you’ve said matches my needs.

From this moment forward, we either walk the next steps of the consumer-brand journey arm-in-arm, or I wing off in another direction looking for a better match. I could become a loyal customer for decades, or I might never think of your business again.

That’s how important and fleeting the moment of opportunity can be when a customer encounters a unique selling proposition (USP) highlighted by a local business. In Chapter 3 of The Essential Local SEO Strategy Guide, we reference how a clear USP underpins SEO, and it’s a topic that deserves a deeper dive. For new neighbors, travelers, and residents in search of new goods and services, the USP is a sign you can hang in many places.

In this article, we’ll actively practice writing compelling USPs for real-world local businesses based on six simple components. Further, I’ll teach you to see a brand you’re marketing from the viewpoint of customers on the basis of user generated content (UGC).

First, what’s a USP?

A unique selling proposition in marketing is a brief statement that’s typically defined as distinguishing a brand and its offerings from its competitors. It’s not the same thing as the catchphrase found in slogans and jingles (e.g. “Reach out and touch someone” or “Just Do It”), which, while memorable, may only vaguely hint at what a business is or does. Instead, a USP should clearly define whether what a business is, does, and has matches the intent of the customer, and the art involved is in learning to convey a lot of meaning in very few words.

If you learn best from real-world examples, here’s an independent grocery store that has put its slogan and mission statement on its website homepage:

If we were tasked with creating a USP, just from this information, we would write something like this:

Shop the oldest and largest organic grocery store in Marin County to actively support our community’s health and sustainability.

If I happen to be looking for a market with a big selection of organics that’s been trusted by locals for many years and I want my dollars to work towards sustainability, my intent will have been perfectly matched by this USP.

Local businesses have an advantage over virtual competitors in that circumstances auto-generate one of the “unique” aspects of the company message: being present in a specific town or city makes your brand a unique resource for people there, as opposed to selling to the world at large. Pair locale with local rarity for a smart combination. The “selling” aspects of this type of content should inspire actionable language on your part; words like “shop”, “experience”, “visit” are mini calls-to-action embedded in the USP. Think of the “proposition” as making an offer you hope the right potential customer can’t refuse because it ideally matches their intent.

There are just 19 words in our sample USP, but it contains multiple intent signals, and now we need to learn how to break those down by type so that you can develop your own messaging for the local brands you market.

Surface QUAAAC components for your strongest USP

Image credit: Hedera Baltica

I recently learned that one of the great secrets to QVC’s multi-billion-dollar success is to get shoppers to ask the question, “Is this me?” and then answer with a, “Yes”. USPs should work just like this! You’ll have noticed that we turned the slogan and mission statement toward the customer in our example USP above, in hopes that they will see themselves in the details. In other words, we’re hoping the customer will ask, “Is this me who wants to shop for organic groceries at a time-honored store, and contribute to sustainability?” and find themselves saying, “Yes”.

Choosing the right details to highlight, when you have a limited amount of space, really matters! Let’s get our ducks in a row with a practice session of writing USPs together, breaking down our options into six basic components:

Quality

If our example grocery store decided that it was the high quality of their inventory that should star in their USP, based on what they’ve learned matters most to their customers, we could write a proposition like this:

Shop all-organic groceries, many sourced locally from our community’s best farmers, for peak quality you can taste!

In other instances, customers’ search for value underlies their quest for quality. They want to know what the highest quality is that they can afford on their budget. In that case, a USP might emphasize cheapness, deals, discounts, or specials. Brands like Imperfect Foods aim to deliver inventory that’s of good quality, if not flawless, and that’s easier on wallets, as made clear by their USP:

Get sustainable, affordable groceries delivered weekly to your door.

The skill required here is to match the economic realities of your customer base to the best quality their money can buy. Whether the inventory is luxury goods or the most affordable deals, nearly all customers want good value.

Uniqueness

If your business model relies on providing something rare, uniqueness might deserve emphasis in your USP. For our grocery store, we might say:

Tired of reading labels? Shop trustingly at Marin County’s only 100% organic grocery store.

Perhaps my favorite example of a USP based on uniqueness comes from Redwood Yurok Canoe Tours, which reads:

Come and explore the powerful Klamath River on a spiritual adventure that will take you back in time, hearing only the quiet chatter of wildlife as you glide along the water’s surface.

This Indigenous-owned business is offering an experience you literally cannot get anywhere else in the world, and it’s a great illustration of building romance around rarity.

Availability

Simple availability can be an easy USP starting point for almost any business, because so many customer searches begin with the question, “I wonder if X business offers X good or service.”

I often recall seeing storefront signage for a business that had started out as “Pens Unlimited” and then presumably appended the slogan “More than just pens” to its messaging as they expanded, leaving me guessing about what the company actually offered. If your inventory is highly varied, it can be a challenge to fit it all into a business name or slogan, but a slightly longer USP can help. Our grocery store might highlight availability like this:

Shop organic produce, dry goods, supplements and award-winning prepared meals at Marin’s largest natural foods store.

As another example, the website of this SMB shoe store may not be state-of-the-art, but their USP immediately answers the question of “I wonder if they have X?”:

Shoe store offering fashionable dress, comfort, boots, and athletic shoes for men and women.

If a potential customer wanted to know if this particular shop had comfort footwear, this USP does the job.

Authority

This is a proposition that works well when customers need a resource they can trust based on the availability of expertise or the proof of longevity. Our grocery store might say:

Shop Marin’s only grocery store owned by a sitting board member of the Organic Trade Association — locals have trusted our organic commitment since 1969.

Certifications can go a long way towards conveying authority. I found information of this kind buried deep in the loam of a Washington plant nursery, which could be brought forward to their homepage as an authority-based USP like this:

Shop plants with three Master Gardeners and two Certified Professional Horticulturists on-site to help you grow your dream garden!

Affinity

Some of my personal favorite USPs send signals of brand-consumer affinity — they convey that the local business operates on the basis of certain values shared by customers. Our sample grocery store is fertile ground for authentic proofs of community building, and could write a USP like this:

Be the change! Shopping with us benefits your whole community, from free organic meal programs for students and elders, to our Deep Green Energy commitment, to profits shared by all employees.

Meanwhile, outdoor outfitter Patagonia takes a similar approach with this USP:

Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.

And sometimes, a USP can blend more than one element. The gorgeous website of The Red Door catering company has signals of both authority and affinity that could be stirred together for an inspirational, aspirational message, like:

MBE-Certified, Women-Owned, ICA member caterers prepare local, organic feasts for your unforgettable event.

Convenience

When ease is paramount for customers, convenience-based USPs can send a good message. Our grocery store might write:

Try convenient online ordering, curbside pickup, and prepared meals, or walk in just minutes from any downtown neighborhood to our organic grocery store.

Sometimes, location is all it takes to convey convenience. I love this ultra-simple USP from Deer Valley Grocery, which happens to have a beautiful waterside destination location:

“Enjoy breakfast and lunch lakeside.”

It can’t get shorter or sweeter than that.

I hope this practice session was useful. Now, we need to determine the most effective components for a particular local business you’re marketing.

Let customer content inspire your USP

Sentiment trends in your reviews, Q&A, and social media comments can point the way to what your customers value most about what your business does. These forms of user-generated content (UGC) can be a big help in determining which elements could be most effective if centered in your USP.

Start by searching Google for your brand name so that your Google Business Profile appears on the left of the screen (if your brand name search doesn’t work, add your city to your query. If that doesn’t work, you may need to learn the basics of local SEO first so that you build enough authority for Google to associate branded searches with your local business listing). Click on the “View All Reviews” portion of your profile and look at the Place Topics Google has surfaced in the oval tabs at the top of your review display.

Place Topics are an accessible, free form of basic sentiment analysis, highlighting topics mentioned most frequently in your reviews. If we had no other information about our grocery store than this, we could write a customer-centric USP along these lines:

Done with Whole Foods? Shop sustainable, fresh produce, our scrumptious salad bar, and healthy vegan choices at our Mill Valley market.

The great thing about Place Topics is that when you click on them, they sort the review corpus to show only reviews that contain the chosen topic. For example, when I click the “produce” tab, this deepens my understanding of exactly what customers are saying about the fruits and veggies at this store:

If we decided produce was uppermost in our customers’ minds, we could refine our USP like this:

Shop “the best produce in Marin” — unlike Whole Foods, we’re 100% organic and locally-owned!

Definitely dig deeply into your reviews to find out what really resonates with your customers. Moz Local customers have the added advantage of our sentiment analysis and trend features to help you go beyond Google and understand dominant review topics across multiple platforms.

If a local business has active social media profiles, customer likes and comments can also provide insight. Looking back through our grocery store’s Facebook posts, I caught the moment early in 2020 when a simple inspirational post received an unusually high amount of likes and loves, and comments from customers saying how much they missed the store and wished delivery was available:

Happily, the business was able to utilize this moment of community interaction to announce the debut of their curbside and delivery service:

A major change in operations, which so many local businesses underwent as a result of the pandemic, could be a strong reason to temporarily alter a company’s core USP for the purpose of quickly disseminating new information. For example, the market might have publicized this message:

Your organic groceries are now available via curbside and delivery in Fairfax and San Anselmo through our new shopping cart.

Other sources of USP-inspiring UGC could include FAQs the business receives via Google Q&A, phone calls, and form submissions — very good reasons to be empowering relevant staff to actively track this type of sentiment. Meanwhile, searcher behavior (if not content) could further refine your USP messaging. Consider using Google Trends or keyword research tools like Moz Keyword Explorer to discover popular search terms related to what your business offers, and that could be effective if incorporated into your proposition.

Where should you publicize your local business USP?

Image Credit: Chris Hottentot

One you’ve put in the work of crafting a strong USP, be sure you are nesting it in as many places as make sense, including:

Website masthead

Website homepage

Website about/mission page

Website contact page

Website location landing pages

Website footer

Website title tags

Website meta description tags

Website Header tags

Alt tags (if appropriate to describing images)

Blog posts

Email campaigns

Email signatures

Google My Business description

Google Posts

Google Q&A (if it answers an FAQ)

Descriptions on all local business listings and review profiles (use Moz Local for a quick data push!)

Carefully-worded review requests in hopes that reviewers will talk about aspects of your USP that matter most to them

Social media profiles

Social media posts

Digital ad campaigns

Guest post profiles

Storefront or in-store signage

Billboards

Radio and television ad campaigns

Print news campaigns

Mailers, circulars, and other print assets

Business cards

Company vehicles

Employee apparel

Company swag

With such amazing, multifarious applications, it’s easy to see the worth of investing time and care into developing a meaningful USP. You might adjust the wording slightly, based on medium, and you might even create several propositions for different purposes, seasons, or testing periods.

What I think you’ll learn from practicing perfecting your USP is that, like so much else in marketing, it comes down to great storytelling in a limited space, with eyes firmly set on engaging customers with a message of readiness that deftly meets their needs.

[kjt-lawyers]

How to Create Your Local Business USP with QUAAAC + UGC

I’m new in town and have never heard of your business before. I’m looking for an explanation that’s as quick and easy to read as a street sign.

You have just a few seconds to convey to me what your local business offers and why customers like it. Then I’ll take a few seconds to determine whether what you’ve said matches my needs.

From this moment forward, we either walk the next steps of the consumer-brand journey arm-in-arm, or I wing off in another direction looking for a better match. I could become a loyal customer for decades, or I might never think of your business again.

That’s how important and fleeting the moment of opportunity can be when a customer encounters a unique selling proposition (USP) highlighted by a local business. In Chapter 3 of The Essential Local SEO Strategy Guide, we reference how a clear USP underpins SEO, and it’s a topic that deserves a deeper dive. For new neighbors, travelers, and residents in search of new goods and services, the USP is a sign you can hang in many places.

In this article, we’ll actively practice writing compelling USPs for real-world local businesses based on six simple components. Further, I’ll teach you to see a brand you’re marketing from the viewpoint of customers on the basis of user generated content (UGC).

First, what’s a USP?

A unique selling proposition in marketing is a brief statement that’s typically defined as distinguishing a brand and its offerings from its competitors. It’s not the same thing as the catchphrase found in slogans and jingles (e.g. “Reach out and touch someone” or “Just Do It”), which, while memorable, may only vaguely hint at what a business is or does. Instead, a USP should clearly define whether what a business is, does, and has matches the intent of the customer, and the art involved is in learning to convey a lot of meaning in very few words.

If you learn best from real-world examples, here’s an independent grocery store that has put its slogan and mission statement on its website homepage:

If we were tasked with creating a USP, just from this information, we would write something like this:

Shop the oldest and largest organic grocery store in Marin County to actively support our community’s health and sustainability.

