(This article was originally a guest post for Copy Chief.)
You may have seen the mean looking lady at the top of this article on TV before. Or maybe on YouTube. She’s the lady who’s always in those cage fights, crushing some other girl in a “no-holds barred” blood contest.
She normally ends up winning, brutalizing her opponent in a matter of seconds.
Her name is Ronda Rousey.
Now, how you just reacted to me calling her sport a “no-holds-barred blood contest” says a lot about you.
For some, her sport — Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) — is a barbaric practice, with no place in modern, civilized society.
For others, it’s the pinnacle of competitive, unarmed combat – the ultimate martial art.
One thing’s for certain though: regardless of your views on the sport, it’s becoming hard to ignore MMA as it gains more (and more) mainstream exposure.
I started paying attention last year, when my imagination was fully captured by the sport’s premier organization — the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC).
And I’m not the only one who’s recently started to take notice.
It’s been claimed (and reported) that MMA is the world’s fastest growing sport.
In such a competitive and established market as sports, how has the UFC managed to carve out such a large piece of the market?
And since MMA was only created in the 90s, how did they do it in such a short period of time?
After getting sucked into the UFC’s world, I’ve been paying close attention to their marketing to find out how.
Simply put: If the UFC’s marketing was in a cage with any other sport, they’d be finishing the fight faster than Ronda Rousey.
Because when it comes to their marketing, there are 2 things they do exceptionally well:
- They create a legitimate Unique Selling Proposition (USP) for every fight (why this fight is THE ONLY ONE of it’s kind — and why you have to watch this fight over ANY OTHER fight).
- They sell every fight based on the power of it’s story.
Today, we’re going to take a look at both of these aspects and how they’ve contributed to the UFC’s record growth.
When it comes to selling with story, there are few better in the world right now. I have a prime example to share later in this article.
But first, let’s take a look at a marketing concept a lot of people think they understand…
“What is a Unique Selling Proposition?”
Let’s start with a “USP crash course”.
Understanding USPs properly is extremely important to the lifeblood of your business – sales.
A USP is more than just a claim of ‘Hot pizza in 30 minutes or it’s free!’ — which is what most people associate with a USP.
The truth is that coming up with a great USP for your business is hard. Real hard.
So, my goal here is to give you all the tools you need to be able to identify a killer USP, and then craft one for your own marketing.
First, let’s start with a functional definition. A definition that — when you understand it — will give you a leg up on the competition, right off the bat.
A USP (also know