What’s Your Hook? The USP Revisited

by Nancy Marmolejo on June 8, 2009

in Lead Generation & Soft Selling

The reason Twitter has taken off is pretty easy to figure out: with more and more information coming at us each day, quick and easy nuggets of communication are becoming the preferred method. This is trickling down to how we speak about our businesses and what skills and results people associate us with.

The majority of my clients are experienced business owners, many of them marketing experts and highly skilled business coaches. They’re not newbies to online marketing and they’re masterful at what they do.

But they come to me needing survival skills. Social media is making their heads spin and they’re feeling like the freshman class of Web 2.o.

Here’s a common dilemma I hear almost daily:

How do you distill years of experience, training, and earned wisdom into a micro-sound bite that engages prospects and attracts clients?

You need what I call your “hook”.

Not a gimmick, even though I think the musical Gypsy’s “You Gotta Have a Gimmick” does have some good ideas to build upon (bumping a Christmas light on with your hips is optional).

Think of something that will make people easily remember you and create a hunger for the results you deliver. Cleverness is always a good way to go, which means you add a dose of original creativity to the mix.

I’ve been really impressed lately with Lisa Sasevich of www.TheInvisibleClose.com and I’m using her as an example for many of my clients.

Lisa could have been yet another muddled sales professional out there trying to get everyone to learn how to sell.

What sets her apart is that she took her brilliance- which is soft selling- and applied it to getting results in a specific situation- speaking from the stage.

She calls her technique “The Invisible Close” and teaches entrepreneurs how to “sell from the stage without sounding salesy”.

I think what she’s doing is brilliant because she’s helping to break the boring cookie-cutter mold that people get into. And every time I turn around someone I know is now working with her so they can convert more sales during their talks- so obviously she’s onto a good thing and people are responding!

Think about this hook thing.

  • Take your brilliance.
  • Apply it to a particular situation.
  • Connect it to results.

If your brain is frying over this, and you’re eagerly working to find an answer, you can  schedule a Visibility Strategy Session with me.

We’ll work together on your “hook” then find how to use Web 2.0 to get the word out.

Messages are getting shorter and shorter while our knowledge is getting broader and broader. A great “hook” is what you need to attract leads and engage prospective clients.

What do you think? Are you feeling the creative juices flowing? Drop me a comment, I truly enjoy geeking out on this topic!

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  • Great reading. My hook could be improved.

    I would like to know if anyone out there has taken massive action or had some life changing experience because of a tweet. I think Twitter is about to hit a brick wall. Everyone is jumping on getting wrapped up in how many followers they have. I think very little quality information is being exchanged. I think it is now becoming a distrcation rather than an effective marketing tool.

    How many tweets did you read today?

    What did you send today? Did it add value to someone's life or did it just polish your ego?

    What tweets do you remember from yesterday?

    Social media certainly works - Youtube and facebook. Quality information can be communicated, but I think Twitter is more like web graffiti. It is for twits with too much time on their hands.

    I think it can only work for you celebrities, sportspeople, big business name etc

    What do you think??

    but I really believe in networking and meeting people. I often find I meet people at I think we are going to reach where we will
  • ohhh Nick, I like the feisty challenge here!
    Twitter today is not the same as it was in late 2008 / early 2009. It's more important than ever to focus on providing value, bolstering your credibility, and building trust. The focus on numbers has gotten people more than a little drunk on ego.

    I don't think Twitter is useless, however I do think using Twitter as a marketing tool needs to be reassessed. Right now it's like reading the Penny Saver (series of classified ads). It should be about listening and conversing, not just about announcing and promoting.

    I vote for going micro with your contacts, cherry picking the top 20% and going deeper with them... mostly offline.
  • This is a refreshing idea. I think more and more people are wanting to work with real people.
    Have you navigated through a computer tech support tree? Eesh... it's hair pulling.
    Being real is what attracts people to what you are offering.

    Thanks for a great read and inspiring information.
    Donna DeVane

    <abbr>Donna DeVanes last blog post..Journey From Grief Back to Joy</abbr>
  • Thinking about drilling your hook down to a short one floor elevator speech sentence - why not test your ideas out on a blind audience using adwords. I distilled my brand's USP into six test sentences and then ran an adwords campaign for my brands keywords. All the ads were identical apart from the thrid line which held the test USP message. The ads were rotated evenly and the results gave us two clear winners to work with further - one is customer facing and one is about us namely "Niche Ideas to make YOU money" and "The home of Niche Ideas".

    So test your ideas out on a disconnected audience who don't know you and let them help you narrow down your choices!
  • Thank you Colin for that great idea. It's amazing how much customer feedback can give us the right words.

    N
  • Lisa Marie Platske
    Gosh, this is so good. And, I needed it. Thanks, Nancy!
  • Great advice, but I would think people, myself included, are wondering how you use that hook. Should you be using a tag line, should it be in your bio Or should we all go out and change our web address to include the hook we are using?

    I agree that a good hook sets you apart from the other fishermen but, if you dont know how to bait it or what pond to put it in, it will be nothing more than a shiny object that won't catch a single fish!

    <abbr>Lisa Dingmans last blog post..code</abbr>
  • Great info in the post.
    It is also important to caution people that the USP or "hook" still needs to be straightforward and clear. I have found that people often get attached to a clever tagline that sounds witty but doesn't really say anything.
  • Great point Brent! If the cleverness turns into an ego parade, that is always dangerous. A hook grabs you, something clever that doesn't say anything doesn't have any traction.
  • It's critical to have *something* to make us stand out from the crowd and a hook is exactly it and something many of us (self included) struggle with -- finding the right angle without being "hypey" can be challenging no matter how long you've been in business or how successful you are.

    Thanks SO MUCH for yet another great post AND offering the strategy sessions!

    Be talking with you soon! :-)

    Sandy

    <abbr>Sandra Martinis last blog post..What do John Cena & Wrestling have to do with your business?</abbr>
  • This is so unbelievably timely as I just had a "head to heart" conversation this morning about the same thing.

    It's amazing how true your points are when you connect those three dots to vocalize your hook in our micro-blogging and social media world. Mine as you know it's all about passion as without it, a lot of life/business balance go missing and how do we go ahead to make our profits hot? -

    And let's not forget about showing the much needed "Intellectual Cleavage" and break some rules so that we can create our own = USP

    Three little words: "Hot, Hot, Hot"

    <abbr>Ali R. Rodriguezs last blog post..Back to the Top!</abbr>
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