If I happen to be looking for a market with a big selection of organics that’s been trusted by locals for many years and I want my dollars to work towards sustainability, my intent will have been perfectly matched by this USP.

Local businesses have an advantage over virtual competitors in that circumstances auto-generate one of the “unique” aspects of the company message: being present in a specific town or city makes your brand a unique resource for people there, as opposed to selling to the world at large. Pair locale with local rarity for a smart combination. The “selling” aspects of this type of content should inspire actionable language on your part; words like “shop”, “experience”, “visit” are mini calls-to-action embedded in the USP. Think of the “proposition” as making an offer you hope the right potential customer can’t refuse because it ideally matches their intent.

There are just 19 words in our sample USP, but it contains multiple intent signals, and now we need to learn how to break those down by type so that you can develop your own messaging for the local brands you market.

Surface QUAAAC components for your strongest USP

Image credit: Hedera Baltica

I recently learned that one of the great secrets to QVC’s multi-billion-dollar success is to get shoppers to ask the question, “Is this me?” and then answer with a, “Yes”. USPs should work just like this! You’ll have noticed that we turned the slogan and mission statement toward the customer in our example USP above, in hopes that they will see themselves in the details. In other words, we’re hoping the customer will ask, “Is this me who wants to shop for organic groceries at a time-honored store, and contribute to sustainability?” and find themselves saying, “Yes”.

Choosing the right details to highlight, when you have a limited amount of space, really matters! Let’s get our ducks in a row with a practice session of writing USPs together, breaking down our options into six basic components:

Quality

If our example grocery store decided that it was the high quality of their inventory that should star in their USP, based on what they’ve learned matters most to their customers, we could write a proposition like this:

Shop all-organic groceries, many sourced locally from our community’s best farmers, for peak quality you can taste!

In other instances, customers’ search for value underlies their quest for quality. They want to know what the highest quality is that they can afford on their budget. In that case, a USP might emphasize cheapness, deals, discounts, or specials. Brands like Imperfect Foods aim to deliver inventory that’s of good quality, if not flawless, and that’s easier on wallets, as made clear by their USP:

Get sustainable, affordable groceries delivered weekly to your door.

The skill required here is to match the economic realities of your customer base to the best quality their money can buy. Whether the inventory is luxury goods or the most affordable deals, nearly all customers want good value.

Uniqueness

If your business model relies on providing something rare, uniqueness might deserve emphasis in your USP. For our grocery store, we might say:

Tired of reading labels? Shop trustingly at Marin County’s only 100% organic grocery store.

Perhaps my favorite example of a USP based on uniqueness comes from Redwood Yurok Canoe Tours, which reads:

Come and explore the powerful Klamath River on a spiritual adventure that will take you back in time, hearing only the quiet chatter of wildlife as you glide along the water’s surface.

This Indigenous-owned business is offering an experience you literally cannot get anywhere else in the world, and it’s a great illustration of building romance around rarity.

Availability

Simple availability can be an easy USP starting point for almost any business, because so many customer searches begin with the question, “I wonder if X business offers X good or service.”

I often recall seeing storefront signage for a business that had started out as “Pens Unlimited” and then presumably appended the slogan “More than just pens” to its messaging as they expanded, leaving me guessing about what the company actually offered. If your inventory is highly varied, it can be a challenge to fit it all into a business name or slogan, but a slightly longer USP can help. Our grocery store might highlight availability like this:

Shop organic produce, dry goods, supplements and award-winning prepared meals at Marin’s largest natural foods store.

As another example, the website of this SMB shoe store may not be state-of-the-art, but their USP immediately answers the question of “I wonder if they have X?”:

Shoe store offering fashionable dress, comfort, boots, and athletic shoes for men and women.

If a potential customer wanted to know if this particular shop had comfort footwear, this USP does the job.

Authority

This is a proposition that works well when customers need a resource they can trust based on the availability of expertise or the proof of longevity. Our grocery store might say:

Shop Marin’s only grocery store owned by a sitting board member of the Organic Trade Association — locals have trusted our organic commitment since 1969.

Certifications can go a long way towards conveying authority. I found information of this kind buried deep in the loam of a Washington plant nursery, which could be brought forward to their homepage as an authority-based USP like this:

Shop plants with three Master Gardeners and two Certified Professional Horticulturists on-site to help you grow your dream garden!

Affinity

Some of my personal favorite USPs send signals of brand-consumer affinity — they convey that the local business operates on the basis of certain values shared by customers. Our sample grocery store is fertile ground for authentic proofs of community building, and could write a USP like this:

Be the change! Shopping with us benefits your whole community, from free organic meal programs for students and elders, to our Deep Green Energy commitment, to profits shared by all employees.

Meanwhile, outdoor outfitter Patagonia takes a similar approach with this USP:

Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.

And sometimes, a USP can blend more than one element. The gorgeous website of The Red Door catering company has signals of both authority and affinity that could be stirred together for an inspirational, aspirational message, like:

MBE-Certified, Women-Owned, ICA member caterers prepare local, organic feasts for your unforgettable event.

Convenience

When ease is paramount for customers, convenience-based USPs can send a good message. Our grocery store might write:

Try convenient online ordering, curbside pickup, and prepared meals, or walk in just minutes from any downtown neighborhood to our organic grocery store.

Sometimes, location is all it takes to convey convenience. I love this ultra-simple USP from Deer Valley Grocery, which happens to have a beautiful waterside destination location:

“Enjoy breakfast and lunch lakeside.”

It can’t get shorter or sweeter than that.

I hope this practice session was useful. Now, we need to determine the most effective components for a particular local business you’re marketing.

Let customer content inspire your USP

Sentiment trends in your reviews, Q&A, and social media comments can point the way to what your customers value most about what your business does. These forms of user-generated content (UGC) can be a big help in determining which elements could be most effective if centered in your USP.

Start by searching Google for your brand name so that your Google Business Profile appears on the left of the screen (if your brand name search doesn’t work, add your city to your query. If that doesn’t work, you may need to learn the basics of local SEO first so that you build enough authority for Google to associate branded searches with your local business listing). Click on the “View All Reviews” portion of your profile and look at the Place Topics Google has surfaced in the oval tabs at the top of your review display.

Place Topics are an accessible, free form of basic sentiment analysis, highlighting topics mentioned most frequently in your reviews. If we had no other information about our grocery store than this, we could write a customer-centric USP along these lines:

Done with Whole Foods? Shop sustainable, fresh produce, our scrumptious salad bar, and healthy vegan choices at our Mill Valley market.

The great thing about Place Topics is that when you click on them, they sort the review corpus to show only reviews that contain the chosen topic. For example, when I click the “produce” tab, this deepens my understanding of exactly what customers are saying about the fruits and veggies at this store:

If we decided produce was uppermost in our customers’ minds, we could refine our USP like this:

Shop “the best produce in Marin” — unlike Whole Foods, we’re 100% organic and locally-owned!

Definitely dig deeply into your reviews to find out what really resonates with your customers. Moz Local customers have the added advantage of our sentiment analysis and trend features to help you go beyond Google and understand dominant review topics across multiple platforms.

If a local business has active social media profiles, customer likes and comments can also provide insight. Looking back through our grocery store’s Facebook posts, I caught the moment early in 2020 when a simple inspirational post received an unusually high amount of likes and loves, and comments from customers saying how much they missed the store and wished delivery was available:

Happily, the business was able to utilize this moment of community interaction to announce the debut of their curbside and delivery service:

A major change in operations, which so many local businesses underwent as a result of the pandemic, could be a strong reason to temporarily alter a company’s core USP for the purpose of quickly disseminating new information. For example, the market might have publicized this message:

Your organic groceries are now available via curbside and delivery in Fairfax and San Anselmo through our new shopping cart.

Other sources of USP-inspiring UGC could include FAQs the business receives via Google Q&A, phone calls, and form submissions — very good reasons to be empowering relevant staff to actively track this type of sentiment. Meanwhile, searcher behavior (if not content) could further refine your USP messaging. Consider using Google Trends or keyword research tools like Moz Keyword Explorer to discover popular search terms related to what your business offers, and that could be effective if incorporated into your proposition.

Where should you publicize your local business USP?

Image Credit: Chris Hottentot

One you’ve put in the work of crafting a strong USP, be sure you are nesting it in as many places as make sense, including:

Website masthead

Website homepage

Website about/mission page

Website contact page

Website location landing pages

Website footer

Website title tags

Website meta description tags

Website Header tags

Alt tags (if appropriate to describing images)

Blog posts

Email campaigns

Email signatures

Google My Business description

Google Posts

Google Q&A (if it answers an FAQ)

Descriptions on all local business listings and review profiles (use Moz Local for a quick data push!)

Carefully-worded review requests in hopes that reviewers will talk about aspects of your USP that matter most to them

Social media profiles

Social media posts

Digital ad campaigns

Guest post profiles

Storefront or in-store signage

Billboards

Radio and television ad campaigns

Print news campaigns

Mailers, circulars, and other print assets

Business cards

Company vehicles

Employee apparel

Company swag

With such amazing, multifarious applications, it’s easy to see the worth of investing time and care into developing a meaningful USP. You might adjust the wording slightly, based on medium, and you might even create several propositions for different purposes, seasons, or testing periods.

What I think you’ll learn from practicing perfecting your USP is that, like so much else in marketing, it comes down to great storytelling in a limited space, with eyes firmly set on engaging customers with a message of readiness that deftly meets their needs.

[gamebazu]

How to Create Your Local Business USP with QUAAAC + UGC

I’m new in town and have never heard of your business before. I’m looking for an explanation that’s as quick and easy to read as a street sign.

You have just a few seconds to convey to me what your local business offers and why customers like it. Then I’ll take a few seconds to determine whether what you’ve said matches my needs.

From this moment forward, we either walk the next steps of the consumer-brand journey arm-in-arm, or I wing off in another direction looking for a better match. I could become a loyal customer for decades, or I might never think of your business again.

That’s how important and fleeting the moment of opportunity can be when a customer encounters a unique selling proposition (USP) highlighted by a local business. In Chapter 3 of The Essential Local SEO Strategy Guide, we reference how a clear USP underpins SEO, and it’s a topic that deserves a deeper dive. For new neighbors, travelers, and residents in search of new goods and services, the USP is a sign you can hang in many places.

In this article, we’ll actively practice writing compelling USPs for real-world local businesses based on six simple components. Further, I’ll teach you to see a brand you’re marketing from the viewpoint of customers on the basis of user generated content (UGC).

First, what’s a USP?

A unique selling proposition in marketing is a brief statement that’s typically defined as distinguishing a brand and its offerings from its competitors. It’s not the same thing as the catchphrase found in slogans and jingles (e.g. “Reach out and touch someone” or “Just Do It”), which, while memorable, may only vaguely hint at what a business is or does. Instead, a USP should clearly define whether what a business is, does, and has matches the intent of the customer, and the art involved is in learning to convey a lot of meaning in very few words.

If you learn best from real-world examples, here’s an independent grocery store that has put its slogan and mission statement on its website homepage:

If we were tasked with creating a USP, just from this information, we would write something like this:

Shop the oldest and largest organic grocery store in Marin County to actively support our community’s health and sustainability.

If I happen to be looking for a market with a big selection of organics that’s been trusted by locals for many years and I want my dollars to work towards sustainability, my intent will have been perfectly matched by this USP.

Local businesses have an advantage over virtual competitors in that circumstances auto-generate one of the “unique” aspects of the company message: being present in a specific town or city makes your brand a unique resource for people there, as opposed to selling to the world at large. Pair locale with local rarity for a smart combination. The “selling” aspects of this type of content should inspire actionable language on your part; words like “shop”, “experience”, “visit” are mini calls-to-action embedded in the USP. Think of the “proposition” as making an offer you hope the right potential customer can’t refuse because it ideally matches their intent.

There are just 19 words in our sample USP, but it contains multiple intent signals, and now we need to learn how to break those down by type so that you can develop your own messaging for the local brands you market.

Surface QUAAAC components for your strongest USP

Image credit: Hedera Baltica

I recently learned that one of the great secrets to QVC’s multi-billion-dollar success is to get shoppers to ask the question, “Is this me?” and then answer with a, “Yes”. USPs should work just like this! You’ll have noticed that we turned the slogan and mission statement toward the customer in our example USP above, in hopes that they will see themselves in the details. In other words, we’re hoping the customer will ask, “Is this me who wants to shop for organic groceries at a time-honored store, and contribute to sustainability?” and find themselves saying, “Yes”.

Choosing the right details to highlight, when you have a limited amount of space, really matters! Let’s get our ducks in a row with a practice session of writing USPs together, breaking down our options into six basic components:

Quality

If our example grocery store decided that it was the high quality of their inventory that should star in their USP, based on what they’ve learned matters most to their customers, we could write a proposition like this:

Shop all-organic groceries, many sourced locally from our community’s best farmers, for peak quality you can taste!

In other instances, customers’ search for value underlies their quest for quality. They want to know what the highest quality is that they can afford on their budget. In that case, a USP might emphasize cheapness, deals, discounts, or specials. Brands like Imperfect Foods aim to deliver inventory that’s of good quality, if not flawless, and that’s easier on wallets, as made clear by their USP:

Get sustainable, affordable groceries delivered weekly to your door.

The skill required here is to match the economic realities of your customer base to the best quality their money can buy. Whether the inventory is luxury goods or the most affordable deals, nearly all customers want good value.

Uniqueness

If your business model relies on providing something rare, uniqueness might deserve emphasis in your USP. For our grocery store, we might say:

Tired of reading labels? Shop trustingly at Marin County’s only 100% organic grocery store.

Perhaps my favorite example of a USP based on uniqueness comes from Redwood Yurok Canoe Tours, which reads:

Come and explore the powerful Klamath River on a spiritual adventure that will take you back in time, hearing only the quiet chatter of wildlife as you glide along the water’s surface.

This Indigenous-owned business is offering an experience you literally cannot get anywhere else in the world, and it’s a great illustration of building romance around rarity.

Availability

Simple availability can be an easy USP starting point for almost any business, because so many customer searches begin with the question, “I wonder if X business offers X good or service.”

I often recall seeing storefront signage for a business that had started out as “Pens Unlimited” and then presumably appended the slogan “More than just pens” to its messaging as they expanded, leaving me guessing about what the company actually offered. If your inventory is highly varied, it can be a challenge to fit it all into a business name or slogan, but a slightly longer USP can help. Our grocery store might highlight availability like this:

Shop organic produce, dry goods, supplements and award-winning prepared meals at Marin’s largest natural foods store.

As another example, the website of this SMB shoe store may not be state-of-the-art, but their USP immediately answers the question of “I wonder if they have X?”:

Shoe store offering fashionable dress, comfort, boots, and athletic shoes for men and women.

If a potential customer wanted to know if this particular shop had comfort footwear, this USP does the job.

Authority

This is a proposition that works well when customers need a resource they can trust based on the availability of expertise or the proof of longevity. Our grocery store might say:

Shop Marin’s only grocery store owned by a sitting board member of the Organic Trade Association — locals have trusted our organic commitment since 1969.

Certifications can go a long way towards conveying authority. I found information of this kind buried deep in the loam of a Washington plant nursery, which could be brought forward to their homepage as an authority-based USP like this:

Shop plants with three Master Gardeners and two Certified Professional Horticulturists on-site to help you grow your dream garden!

Affinity

Some of my personal favorite USPs send signals of brand-consumer affinity — they convey that the local business operates on the basis of certain values shared by customers. Our sample grocery store is fertile ground for authentic proofs of community building, and could write a USP like this:

Be the change! Shopping with us benefits your whole community, from free organic meal programs for students and elders, to our Deep Green Energy commitment, to profits shared by all employees.

Meanwhile, outdoor outfitter Patagonia takes a similar approach with this USP:

Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.

And sometimes, a USP can blend more than one element. The gorgeous website of The Red Door catering company has signals of both authority and affinity that could be stirred together for an inspirational, aspirational message, like:

MBE-Certified, Women-Owned, ICA member caterers prepare local, organic feasts for your unforgettable event.

Convenience

When ease is paramount for customers, convenience-based USPs can send a good message. Our grocery store might write:

Try convenient online ordering, curbside pickup, and prepared meals, or walk in just minutes from any downtown neighborhood to our organic grocery store.

Sometimes, location is all it takes to convey convenience. I love this ultra-simple USP from Deer Valley Grocery, which happens to have a beautiful waterside destination location:

“Enjoy breakfast and lunch lakeside.”

It can’t get shorter or sweeter than that.

I hope this practice session was useful. Now, we need to determine the most effective components for a particular local business you’re marketing.

Let customer content inspire your USP

Sentiment trends in your reviews, Q&A, and social media comments can point the way to what your customers value most about what your business does. These forms of user-generated content (UGC) can be a big help in determining which elements could be most effective if centered in your USP.

Start by searching Google for your brand name so that your Google Business Profile appears on the left of the screen (if your brand name search doesn’t work, add your city to your query. If that doesn’t work, you may need to learn the basics of local SEO first so that you build enough authority for Google to associate branded searches with your local business listing). Click on the “View All Reviews” portion of your profile and look at the Place Topics Google has surfaced in the oval tabs at the top of your review display.

Place Topics are an accessible, free form of basic sentiment analysis, highlighting topics mentioned most frequently in your reviews. If we had no other information about our grocery store than this, we could write a customer-centric USP along these lines:

Done with Whole Foods? Shop sustainable, fresh produce, our scrumptious salad bar, and healthy vegan choices at our Mill Valley market.

The great thing about Place Topics is that when you click on them, they sort the review corpus to show only reviews that contain the chosen topic. For example, when I click the “produce” tab, this deepens my understanding of exactly what customers are saying about the fruits and veggies at this store:

If we decided produce was uppermost in our customers’ minds, we could refine our USP like this:

Shop “the best produce in Marin” — unlike Whole Foods, we’re 100% organic and locally-owned!

Definitely dig deeply into your reviews to find out what really resonates with your customers. Moz Local customers have the added advantage of our sentiment analysis and trend features to help you go beyond Google and understand dominant review topics across multiple platforms.

If a local business has active social media profiles, customer likes and comments can also provide insight. Looking back through our grocery store’s Facebook posts, I caught the moment early in 2020 when a simple inspirational post received an unusually high amount of likes and loves, and comments from customers saying how much they missed the store and wished delivery was available:

Happily, the business was able to utilize this moment of community interaction to announce the debut of their curbside and delivery service:

A major change in operations, which so many local businesses underwent as a result of the pandemic, could be a strong reason to temporarily alter a company’s core USP for the purpose of quickly disseminating new information. For example, the market might have publicized this message:

Your organic groceries are now available via curbside and delivery in Fairfax and San Anselmo through our new shopping cart.

Other sources of USP-inspiring UGC could include FAQs the business receives via Google Q&A, phone calls, and form submissions — very good reasons to be empowering relevant staff to actively track this type of sentiment. Meanwhile, searcher behavior (if not content) could further refine your USP messaging. Consider using Google Trends or keyword research tools like Moz Keyword Explorer to discover popular search terms related to what your business offers, and that could be effective if incorporated into your proposition.

Where should you publicize your local business USP?

Image Credit: Chris Hottentot

One you’ve put in the work of crafting a strong USP, be sure you are nesting it in as many places as make sense, including:

Website masthead

Website homepage

Website about/mission page

Website contact page

Website location landing pages

Website footer

Website title tags

Website meta description tags

Website Header tags

Alt tags (if appropriate to describing images)

Blog posts

Email campaigns

Email signatures

Google My Business description

Google Posts

Google Q&A (if it answers an FAQ)

Descriptions on all local business listings and review profiles (use Moz Local for a quick data push!)

Carefully-worded review requests in hopes that reviewers will talk about aspects of your USP that matter most to them

Social media profiles

Social media posts

Digital ad campaigns

Guest post profiles

Storefront or in-store signage

Billboards

Radio and television ad campaigns

Print news campaigns

Mailers, circulars, and other print assets

Business cards

Company vehicles

Employee apparel

Company swag

With such amazing, multifarious applications, it’s easy to see the worth of investing time and care into developing a meaningful USP. You might adjust the wording slightly, based on medium, and you might even create several propositions for different purposes, seasons, or testing periods.

What I think you’ll learn from practicing perfecting your USP is that, like so much else in marketing, it comes down to great storytelling in a limited space, with eyes firmly set on engaging customers with a message of readiness that deftly meets their needs.

https://ift.tt/2TmbDHf

[camerasieunhovn]

How to Create Your Local Business USP with QUAAAC + UGC

I’m new in town and have never heard of your business before. I’m looking for an explanation that’s as quick and easy to read as a street sign.

You have just a few seconds to convey to me what your local business offers and why customers like it. Then I’ll take a few seconds to determine whether what you’ve said matches my needs.

From this moment forward, we either walk the next steps of the consumer-brand journey arm-in-arm, or I wing off in another direction looking for a better match. I could become a loyal customer for decades, or I might never think of your business again.

That’s how important and fleeting the moment of opportunity can be when a customer encounters a unique selling proposition (USP) highlighted by a local business. In Chapter 3 of The Essential Local SEO Strategy Guide, we reference how a clear USP underpins SEO, and it’s a topic that deserves a deeper dive. For new neighbors, travelers, and residents in search of new goods and services, the USP is a sign you can hang in many places.

In this article, we’ll actively practice writing compelling USPs for real-world local businesses based on six simple components. Further, I’ll teach you to see a brand you’re marketing from the viewpoint of customers on the basis of user generated content (UGC).

First, what’s a USP?

A unique selling proposition in marketing is a brief statement that’s typically defined as distinguishing a brand and its offerings from its competitors. It’s not the same thing as the catchphrase found in slogans and jingles (e.g. “Reach out and touch someone” or “Just Do It”), which, while memorable, may only vaguely hint at what a business is or does. Instead, a USP should clearly define whether what a business is, does, and has matches the intent of the customer, and the art involved is in learning to convey a lot of meaning in very few words.

If you learn best from real-world examples, here’s an independent grocery store that has put its slogan and mission statement on its website homepage:

If we were tasked with creating a USP, just from this information, we would write something like this:

Shop the oldest and largest organic grocery store in Marin County to actively support our community’s health and sustainability.

If I happen to be looking for a market with a big selection of organics that’s been trusted by locals for many years and I want my dollars to work towards sustainability, my intent will have been perfectly matched by this USP.

Local businesses have an advantage over virtual competitors in that circumstances auto-generate one of the “unique” aspects of the company message: being present in a specific town or city makes your brand a unique resource for people there, as opposed to selling to the world at large. Pair locale with local rarity for a smart combination. The “selling” aspects of this type of content should inspire actionable language on your part; words like “shop”, “experience”, “visit” are mini calls-to-action embedded in the USP. Think of the “proposition” as making an offer you hope the right potential customer can’t refuse because it ideally matches their intent.

There are just 19 words in our sample USP, but it contains multiple intent signals, and now we need to learn how to break those down by type so that you can develop your own messaging for the local brands you market.

Surface QUAAAC components for your strongest USP

Image credit: Hedera Baltica

I recently learned that one of the great secrets to QVC’s multi-billion-dollar success is to get shoppers to ask the question, “Is this me?” and then answer with a, “Yes”. USPs should work just like this! You’ll have noticed that we turned the slogan and mission statement toward the customer in our example USP above, in hopes that they will see themselves in the details. In other words, we’re hoping the customer will ask, “Is this me who wants to shop for organic groceries at a time-honored store, and contribute to sustainability?” and find themselves saying, “Yes”.

Choosing the right details to highlight, when you have a limited amount of space, really matters! Let’s get our ducks in a row with a practice session of writing USPs together, breaking down our options into six basic components:

Quality

If our example grocery store decided that it was the high quality of their inventory that should star in their USP, based on what they’ve learned matters most to their customers, we could write a proposition like this:

Shop all-organic groceries, many sourced locally from our community’s best farmers, for peak quality you can taste!

In other instances, customers’ search for value underlies their quest for quality. They want to know what the highest quality is that they can afford on their budget. In that case, a USP might emphasize cheapness, deals, discounts, or specials. Brands like Imperfect Foods aim to deliver inventory that’s of good quality, if not flawless, and that’s easier on wallets, as made clear by their USP:

Get sustainable, affordable groceries delivered weekly to your door.

The skill required here is to match the economic realities of your customer base to the best quality their money can buy. Whether the inventory is luxury goods or the most affordable deals, nearly all customers want good value.

Uniqueness

If your business model relies on providing something rare, uniqueness might deserve emphasis in your USP. For our grocery store, we might say:

Tired of reading labels? Shop trustingly at Marin County’s only 100% organic grocery store.

Perhaps my favorite example of a USP based on uniqueness comes from Redwood Yurok Canoe Tours, which reads:

Come and explore the powerful Klamath River on a spiritual adventure that will take you back in time, hearing only the quiet chatter of wildlife as you glide along the water’s surface.

This Indigenous-owned business is offering an experience you literally cannot get anywhere else in the world, and it’s a great illustration of building romance around rarity.

Availability

Simple availability can be an easy USP starting point for almost any business, because so many customer searches begin with the question, “I wonder if X business offers X good or service.”

I often recall seeing storefront signage for a business that had started out as “Pens Unlimited” and then presumably appended the slogan “More than just pens” to its messaging as they expanded, leaving me guessing about what the company actually offered. If your inventory is highly varied, it can be a challenge to fit it all into a business name or slogan, but a slightly longer USP can help. Our grocery store might highlight availability like this:

Shop organic produce, dry goods, supplements and award-winning prepared meals at Marin’s largest natural foods store.

As another example, the website of this SMB shoe store may not be state-of-the-art, but their USP immediately answers the question of “I wonder if they have X?”:

Shoe store offering fashionable dress, comfort, boots, and athletic shoes for men and women.

If a potential customer wanted to know if this particular shop had comfort footwear, this USP does the job.

Authority

This is a proposition that works well when customers need a resource they can trust based on the availability of expertise or the proof of longevity. Our grocery store might say:

Shop Marin’s only grocery store owned by a sitting board member of the Organic Trade Association — locals have trusted our organic commitment since 1969.

Certifications can go a long way towards conveying authority. I found information of this kind buried deep in the loam of a Washington plant nursery, which could be brought forward to their homepage as an authority-based USP like this:

Shop plants with three Master Gardeners and two Certified Professional Horticulturists on-site to help you grow your dream garden!

Affinity

Some of my personal favorite USPs send signals of brand-consumer affinity — they convey that the local business operates on the basis of certain values shared by customers. Our sample grocery store is fertile ground for authentic proofs of community building, and could write a USP like this:

Be the change! Shopping with us benefits your whole community, from free organic meal programs for students and elders, to our Deep Green Energy commitment, to profits shared by all employees.

Meanwhile, outdoor outfitter Patagonia takes a similar approach with this USP:

Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.

And sometimes, a USP can blend more than one element. The gorgeous website of The Red Door catering company has signals of both authority and affinity that could be stirred together for an inspirational, aspirational message, like:

MBE-Certified, Women-Owned, ICA member caterers prepare local, organic feasts for your unforgettable event.

Convenience

When ease is paramount for customers, convenience-based USPs can send a good message. Our grocery store might write:

Try convenient online ordering, curbside pickup, and prepared meals, or walk in just minutes from any downtown neighborhood to our organic grocery store.

Sometimes, location is all it takes to convey convenience. I love this ultra-simple USP from Deer Valley Grocery, which happens to have a beautiful waterside destination location:

“Enjoy breakfast and lunch lakeside.”

It can’t get shorter or sweeter than that.

I hope this practice session was useful. Now, we need to determine the most effective components for a particular local business you’re marketing.

Let customer content inspire your USP

Sentiment trends in your reviews, Q&A, and social media comments can point the way to what your customers value most about what your business does. These forms of user-generated content (UGC) can be a big help in determining which elements could be most effective if centered in your USP.

Start by searching Google for your brand name so that your Google Business Profile appears on the left of the screen (if your brand name search doesn’t work, add your city to your query. If that doesn’t work, you may need to learn the basics of local SEO first so that you build enough authority for Google to associate branded searches with your local business listing). Click on the “View All Reviews” portion of your profile and look at the Place Topics Google has surfaced in the oval tabs at the top of your review display.

Place Topics are an accessible, free form of basic sentiment analysis, highlighting topics mentioned most frequently in your reviews. If we had no other information about our grocery store than this, we could write a customer-centric USP along these lines:

Done with Whole Foods? Shop sustainable, fresh produce, our scrumptious salad bar, and healthy vegan choices at our Mill Valley market.

The great thing about Place Topics is that when you click on them, they sort the review corpus to show only reviews that contain the chosen topic. For example, when I click the “produce” tab, this deepens my understanding of exactly what customers are saying about the fruits and veggies at this store:

If we decided produce was uppermost in our customers’ minds, we could refine our USP like this:

Shop “the best produce in Marin” — unlike Whole Foods, we’re 100% organic and locally-owned!

Definitely dig deeply into your reviews to find out what really resonates with your customers. Moz Local customers have the added advantage of our sentiment analysis and trend features to help you go beyond Google and understand dominant review topics across multiple platforms.

If a local business has active social media profiles, customer likes and comments can also provide insight. Looking back through our grocery store’s Facebook posts, I caught the moment early in 2020 when a simple inspirational post received an unusually high amount of likes and loves, and comments from customers saying how much they missed the store and wished delivery was available:

Happily, the business was able to utilize this moment of community interaction to announce the debut of their curbside and delivery service:

A major change in operations, which so many local businesses underwent as a result of the pandemic, could be a strong reason to temporarily alter a company’s core USP for the purpose of quickly disseminating new information. For example, the market might have publicized this message:

Your organic groceries are now available via curbside and delivery in Fairfax and San Anselmo through our new shopping cart.

Other sources of USP-inspiring UGC could include FAQs the business receives via Google Q&A, phone calls, and form submissions — very good reasons to be empowering relevant staff to actively track this type of sentiment. Meanwhile, searcher behavior (if not content) could further refine your USP messaging. Consider using Google Trends or keyword research tools like Moz Keyword Explorer to discover popular search terms related to what your business offers, and that could be effective if incorporated into your proposition.

Where should you publicize your local business USP?

Image Credit: Chris Hottentot

One you’ve put in the work of crafting a strong USP, be sure you are nesting it in as many places as make sense, including:

Website masthead

Website homepage

Website about/mission page

Website contact page

Website location landing pages

Website footer

Website title tags

Website meta description tags

Website Header tags

Alt tags (if appropriate to describing images)

Blog posts

Email campaigns

Email signatures

Google My Business description

Google Posts

Google Q&A (if it answers an FAQ)

Descriptions on all local business listings and review profiles (use Moz Local for a quick data push!)

Carefully-worded review requests in hopes that reviewers will talk about aspects of your USP that matter most to them

Social media profiles

Social media posts

Digital ad campaigns

Guest post profiles

Storefront or in-store signage

Billboards

Radio and television ad campaigns

Print news campaigns

Mailers, circulars, and other print assets

Business cards

Company vehicles

Employee apparel

Company swag

With such amazing, multifarious applications, it’s easy to see the worth of investing time and care into developing a meaningful USP. You might adjust the wording slightly, based on medium, and you might even create several propositions for different purposes, seasons, or testing periods.

What I think you’ll learn from practicing perfecting your USP is that, like so much else in marketing, it comes down to great storytelling in a limited space, with eyes firmly set on engaging customers with a message of readiness that deftly meets their needs.

[noithatotoaz]

How to Create Your Local Business USP with QUAAAC + UGC

I’m new in town and have never heard of your business before. I’m looking for an explanation that’s as quick and easy to read as a street sign.

You have just a few seconds to convey to me what your local business offers and why customers like it. Then I’ll take a few seconds to determine whether what you’ve said matches my needs.

From this moment forward, we either walk the next steps of the consumer-brand journey arm-in-arm, or I wing off in another direction looking for a better match. I could become a loyal customer for decades, or I might never think of your business again.

That’s how important and fleeting the moment of opportunity can be when a customer encounters a unique selling proposition (USP) highlighted by a local business. In Chapter 3 of The Essential Local SEO Strategy Guide, we reference how a clear USP underpins SEO, and it’s a topic that deserves a deeper dive. For new neighbors, travelers, and residents in search of new goods and services, the USP is a sign you can hang in many places.

In this article, we’ll actively practice writing compelling USPs for real-world local businesses based on six simple components. Further, I’ll teach you to see a brand you’re marketing from the viewpoint of customers on the basis of user generated content (UGC).

First, what’s a USP?

A unique selling proposition in marketing is a brief statement that’s typically defined as distinguishing a brand and its offerings from its competitors. It’s not the same thing as the catchphrase found in slogans and jingles (e.g. “Reach out and touch someone” or “Just Do It”), which, while memorable, may only vaguely hint at what a business is or does. Instead, a USP should clearly define whether what a business is, does, and has matches the intent of the customer, and the art involved is in learning to convey a lot of meaning in very few words.

If you learn best from real-world examples, here’s an independent grocery store that has put its slogan and mission statement on its website homepage:

If we were tasked with creating a USP, just from this information, we would write something like this:

Shop the oldest and largest organic grocery store in Marin County to actively support our community’s health and sustainability.

If I happen to be looking for a market with a big selection of organics that’s been trusted by locals for many years and I want my dollars to work towards sustainability, my intent will have been perfectly matched by this USP.

Local businesses have an advantage over virtual competitors in that circumstances auto-generate one of the “unique” aspects of the company message: being present in a specific town or city makes your brand a unique resource for people there, as opposed to selling to the world at large. Pair locale with local rarity for a smart combination. The “selling” aspects of this type of content should inspire actionable language on your part; words like “shop”, “experience”, “visit” are mini calls-to-action embedded in the USP. Think of the “proposition” as making an offer you hope the right potential customer can’t refuse because it ideally matches their intent.

There are just 19 words in our sample USP, but it contains multiple intent signals, and now we need to learn how to break those down by type so that you can develop your own messaging for the local brands you market.

Surface QUAAAC components for your strongest USP

Image credit: Hedera Baltica

I recently learned that one of the great secrets to QVC’s multi-billion-dollar success is to get shoppers to ask the question, “Is this me?” and then answer with a, “Yes”. USPs should work just like this! You’ll have noticed that we turned the slogan and mission statement toward the customer in our example USP above, in hopes that they will see themselves in the details. In other words, we’re hoping the customer will ask, “Is this me who wants to shop for organic groceries at a time-honored store, and contribute to sustainability?” and find themselves saying, “Yes”.

Choosing the right details to highlight, when you have a limited amount of space, really matters! Let’s get our ducks in a row with a practice session of writing USPs together, breaking down our options into six basic components:

Quality

If our example grocery store decided that it was the high quality of their inventory that should star in their USP, based on what they’ve learned matters most to their customers, we could write a proposition like this:

Shop all-organic groceries, many sourced locally from our community’s best farmers, for peak quality you can taste!

In other instances, customers’ search for value underlies their quest for quality. They want to know what the highest quality is that they can afford on their budget. In that case, a USP might emphasize cheapness, deals, discounts, or specials. Brands like Imperfect Foods aim to deliver inventory that’s of good quality, if not flawless, and that’s easier on wallets, as made clear by their USP:

Get sustainable, affordable groceries delivered weekly to your door.

The skill required here is to match the economic realities of your customer base to the best quality their money can buy. Whether the inventory is luxury goods or the most affordable deals, nearly all customers want good value.

Uniqueness

If your business model relies on providing something rare, uniqueness might deserve emphasis in your USP. For our grocery store, we might say:

Tired of reading labels? Shop trustingly at Marin County’s only 100% organic grocery store.

Perhaps my favorite example of a USP based on uniqueness comes from Redwood Yurok Canoe Tours, which reads:

Come and explore the powerful Klamath River on a spiritual adventure that will take you back in time, hearing only the quiet chatter of wildlife as you glide along the water’s surface.

This Indigenous-owned business is offering an experience you literally cannot get anywhere else in the world, and it’s a great illustration of building romance around rarity.

Availability

Simple availability can be an easy USP starting point for almost any business, because so many customer searches begin with the question, “I wonder if X business offers X good or service.”

I often recall seeing storefront signage for a business that had started out as “Pens Unlimited” and then presumably appended the slogan “More than just pens” to its messaging as they expanded, leaving me guessing about what the company actually offered. If your inventory is highly varied, it can be a challenge to fit it all into a business name or slogan, but a slightly longer USP can help. Our grocery store might highlight availability like this:

Shop organic produce, dry goods, supplements and award-winning prepared meals at Marin’s largest natural foods store.

As another example, the website of this SMB shoe store may not be state-of-the-art, but their USP immediately answers the question of “I wonder if they have X?”:

Shoe store offering fashionable dress, comfort, boots, and athletic shoes for men and women.

If a potential customer wanted to know if this particular shop had comfort footwear, this USP does the job.

Authority

This is a proposition that works well when customers need a resource they can trust based on the availability of expertise or the proof of longevity. Our grocery store might say:

Shop Marin’s only grocery store owned by a sitting board member of the Organic Trade Association — locals have trusted our organic commitment since 1969.

Certifications can go a long way towards conveying authority. I found information of this kind buried deep in the loam of a Washington plant nursery, which could be brought forward to their homepage as an authority-based USP like this:

Shop plants with three Master Gardeners and two Certified Professional Horticulturists on-site to help you grow your dream garden!

Affinity

Some of my personal favorite USPs send signals of brand-consumer affinity — they convey that the local business operates on the basis of certain values shared by customers. Our sample grocery store is fertile ground for authentic proofs of community building, and could write a USP like this:

Be the change! Shopping with us benefits your whole community, from free organic meal programs for students and elders, to our Deep Green Energy commitment, to profits shared by all employees.

Meanwhile, outdoor outfitter Patagonia takes a similar approach with this USP:

Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.

And sometimes, a USP can blend more than one element. The gorgeous website of The Red Door catering company has signals of both authority and affinity that could be stirred together for an inspirational, aspirational message, like:

MBE-Certified, Women-Owned, ICA member caterers prepare local, organic feasts for your unforgettable event.

Convenience

When ease is paramount for customers, convenience-based USPs can send a good message. Our grocery store might write:

Try convenient online ordering, curbside pickup, and prepared meals, or walk in just minutes from any downtown neighborhood to our organic grocery store.

Sometimes, location is all it takes to convey convenience. I love this ultra-simple USP from Deer Valley Grocery, which happens to have a beautiful waterside destination location:

“Enjoy breakfast and lunch lakeside.”

It can’t get shorter or sweeter than that.

I hope this practice session was useful. Now, we need to determine the most effective components for a particular local business you’re marketing.

Let customer content inspire your USP

Sentiment trends in your reviews, Q&A, and social media comments can point the way to what your customers value most about what your business does. These forms of user-generated content (UGC) can be a big help in determining which elements could be most effective if centered in your USP.

Start by searching Google for your brand name so that your Google Business Profile appears on the left of the screen (if your brand name search doesn’t work, add your city to your query. If that doesn’t work, you may need to learn the basics of local SEO first so that you build enough authority for Google to associate branded searches with your local business listing). Click on the “View All Reviews” portion of your profile and look at the Place Topics Google has surfaced in the oval tabs at the top of your review display.

Place Topics are an accessible, free form of basic sentiment analysis, highlighting topics mentioned most frequently in your reviews. If we had no other information about our grocery store than this, we could write a customer-centric USP along these lines:

Done with Whole Foods? Shop sustainable, fresh produce, our scrumptious salad bar, and healthy vegan choices at our Mill Valley market.

The great thing about Place Topics is that when you click on them, they sort the review corpus to show only reviews that contain the chosen topic. For example, when I click the “produce” tab, this deepens my understanding of exactly what customers are saying about the fruits and veggies at this store:

If we decided produce was uppermost in our customers’ minds, we could refine our USP like this:

Shop “the best produce in Marin” — unlike Whole Foods, we’re 100% organic and locally-owned!

Definitely dig deeply into your reviews to find out what really resonates with your customers. Moz Local customers have the added advantage of our sentiment analysis and trend features to help you go beyond Google and understand dominant review topics across multiple platforms.

If a local business has active social media profiles, customer likes and comments can also provide insight. Looking back through our grocery store’s Facebook posts, I caught the moment early in 2020 when a simple inspirational post received an unusually high amount of likes and loves, and comments from customers saying how much they missed the store and wished delivery was available:

Happily, the business was able to utilize this moment of community interaction to announce the debut of their curbside and delivery service:

A major change in operations, which so many local businesses underwent as a result of the pandemic, could be a strong reason to temporarily alter a company’s core USP for the purpose of quickly disseminating new information. For example, the market might have publicized this message:

Your organic groceries are now available via curbside and delivery in Fairfax and San Anselmo through our new shopping cart.

Other sources of USP-inspiring UGC could include FAQs the business receives via Google Q&A, phone calls, and form submissions — very good reasons to be empowering relevant staff to actively track this type of sentiment. Meanwhile, searcher behavior (if not content) could further refine your USP messaging. Consider using Google Trends or keyword research tools like Moz Keyword Explorer to discover popular search terms related to what your business offers, and that could be effective if incorporated into your proposition.

Where should you publicize your local business USP?

Image Credit: Chris Hottentot

One you’ve put in the work of crafting a strong USP, be sure you are nesting it in as many places as make sense, including:

Website masthead

Website homepage

Website about/mission page

Website contact page

Website location landing pages

Website footer

Website title tags

Website meta description tags

Website Header tags

Alt tags (if appropriate to describing images)

Blog posts

Email campaigns

Email signatures

Google My Business description

Google Posts

Google Q&A (if it answers an FAQ)

Descriptions on all local business listings and review profiles (use Moz Local for a quick data push!)

Carefully-worded review requests in hopes that reviewers will talk about aspects of your USP that matter most to them

Social media profiles

Social media posts

Digital ad campaigns

Guest post profiles

Storefront or in-store signage

Billboards

Radio and television ad campaigns

Print news campaigns

Mailers, circulars, and other print assets

Business cards

Company vehicles

Employee apparel

Company swag

With such amazing, multifarious applications, it’s easy to see the worth of investing time and care into developing a meaningful USP. You might adjust the wording slightly, based on medium, and you might even create several propositions for different purposes, seasons, or testing periods.

What I think you’ll learn from practicing perfecting your USP is that, like so much else in marketing, it comes down to great storytelling in a limited space, with eyes firmly set on engaging customers with a message of readiness that deftly meets their needs.

[ductrungnguyen87]

How to Create Your Local Business USP with QUAAAC + UGC

I’m new in town and have never heard of your business before. I’m looking for an explanation that’s as quick and easy to read as a street sign.

You have just a few seconds to convey to me what your local business offers and why customers like it. Then I’ll take a few seconds to determine whether what you’ve said matches my needs.

From this moment forward, we either walk the next steps of the consumer-brand journey arm-in-arm, or I wing off in another direction looking for a better match. I could become a loyal customer for decades, or I might never think of your business again.

That’s how important and fleeting the moment of opportunity can be when a customer encounters a unique selling proposition (USP) highlighted by a local business. In Chapter 3 of The Essential Local SEO Strategy Guide, we reference how a clear USP underpins SEO, and it’s a topic that deserves a deeper dive. For new neighbors, travelers, and residents in search of new goods and services, the USP is a sign you can hang in many places.

In this article, we’ll actively practice writing compelling USPs for real-world local businesses based on six simple components. Further, I’ll teach you to see a brand you’re marketing from the viewpoint of customers on the basis of user generated content (UGC).

First, what’s a USP?

A unique selling proposition in marketing is a brief statement that’s typically defined as distinguishing a brand and its offerings from its competitors. It’s not the same thing as the catchphrase found in slogans and jingles (e.g. “Reach out and touch someone” or “Just Do It”), which, while memorable, may only vaguely hint at what a business is or does. Instead, a USP should clearly define whether what a business is, does, and has matches the intent of the customer, and the art involved is in learning to convey a lot of meaning in very few words.

If you learn best from real-world examples, here’s an independent grocery store that has put its slogan and mission statement on its website homepage:

If we were tasked with creating a USP, just from this information, we would write something like this:

Shop the oldest and largest organic grocery store in Marin County to actively support our community’s health and sustainability.

If I happen to be looking for a market with a big selection of organics that’s been trusted by locals for many years and I want my dollars to work towards sustainability, my intent will have been perfectly matched by this USP.

Local businesses have an advantage over virtual competitors in that circumstances auto-generate one of the “unique” aspects of the company message: being present in a specific town or city makes your brand a unique resource for people there, as opposed to selling to the world at large. Pair locale with local rarity for a smart combination. The “selling” aspects of this type of content should inspire actionable language on your part; words like “shop”, “experience”, “visit” are mini calls-to-action embedded in the USP. Think of the “proposition” as making an offer you hope the right potential customer can’t refuse because it ideally matches their intent.

There are just 19 words in our sample USP, but it contains multiple intent signals, and now we need to learn how to break those down by type so that you can develop your own messaging for the local brands you market.

Surface QUAAAC components for your strongest USP

Image credit: Hedera Baltica

I recently learned that one of the great secrets to QVC’s multi-billion-dollar success is to get shoppers to ask the question, “Is this me?” and then answer with a, “Yes”. USPs should work just like this! You’ll have noticed that we turned the slogan and mission statement toward the customer in our example USP above, in hopes that they will see themselves in the details. In other words, we’re hoping the customer will ask, “Is this me who wants to shop for organic groceries at a time-honored store, and contribute to sustainability?” and find themselves saying, “Yes”.

Choosing the right details to highlight, when you have a limited amount of space, really matters! Let’s get our ducks in a row with a practice session of writing USPs together, breaking down our options into six basic components:

Quality

If our example grocery store decided that it was the high quality of their inventory that should star in their USP, based on what they’ve learned matters most to their customers, we could write a proposition like this:

Shop all-organic groceries, many sourced locally from our community’s best farmers, for peak quality you can taste!

In other instances, customers’ search for value underlies their quest for quality. They want to know what the highest quality is that they can afford on their budget. In that case, a USP might emphasize cheapness, deals, discounts, or specials. Brands like Imperfect Foods aim to deliver inventory that’s of good quality, if not flawless, and that’s easier on wallets, as made clear by their USP:

Get sustainable, affordable groceries delivered weekly to your door.

The skill required here is to match the economic realities of your customer base to the best quality their money can buy. Whether the inventory is luxury goods or the most affordable deals, nearly all customers want good value.

Uniqueness

If your business model relies on providing something rare, uniqueness might deserve emphasis in your USP. For our grocery store, we might say:

Tired of reading labels? Shop trustingly at Marin County’s only 100% organic grocery store.

Perhaps my favorite example of a USP based on uniqueness comes from Redwood Yurok Canoe Tours, which reads:

Come and explore the powerful Klamath River on a spiritual adventure that will take you back in time, hearing only the quiet chatter of wildlife as you glide along the water’s surface.

This Indigenous-owned business is offering an experience you literally cannot get anywhere else in the world, and it’s a great illustration of building romance around rarity.

Availability

Simple availability can be an easy USP starting point for almost any business, because so many customer searches begin with the question, “I wonder if X business offers X good or service.”

I often recall seeing storefront signage for a business that had started out as “Pens Unlimited” and then presumably appended the slogan “More than just pens” to its messaging as they expanded, leaving me guessing about what the company actually offered. If your inventory is highly varied, it can be a challenge to fit it all into a business name or slogan, but a slightly longer USP can help. Our grocery store might highlight availability like this:

Shop organic produce, dry goods, supplements and award-winning prepared meals at Marin’s largest natural foods store.

As another example, the website of this SMB shoe store may not be state-of-the-art, but their USP immediately answers the question of “I wonder if they have X?”:

Shoe store offering fashionable dress, comfort, boots, and athletic shoes for men and women.

If a potential customer wanted to know if this particular shop had comfort footwear, this USP does the job.

Authority

This is a proposition that works well when customers need a resource they can trust based on the availability of expertise or the proof of longevity. Our grocery store might say:

Shop Marin’s only grocery store owned by a sitting board member of the Organic Trade Association — locals have trusted our organic commitment since 1969.

Certifications can go a long way towards conveying authority. I found information of this kind buried deep in the loam of a Washington plant nursery, which could be brought forward to their homepage as an authority-based USP like this:

Shop plants with three Master Gardeners and two Certified Professional Horticulturists on-site to help you grow your dream garden!

Affinity

Some of my personal favorite USPs send signals of brand-consumer affinity — they convey that the local business operates on the basis of certain values shared by customers. Our sample grocery store is fertile ground for authentic proofs of community building, and could write a USP like this:

Be the change! Shopping with us benefits your whole community, from free organic meal programs for students and elders, to our Deep Green Energy commitment, to profits shared by all employees.

Meanwhile, outdoor outfitter Patagonia takes a similar approach with this USP:

Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.

And sometimes, a USP can blend more than one element. The gorgeous website of The Red Door catering company has signals of both authority and affinity that could be stirred together for an inspirational, aspirational message, like:

MBE-Certified, Women-Owned, ICA member caterers prepare local, organic feasts for your unforgettable event.

Convenience

When ease is paramount for customers, convenience-based USPs can send a good message. Our grocery store might write:

Try convenient online ordering, curbside pickup, and prepared meals, or walk in just minutes from any downtown neighborhood to our organic grocery store.

Sometimes, location is all it takes to convey convenience. I love this ultra-simple USP from Deer Valley Grocery, which happens to have a beautiful waterside destination location:

“Enjoy breakfast and lunch lakeside.”

It can’t get shorter or sweeter than that.

I hope this practice session was useful. Now, we need to determine the most effective components for a particular local business you’re marketing.

Let customer content inspire your USP

Sentiment trends in your reviews, Q&A, and social media comments can point the way to what your customers value most about what your business does. These forms of user-generated content (UGC) can be a big help in determining which elements could be most effective if centered in your USP.

Start by searching Google for your brand name so that your Google Business Profile appears on the left of the screen (if your brand name search doesn’t work, add your city to your query. If that doesn’t work, you may need to learn the basics of local SEO first so that you build enough authority for Google to associate branded searches with your local business listing). Click on the “View All Reviews” portion of your profile and look at the Place Topics Google has surfaced in the oval tabs at the top of your review display.

Place Topics are an accessible, free form of basic sentiment analysis, highlighting topics mentioned most frequently in your reviews. If we had no other information about our grocery store than this, we could write a customer-centric USP along these lines:

Done with Whole Foods? Shop sustainable, fresh produce, our scrumptious salad bar, and healthy vegan choices at our Mill Valley market.

The great thing about Place Topics is that when you click on them, they sort the review corpus to show only reviews that contain the chosen topic. For example, when I click the “produce” tab, this deepens my understanding of exactly what customers are saying about the fruits and veggies at this store:

If we decided produce was uppermost in our customers’ minds, we could refine our USP like this:

Shop “the best produce in Marin” — unlike Whole Foods, we’re 100% organic and locally-owned!

Definitely dig deeply into your reviews to find out what really resonates with your customers. Moz Local customers have the added advantage of our sentiment analysis and trend features to help you go beyond Google and understand dominant review topics across multiple platforms.

If a local business has active social media profiles, customer likes and comments can also provide insight. Looking back through our grocery store’s Facebook posts, I caught the moment early in 2020 when a simple inspirational post received an unusually high amount of likes and loves, and comments from customers saying how much they missed the store and wished delivery was available:

Happily, the business was able to utilize this moment of community interaction to announce the debut of their curbside and delivery service:

A major change in operations, which so many local businesses underwent as a result of the pandemic, could be a strong reason to temporarily alter a company’s core USP for the purpose of quickly disseminating new information. For example, the market might have publicized this message:

Your organic groceries are now available via curbside and delivery in Fairfax and San Anselmo through our new shopping cart.

Other sources of USP-inspiring UGC could include FAQs the business receives via Google Q&A, phone calls, and form submissions — very good reasons to be empowering relevant staff to actively track this type of sentiment. Meanwhile, searcher behavior (if not content) could further refine your USP messaging. Consider using Google Trends or keyword research tools like Moz Keyword Explorer to discover popular search terms related to what your business offers, and that could be effective if incorporated into your proposition.

Where should you publicize your local business USP?

Image Credit: Chris Hottentot

One you’ve put in the work of crafting a strong USP, be sure you are nesting it in as many places as make sense, including:

Website masthead

Website homepage

Website about/mission page

Website contact page

Website location landing pages

Website footer

Website title tags

Website meta description tags

Website Header tags

Alt tags (if appropriate to describing images)

Blog posts

Email campaigns

Email signatures

Google My Business description

Google Posts

Google Q&A (if it answers an FAQ)

Descriptions on all local business listings and review profiles (use Moz Local for a quick data push!)

Carefully-worded review requests in hopes that reviewers will talk about aspects of your USP that matter most to them

Social media profiles

Social media posts

Digital ad campaigns

Guest post profiles

Storefront or in-store signage

Billboards

Radio and television ad campaigns

Print news campaigns

Mailers, circulars, and other print assets

Business cards

Company vehicles

Employee apparel

Company swag

With such amazing, multifarious applications, it’s easy to see the worth of investing time and care into developing a meaningful USP. You might adjust the wording slightly, based on medium, and you might even create several propositions for different purposes, seasons, or testing periods.

What I think you’ll learn from practicing perfecting your USP is that, like so much else in marketing, it comes down to great storytelling in a limited space, with eyes firmly set on engaging customers with a message of readiness that deftly meets their needs.

[epackingvietnam]

How to Create Your Local Business USP with QUAAAC + UGC

I’m new in town and have never heard of your business before. I’m looking for an explanation that’s as quick and easy to read as a street sign.

You have just a few seconds to convey to me what your local business offers and why customers like it. Then I’ll take a few seconds to determine whether what you’ve said matches my needs.

From this moment forward, we either walk the next steps of the consumer-brand journey arm-in-arm, or I wing off in another direction looking for a better match. I could become a loyal customer for decades, or I might never think of your business again.

That’s how important and fleeting the moment of opportunity can be when a customer encounters a unique selling proposition (USP) highlighted by a local business. In Chapter 3 of The Essential Local SEO Strategy Guide, we reference how a clear USP underpins SEO, and it’s a topic that deserves a deeper dive. For new neighbors, travelers, and residents in search of new goods and services, the USP is a sign you can hang in many places.

In this article, we’ll actively practice writing compelling USPs for real-world local businesses based on six simple components. Further, I’ll teach you to see a brand you’re marketing from the viewpoint of customers on the basis of user generated content (UGC).

First, what’s a USP?

A unique selling proposition in marketing is a brief statement that’s typically defined as distinguishing a brand and its offerings from its competitors. It’s not the same thing as the catchphrase found in slogans and jingles (e.g. “Reach out and touch someone” or “Just Do It”), which, while memorable, may only vaguely hint at what a business is or does. Instead, a USP should clearly define whether what a business is, does, and has matches the intent of the customer, and the art involved is in learning to convey a lot of meaning in very few words.

If you learn best from real-world examples, here’s an independent grocery store that has put its slogan and mission statement on its website homepage:

If we were tasked with creating a USP, just from this information, we would write something like this:

Shop the oldest and largest organic grocery store in Marin County to actively support our community’s health and sustainability.

If I happen to be looking for a market with a big selection of organics that’s been trusted by locals for many years and I want my dollars to work towards sustainability, my intent will have been perfectly matched by this USP.

Local businesses have an advantage over virtual competitors in that circumstances auto-generate one of the “unique” aspects of the company message: being present in a specific town or city makes your brand a unique resource for people there, as opposed to selling to the world at large. Pair locale with local rarity for a smart combination. The “selling” aspects of this type of content should inspire actionable language on your part; words like “shop”, “experience”, “visit” are mini calls-to-action embedded in the USP. Think of the “proposition” as making an offer you hope the right potential customer can’t refuse because it ideally matches their intent.

There are just 19 words in our sample USP, but it contains multiple intent signals, and now we need to learn how to break those down by type so that you can develop your own messaging for the local brands you market.

Surface QUAAAC components for your strongest USP

Image credit: Hedera Baltica

I recently learned that one of the great secrets to QVC’s multi-billion-dollar success is to get shoppers to ask the question, “Is this me?” and then answer with a, “Yes”. USPs should work just like this! You’ll have noticed that we turned the slogan and mission statement toward the customer in our example USP above, in hopes that they will see themselves in the details. In other words, we’re hoping the customer will ask, “Is this me who wants to shop for organic groceries at a time-honored store, and contribute to sustainability?” and find themselves saying, “Yes”.

Choosing the right details to highlight, when you have a limited amount of space, really matters! Let’s get our ducks in a row with a practice session of writing USPs together, breaking down our options into six basic components:

Quality

If our example grocery store decided that it was the high quality of their inventory that should star in their USP, based on what they’ve learned matters most to their customers, we could write a proposition like this:

Shop all-organic groceries, many sourced locally from our community’s best farmers, for peak quality you can taste!

In other instances, customers’ search for value underlies their quest for quality. They want to know what the highest quality is that they can afford on their budget. In that case, a USP might emphasize cheapness, deals, discounts, or specials. Brands like Imperfect Foods aim to deliver inventory that’s of good quality, if not flawless, and that’s easier on wallets, as made clear by their USP:

Get sustainable, affordable groceries delivered weekly to your door.

The skill required here is to match the economic realities of your customer base to the best quality their money can buy. Whether the inventory is luxury goods or the most affordable deals, nearly all customers want good value.

Uniqueness

If your business model relies on providing something rare, uniqueness might deserve emphasis in your USP. For our grocery store, we might say:

Tired of reading labels? Shop trustingly at Marin County’s only 100% organic grocery store.

Perhaps my favorite example of a USP based on uniqueness comes from Redwood Yurok Canoe Tours, which reads:

Come and explore the powerful Klamath River on a spiritual adventure that will take you back in time, hearing only the quiet chatter of wildlife as you glide along the water’s surface.

This Indigenous-owned business is offering an experience you literally cannot get anywhere else in the world, and it’s a great illustration of building romance around rarity.

Availability

Simple availability can be an easy USP starting point for almost any business, because so many customer searches begin with the question, “I wonder if X business offers X good or service.”

I often recall seeing storefront signage for a business that had started out as “Pens Unlimited” and then presumably appended the slogan “More than just pens” to its messaging as they expanded, leaving me guessing about what the company actually offered. If your inventory is highly varied, it can be a challenge to fit it all into a business name or slogan, but a slightly longer USP can help. Our grocery store might highlight availability like this:

Shop organic produce, dry goods, supplements and award-winning prepared meals at Marin’s largest natural foods store.

As another example, the website of this SMB shoe store may not be state-of-the-art, but their USP immediately answers the question of “I wonder if they have X?”:

Shoe store offering fashionable dress, comfort, boots, and athletic shoes for men and women.

If a potential customer wanted to know if this particular shop had comfort footwear, this USP does the job.

Authority

This is a proposition that works well when customers need a resource they can trust based on the availability of expertise or the proof of longevity. Our grocery store might say:

Shop Marin’s only grocery store owned by a sitting board member of the Organic Trade Association — locals have trusted our organic commitment since 1969.

Certifications can go a long way towards conveying authority. I found information of this kind buried deep in the loam of a Washington plant nursery, which could be brought forward to their homepage as an authority-based USP like this:

Shop plants with three Master Gardeners and two Certified Professional Horticulturists on-site to help you grow your dream garden!

Affinity

Some of my personal favorite USPs send signals of brand-consumer affinity — they convey that the local business operates on the basis of certain values shared by customers. Our sample grocery store is fertile ground for authentic proofs of community building, and could write a USP like this:

Be the change! Shopping with us benefits your whole community, from free organic meal programs for students and elders, to our Deep Green Energy commitment, to profits shared by all employees.

Meanwhile, outdoor outfitter Patagonia takes a similar approach with this USP:

Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.

And sometimes, a USP can blend more than one element. The gorgeous website of The Red Door catering company has signals of both authority and affinity that could be stirred together for an inspirational, aspirational message, like:

MBE-Certified, Women-Owned, ICA member caterers prepare local, organic feasts for your unforgettable event.

Convenience

When ease is paramount for customers, convenience-based USPs can send a good message. Our grocery store might write:

Try convenient online ordering, curbside pickup, and prepared meals, or walk in just minutes from any downtown neighborhood to our organic grocery store.

Sometimes, location is all it takes to convey convenience. I love this ultra-simple USP from Deer Valley Grocery, which happens to have a beautiful waterside destination location:

“Enjoy breakfast and lunch lakeside.”

It can’t get shorter or sweeter than that.

I hope this practice session was useful. Now, we need to determine the most effective components for a particular local business you’re marketing.

Let customer content inspire your USP

Sentiment trends in your reviews, Q&A, and social media comments can point the way to what your customers value most about what your business does. These forms of user-generated content (UGC) can be a big help in determining which elements could be most effective if centered in your USP.

Start by searching Google for your brand name so that your Google Business Profile appears on the left of the screen (if your brand name search doesn’t work, add your city to your query. If that doesn’t work, you may need to learn the basics of local SEO first so that you build enough authority for Google to associate branded searches with your local business listing). Click on the “View All Reviews” portion of your profile and look at the Place Topics Google has surfaced in the oval tabs at the top of your review display.

Place Topics are an accessible, free form of basic sentiment analysis, highlighting topics mentioned most frequently in your reviews. If we had no other information about our grocery store than this, we could write a customer-centric USP along these lines:

Done with Whole Foods? Shop sustainable, fresh produce, our scrumptious salad bar, and healthy vegan choices at our Mill Valley market.

The great thing about Place Topics is that when you click on them, they sort the review corpus to show only reviews that contain the chosen topic. For example, when I click the “produce” tab, this deepens my understanding of exactly what customers are saying about the fruits and veggies at this store:

If we decided produce was uppermost in our customers’ minds, we could refine our USP like this:

Shop “the best produce in Marin” — unlike Whole Foods, we’re 100% organic and locally-owned!

Definitely dig deeply into your reviews to find out what really resonates with your customers. Moz Local customers have the added advantage of our sentiment analysis and trend features to help you go beyond Google and understand dominant review topics across multiple platforms.

If a local business has active social media profiles, customer likes and comments can also provide insight. Looking back through our grocery store’s Facebook posts, I caught the moment early in 2020 when a simple inspirational post received an unusually high amount of likes and loves, and comments from customers saying how much they missed the store and wished delivery was available:

Happily, the business was able to utilize this moment of community interaction to announce the debut of their curbside and delivery service:

A major change in operations, which so many local businesses underwent as a result of the pandemic, could be a strong reason to temporarily alter a company’s core USP for the purpose of quickly disseminating new information. For example, the market might have publicized this message:

Your organic groceries are now available via curbside and delivery in Fairfax and San Anselmo through our new shopping cart.

Other sources of USP-inspiring UGC could include FAQs the business receives via Google Q&A, phone calls, and form submissions — very good reasons to be empowering relevant staff to actively track this type of sentiment. Meanwhile, searcher behavior (if not content) could further refine your USP messaging. Consider using Google Trends or keyword research tools like Moz Keyword Explorer to discover popular search terms related to what your business offers, and that could be effective if incorporated into your proposition.

Where should you publicize your local business USP?

Image Credit: Chris Hottentot

One you’ve put in the work of crafting a strong USP, be sure you are nesting it in as many places as make sense, including:

Website masthead

Website homepage

Website about/mission page

Website contact page

Website location landing pages

Website footer

Website title tags

Website meta description tags

Website Header tags

Alt tags (if appropriate to describing images)

Blog posts

Email campaigns

Email signatures

Google My Business description

Google Posts

Google Q&A (if it answers an FAQ)

Descriptions on all local business listings and review profiles (use Moz Local for a quick data push!)

Carefully-worded review requests in hopes that reviewers will talk about aspects of your USP that matter most to them

Social media profiles

Social media posts

Digital ad campaigns

Guest post profiles

Storefront or in-store signage

Billboards

Radio and television ad campaigns

Print news campaigns

Mailers, circulars, and other print assets

Business cards

Company vehicles

Employee apparel

Company swag

With such amazing, multifarious applications, it’s easy to see the worth of investing time and care into developing a meaningful USP. You might adjust the wording slightly, based on medium, and you might even create several propositions for different purposes, seasons, or testing periods.

What I think you’ll learn from practicing perfecting your USP is that, like so much else in marketing, it comes down to great storytelling in a limited space, with eyes firmly set on engaging customers with a message of readiness that deftly meets their needs.

#túi_giấy_epacking_việt_nam #túi_giấy_epacking #in_túi_giấy_giá_rẻ #in_túi_giấy #epackingvietnam #tuigiayepacking

[drummcarpentry]

How to Create Your Local Business USP with QUAAAC + UGC

I’m new in town and have never heard of your business before. I’m looking for an explanation that’s as quick and easy to read as a street sign.

You have just a few seconds to convey to me what your local business offers and why customers like it. Then I’ll take a few seconds to determine whether what you’ve said matches my needs.

From this moment forward, we either walk the next steps of the consumer-brand journey arm-in-arm, or I wing off in another direction looking for a better match. I could become a loyal customer for decades, or I might never think of your business again.

That’s how important and fleeting the moment of opportunity can be when a customer encounters a unique selling proposition (USP) highlighted by a local business. In Chapter 3 of The Essential Local SEO Strategy Guide, we reference how a clear USP underpins SEO, and it’s a topic that deserves a deeper dive. For new neighbors, travelers, and residents in search of new goods and services, the USP is a sign you can hang in many places.

In this article, we’ll actively practice writing compelling USPs for real-world local businesses based on six simple components. Further, I’ll teach you to see a brand you’re marketing from the viewpoint of customers on the basis of user generated content (UGC).

First, what’s a USP?

A unique selling proposition in marketing is a brief statement that’s typically defined as distinguishing a brand and its offerings from its competitors. It’s not the same thing as the catchphrase found in slogans and jingles (e.g. “Reach out and touch someone” or “Just Do It”), which, while memorable, may only vaguely hint at what a business is or does. Instead, a USP should clearly define whether what a business is, does, and has matches the intent of the customer, and the art involved is in learning to convey a lot of meaning in very few words.

If you learn best from real-world examples, here’s an independent grocery store that has put its slogan and mission statement on its website homepage:

If we were tasked with creating a USP, just from this information, we would write something like this:

Shop the oldest and largest organic grocery store in Marin County to actively support our community’s health and sustainability.

If I happen to be looking for a market with a big selection of organics that’s been trusted by locals for many years and I want my dollars to work towards sustainability, my intent will have been perfectly matched by this USP.

Local businesses have an advantage over virtual competitors in that circumstances auto-generate one of the “unique” aspects of the company message: being present in a specific town or city makes your brand a unique resource for people there, as opposed to selling to the world at large. Pair locale with local rarity for a smart combination. The “selling” aspects of this type of content should inspire actionable language on your part; words like “shop”, “experience”, “visit” are mini calls-to-action embedded in the USP. Think of the “proposition” as making an offer you hope the right potential customer can’t refuse because it ideally matches their intent.

There are just 19 words in our sample USP, but it contains multiple intent signals, and now we need to learn how to break those down by type so that you can develop your own messaging for the local brands you market.

Surface QUAAAC components for your strongest USP

Image credit: Hedera Baltica

I recently learned that one of the great secrets to QVC’s multi-billion-dollar success is to get shoppers to ask the question, “Is this me?” and then answer with a, “Yes”. USPs should work just like this! You’ll have noticed that we turned the slogan and mission statement toward the customer in our example USP above, in hopes that they will see themselves in the details. In other words, we’re hoping the customer will ask, “Is this me who wants to shop for organic groceries at a time-honored store, and contribute to sustainability?” and find themselves saying, “Yes”.

Choosing the right details to highlight, when you have a limited amount of space, really matters! Let’s get our ducks in a row with a practice session of writing USPs together, breaking down our options into six basic components:

Quality

If our example grocery store decided that it was the high quality of their inventory that should star in their USP, based on what they’ve learned matters most to their customers, we could write a proposition like this:

Shop all-organic groceries, many sourced locally from our community’s best farmers, for peak quality you can taste!

In other instances, customers’ search for value underlies their quest for quality. They want to know what the highest quality is that they can afford on their budget. In that case, a USP might emphasize cheapness, deals, discounts, or specials. Brands like Imperfect Foods aim to deliver inventory that’s of good quality, if not flawless, and that’s easier on wallets, as made clear by their USP:

Get sustainable, affordable groceries delivered weekly to your door.

The skill required here is to match the economic realities of your customer base to the best quality their money can buy. Whether the inventory is luxury goods or the most affordable deals, nearly all customers want good value.

Uniqueness

If your business model relies on providing something rare, uniqueness might deserve emphasis in your USP. For our grocery store, we might say:

Tired of reading labels? Shop trustingly at Marin County’s only 100% organic grocery store.

Perhaps my favorite example of a USP based on uniqueness comes from Redwood Yurok Canoe Tours, which reads:

Come and explore the powerful Klamath River on a spiritual adventure that will take you back in time, hearing only the quiet chatter of wildlife as you glide along the water’s surface.

This Indigenous-owned business is offering an experience you literally cannot get anywhere else in the world, and it’s a great illustration of building romance around rarity.

Availability

Simple availability can be an easy USP starting point for almost any business, because so many customer searches begin with the question, “I wonder if X business offers X good or service.”

I often recall seeing storefront signage for a business that had started out as “Pens Unlimited” and then presumably appended the slogan “More than just pens” to its messaging as they expanded, leaving me guessing about what the company actually offered. If your inventory is highly varied, it can be a challenge to fit it all into a business name or slogan, but a slightly longer USP can help. Our grocery store might highlight availability like this:

Shop organic produce, dry goods, supplements and award-winning prepared meals at Marin’s largest natural foods store.

As another example, the website of this SMB shoe store may not be state-of-the-art, but their USP immediately answers the question of “I wonder if they have X?”:

Shoe store offering fashionable dress, comfort, boots, and athletic shoes for men and women.

If a potential customer wanted to know if this particular shop had comfort footwear, this USP does the job.

Authority

This is a proposition that works well when customers need a resource they can trust based on the availability of expertise or the proof of longevity. Our grocery store might say:

Shop Marin’s only grocery store owned by a sitting board member of the Organic Trade Association — locals have trusted our organic commitment since 1969.

Certifications can go a long way towards conveying authority. I found information of this kind buried deep in the loam of a Washington plant nursery, which could be brought forward to their homepage as an authority-based USP like this:

Shop plants with three Master Gardeners and two Certified Professional Horticulturists on-site to help you grow your dream garden!

Affinity

Some of my personal favorite USPs send signals of brand-consumer affinity — they convey that the local business operates on the basis of certain values shared by customers. Our sample grocery store is fertile ground for authentic proofs of community building, and could write a USP like this:

Be the change! Shopping with us benefits your whole community, from free organic meal programs for students and elders, to our Deep Green Energy commitment, to profits shared by all employees.

Meanwhile, outdoor outfitter Patagonia takes a similar approach with this USP:

Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.

And sometimes, a USP can blend more than one element. The gorgeous website of The Red Door catering company has signals of both authority and affinity that could be stirred together for an inspirational, aspirational message, like:

MBE-Certified, Women-Owned, ICA member caterers prepare local, organic feasts for your unforgettable event.

Convenience

When ease is paramount for customers, convenience-based USPs can send a good message. Our grocery store might write:

Try convenient online ordering, curbside pickup, and prepared meals, or walk in just minutes from any downtown neighborhood to our organic grocery store.

Sometimes, location is all it takes to convey convenience. I love this ultra-simple USP from Deer Valley Grocery, which happens to have a beautiful waterside destination location:

“Enjoy breakfast and lunch lakeside.”

It can’t get shorter or sweeter than that.

I hope this practice session was useful. Now, we need to determine the most effective components for a particular local business you’re marketing.

Let customer content inspire your USP

Sentiment trends in your reviews, Q&A, and social media comments can point the way to what your customers value most about what your business does. These forms of user-generated content (UGC) can be a big help in determining which elements could be most effective if centered in your USP.

Start by searching Google for your brand name so that your Google Business Profile appears on the left of the screen (if your brand name search doesn’t work, add your city to your query. If that doesn’t work, you may need to learn the basics of local SEO first so that you build enough authority for Google to associate branded searches with your local business listing). Click on the “View All Reviews” portion of your profile and look at the Place Topics Google has surfaced in the oval tabs at the top of your review display.

Place Topics are an accessible, free form of basic sentiment analysis, highlighting topics mentioned most frequently in your reviews. If we had no other information about our grocery store than this, we could write a customer-centric USP along these lines:

Done with Whole Foods? Shop sustainable, fresh produce, our scrumptious salad bar, and healthy vegan choices at our Mill Valley market.

The great thing about Place Topics is that when you click on them, they sort the review corpus to show only reviews that contain the chosen topic. For example, when I click the “produce” tab, this deepens my understanding of exactly what customers are saying about the fruits and veggies at this store:

If we decided produce was uppermost in our customers’ minds, we could refine our USP like this:

Shop “the best produce in Marin” — unlike Whole Foods, we’re 100% organic and locally-owned!

Definitely dig deeply into your reviews to find out what really resonates with your customers. Moz Local customers have the added advantage of our sentiment analysis and trend features to help you go beyond Google and understand dominant review topics across multiple platforms.

If a local business has active social media profiles, customer likes and comments can also provide insight. Looking back through our grocery store’s Facebook posts, I caught the moment early in 2020 when a simple inspirational post received an unusually high amount of likes and loves, and comments from customers saying how much they missed the store and wished delivery was available:

Happily, the business was able to utilize this moment of community interaction to announce the debut of their curbside and delivery service:

A major change in operations, which so many local businesses underwent as a result of the pandemic, could be a strong reason to temporarily alter a company’s core USP for the purpose of quickly disseminating new information. For example, the market might have publicized this message:

Your organic groceries are now available via curbside and delivery in Fairfax and San Anselmo through our new shopping cart.

Other sources of USP-inspiring UGC could include FAQs the business receives via Google Q&A, phone calls, and form submissions — very good reasons to be empowering relevant staff to actively track this type of sentiment. Meanwhile, searcher behavior (if not content) could further refine your USP messaging. Consider using Google Trends or keyword research tools like Moz Keyword Explorer to discover popular search terms related to what your business offers, and that could be effective if incorporated into your proposition.

Where should you publicize your local business USP?

Image Credit: Chris Hottentot

One you’ve put in the work of crafting a strong USP, be sure you are nesting it in as many places as make sense, including:

Website masthead

Website homepage

Website about/mission page

Website contact page

Website location landing pages

Website footer

Website title tags

Website meta description tags

Website Header tags

Alt tags (if appropriate to describing images)

Blog posts

Email campaigns

Email signatures

Google My Business description

Google Posts

Google Q&A (if it answers an FAQ)

Descriptions on all local business listings and review profiles (use Moz Local for a quick data push!)

Carefully-worded review requests in hopes that reviewers will talk about aspects of your USP that matter most to them

Social media profiles

Social media posts

Digital ad campaigns

Guest post profiles

Storefront or in-store signage

Billboards

Radio and television ad campaigns

Print news campaigns

Mailers, circulars, and other print assets

Business cards

Company vehicles

Employee apparel

Company swag

With such amazing, multifarious applications, it’s easy to see the worth of investing time and care into developing a meaningful USP. You might adjust the wording slightly, based on medium, and you might even create several propositions for different purposes, seasons, or testing periods.

What I think you’ll learn from practicing perfecting your USP is that, like so much else in marketing, it comes down to great storytelling in a limited space, with eyes firmly set on engaging customers with a message of readiness that deftly meets their needs.

[xaydungtruonggia]

How to Create Your Local Business USP with QUAAAC + UGC

I’m new in town and have never heard of your business before. I’m looking for an explanation that’s as quick and easy to read as a street sign.

You have just a few seconds to convey to me what your local business offers and why customers like it. Then I’ll take a few seconds to determine whether what you’ve said matches my needs.

From this moment forward, we either walk the next steps of the consumer-brand journey arm-in-arm, or I wing off in another direction looking for a better match. I could become a loyal customer for decades, or I might never think of your business again.

That’s how important and fleeting the moment of opportunity can be when a customer encounters a unique selling proposition (USP) highlighted by a local business. In Chapter 3 of The Essential Local SEO Strategy Guide, we reference how a clear USP underpins SEO, and it’s a topic that deserves a deeper dive. For new neighbors, travelers, and residents in search of new goods and services, the USP is a sign you can hang in many places.

In this article, we’ll actively practice writing compelling USPs for real-world local businesses based on six simple components. Further, I’ll teach you to see a brand you’re marketing from the viewpoint of customers on the basis of user generated content (UGC).

First, what’s a USP?

A unique selling proposition in marketing is a brief statement that’s typically defined as distinguishing a brand and its offerings from its competitors. It’s not the same thing as the catchphrase found in slogans and jingles (e.g. “Reach out and touch someone” or “Just Do It”), which, while memorable, may only vaguely hint at what a business is or does. Instead, a USP should clearly define whether what a business is, does, and has matches the intent of the customer, and the art involved is in learning to convey a lot of meaning in very few words.

If you learn best from real-world examples, here’s an independent grocery store that has put its slogan and mission statement on its website homepage:

If we were tasked with creating a USP, just from this information, we would write something like this:

Shop the oldest and largest organic grocery store in Marin County to actively support our community’s health and sustainability.

If I happen to be looking for a market with a big selection of organics that’s been trusted by locals for many years and I want my dollars to work towards sustainability, my intent will have been perfectly matched by this USP.

Local businesses have an advantage over virtual competitors in that circumstances auto-generate one of the “unique” aspects of the company message: being present in a specific town or city makes your brand a unique resource for people there, as opposed to selling to the world at large. Pair locale with local rarity for a smart combination. The “selling” aspects of this type of content should inspire actionable language on your part; words like “shop”, “experience”, “visit” are mini calls-to-action embedded in the USP. Think of the “proposition” as making an offer you hope the right potential customer can’t refuse because it ideally matches their intent.

There are just 19 words in our sample USP, but it contains multiple intent signals, and now we need to learn how to break those down by type so that you can develop your own messaging for the local brands you market.

Surface QUAAAC components for your strongest USP

Image credit: Hedera Baltica

I recently learned that one of the great secrets to QVC’s multi-billion-dollar success is to get shoppers to ask the question, “Is this me?” and then answer with a, “Yes”. USPs should work just like this! You’ll have noticed that we turned the slogan and mission statement toward the customer in our example USP above, in hopes that they will see themselves in the details. In other words, we’re hoping the customer will ask, “Is this me who wants to shop for organic groceries at a time-honored store, and contribute to sustainability?” and find themselves saying, “Yes”.

Choosing the right details to highlight, when you have a limited amount of space, really matters! Let’s get our ducks in a row with a practice session of writing USPs together, breaking down our options into six basic components:

Quality

If our example grocery store decided that it was the high quality of their inventory that should star in their USP, based on what they’ve learned matters most to their customers, we could write a proposition like this:

Shop all-organic groceries, many sourced locally from our community’s best farmers, for peak quality you can taste!

In other instances, customers’ search for value underlies their quest for quality. They want to know what the highest quality is that they can afford on their budget. In that case, a USP might emphasize cheapness, deals, discounts, or specials. Brands like Imperfect Foods aim to deliver inventory that’s of good quality, if not flawless, and that’s easier on wallets, as made clear by their USP:

Get sustainable, affordable groceries delivered weekly to your door.

The skill required here is to match the economic realities of your customer base to the best quality their money can buy. Whether the inventory is luxury goods or the most affordable deals, nearly all customers want good value.

Uniqueness

If your business model relies on providing something rare, uniqueness might deserve emphasis in your USP. For our grocery store, we might say:

Tired of reading labels? Shop trustingly at Marin County’s only 100% organic grocery store.

Perhaps my favorite example of a USP based on uniqueness comes from Redwood Yurok Canoe Tours, which reads:

Come and explore the powerful Klamath River on a spiritual adventure that will take you back in time, hearing only the quiet chatter of wildlife as you glide along the water’s surface.

This Indigenous-owned business is offering an experience you literally cannot get anywhere else in the world, and it’s a great illustration of building romance around rarity.

Availability

Simple availability can be an easy USP starting point for almost any business, because so many customer searches begin with the question, “I wonder if X business offers X good or service.”

I often recall seeing storefront signage for a business that had started out as “Pens Unlimited” and then presumably appended the slogan “More than just pens” to its messaging as they expanded, leaving me guessing about what the company actually offered. If your inventory is highly varied, it can be a challenge to fit it all into a business name or slogan, but a slightly longer USP can help. Our grocery store might highlight availability like this:

Shop organic produce, dry goods, supplements and award-winning prepared meals at Marin’s largest natural foods store.

As another example, the website of this SMB shoe store may not be state-of-the-art, but their USP immediately answers the question of “I wonder if they have X?”:

Shoe store offering fashionable dress, comfort, boots, and athletic shoes for men and women.

If a potential customer wanted to know if this particular shop had comfort footwear, this USP does the job.

Authority

This is a proposition that works well when customers need a resource they can trust based on the availability of expertise or the proof of longevity. Our grocery store might say:

Shop Marin’s only grocery store owned by a sitting board member of the Organic Trade Association — locals have trusted our organic commitment since 1969.

Certifications can go a long way towards conveying authority. I found information of this kind buried deep in the loam of a Washington plant nursery, which could be brought forward to their homepage as an authority-based USP like this:

Shop plants with three Master Gardeners and two Certified Professional Horticulturists on-site to help you grow your dream garden!

Affinity

Some of my personal favorite USPs send signals of brand-consumer affinity — they convey that the local business operates on the basis of certain values shared by customers. Our sample grocery store is fertile ground for authentic proofs of community building, and could write a USP like this:

Be the change! Shopping with us benefits your whole community, from free organic meal programs for students and elders, to our Deep Green Energy commitment, to profits shared by all employees.

Meanwhile, outdoor outfitter Patagonia takes a similar approach with this USP:

Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.

And sometimes, a USP can blend more than one element. The gorgeous website of The Red Door catering company has signals of both authority and affinity that could be stirred together for an inspirational, aspirational message, like:

MBE-Certified, Women-Owned, ICA member caterers prepare local, organic feasts for your unforgettable event.

Convenience

When ease is paramount for customers, convenience-based USPs can send a good message. Our grocery store might write:

Try convenient online ordering, curbside pickup, and prepared meals, or walk in just minutes from any downtown neighborhood to our organic grocery store.

Sometimes, location is all it takes to convey convenience. I love this ultra-simple USP from Deer Valley Grocery, which happens to have a beautiful waterside destination location:

“Enjoy breakfast and lunch lakeside.”

It can’t get shorter or sweeter than that.

I hope this practice session was useful. Now, we need to determine the most effective components for a particular local business you’re marketing.

Let customer content inspire your USP

Sentiment trends in your reviews, Q&A, and social media comments can point the way to what your customers value most about what your business does. These forms of user-generated content (UGC) can be a big help in determining which elements could be most effective if centered in your USP.

Start by searching Google for your brand name so that your Google Business Profile appears on the left of the screen (if your brand name search doesn’t work, add your city to your query. If that doesn’t work, you may need to learn the basics of local SEO first so that you build enough authority for Google to associate branded searches with your local business listing). Click on the “View All Reviews” portion of your profile and look at the Place Topics Google has surfaced in the oval tabs at the top of your review display.

Place Topics are an accessible, free form of basic sentiment analysis, highlighting topics mentioned most frequently in your reviews. If we had no other information about our grocery store than this, we could write a customer-centric USP along these lines:

Done with Whole Foods? Shop sustainable, fresh produce, our scrumptious salad bar, and healthy vegan choices at our Mill Valley market.

The great thing about Place Topics is that when you click on them, they sort the review corpus to show only reviews that contain the chosen topic. For example, when I click the “produce” tab, this deepens my understanding of exactly what customers are saying about the fruits and veggies at this store:

If we decided produce was uppermost in our customers’ minds, we could refine our USP like this:

Shop “the best produce in Marin” — unlike Whole Foods, we’re 100% organic and locally-owned!

Definitely dig deeply into your reviews to find out what really resonates with your customers. Moz Local customers have the added advantage of our sentiment analysis and trend features to help you go beyond Google and understand dominant review topics across multiple platforms.

If a local business has active social media profiles, customer likes and comments can also provide insight. Looking back through our grocery store’s Facebook posts, I caught the moment early in 2020 when a simple inspirational post received an unusually high amount of likes and loves, and comments from customers saying how much they missed the store and wished delivery was available:

Happily, the business was able to utilize this moment of community interaction to announce the debut of their curbside and delivery service:

A major change in operations, which so many local businesses underwent as a result of the pandemic, could be a strong reason to temporarily alter a company’s core USP for the purpose of quickly disseminating new information. For example, the market might have publicized this message:

Your organic groceries are now available via curbside and delivery in Fairfax and San Anselmo through our new shopping cart.

Other sources of USP-inspiring UGC could include FAQs the business receives via Google Q&A, phone calls, and form submissions — very good reasons to be empowering relevant staff to actively track this type of sentiment. Meanwhile, searcher behavior (if not content) could further refine your USP messaging. Consider using Google Trends or keyword research tools like Moz Keyword Explorer to discover popular search terms related to what your business offers, and that could be effective if incorporated into your proposition.

Where should you publicize your local business USP?

Image Credit: Chris Hottentot

One you’ve put in the work of crafting a strong USP, be sure you are nesting it in as many places as make sense, including:

Website masthead

Website homepage

Website about/mission page

Website contact page

Website location landing pages

Website footer

Website title tags

Website meta description tags

Website Header tags

Alt tags (if appropriate to describing images)

Blog posts

Email campaigns

Email signatures

Google My Business description

Google Posts

Google Q&A (if it answers an FAQ)

Descriptions on all local business listings and review profiles (use Moz Local for a quick data push!)

Carefully-worded review requests in hopes that reviewers will talk about aspects of your USP that matter most to them

Social media profiles

Social media posts

Digital ad campaigns

Guest post profiles

Storefront or in-store signage

Billboards

Radio and television ad campaigns

Print news campaigns

Mailers, circulars, and other print assets

Business cards

Company vehicles

Employee apparel

Company swag

With such amazing, multifarious applications, it’s easy to see the worth of investing time and care into developing a meaningful USP. You might adjust the wording slightly, based on medium, and you might even create several propositions for different purposes, seasons, or testing periods.

What I think you’ll learn from practicing perfecting your USP is that, like so much else in marketing, it comes down to great storytelling in a limited space, with eyes firmly set on engaging customers with a message of readiness that deftly meets their needs.