Part of my job as a copy­writer is com­ing up with names. A while ago, I wrote a blog post on the power of names. I won’t repeat it here, except to reit­er­ate that brand­ing, albeit not a pri­or­ity for most, is still incred­i­bly important.

And it’s some­thing you mustn’t ignore.

Why? Because choos­ing a name for your busi­ness or prod­uct, even your domain name, is often the sin­gle, most impor­tant busi­ness deci­sion you’ll ever make.

To that end, let me share with you some nam­ing tips. In my expe­ri­ence, I have five char­ac­ter­is­tics of great brand names, which I call the five “S’s.” I encour­age you to fol­low when try­ing to come up with a solid, long-​​lasting, and highly prof­itable name.

For starters, let me point out that the best names are rel­a­tively short, easy to pro­nounce, and easy to remem­ber. They have con­sid­er­able mnemonic value.

And mnemonic value often trans­lates into finan­cial value.

A mnemonic is a device — such as a word, sym­bol, or sound — intended to assist in recall. If a name car­ries some mnemonic value, it will increase traf­fic, sales, and value to your busi­ness on its own. The more mnemonic a name is, the more valu­able it is.

There are var­i­ous rea­sons for this.

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The other day I was asked a ques­tion I hear all too often: “How do I dis­tin­guish myself from other copywriters?”

To find the answer, look to one of the most effec­tive and fre­quently used copy­writ­ing and mar­ket­ing tools. It’s your “Unique Sell­ing Propo­si­tion,” or USP.

(I pre­fer to call it a “Unique Sell­ing Posi­tion.” If you’ve read my book, “Power Posi­tion­ing,” then you’d know that I’m a big fan of posi­tion­ing rather than prospecting.)

Your USP is also your “hook.”

Time and time again, I’ve told many aspir­ing copy­writ­ers and mar­keters that a USP is what dis­tin­guishes you from the pack. It increases per­ceived value, exper­tise, and cred­i­bil­ity — with­out need­ing to state it outright.

But since I hear this ques­tion often, par­tic­u­larly from copy­writ­ers just enter­ing the field, I sense that it’s because peo­ple need a lit­tle help in defin­ing their USP.

So to help you, here’s a tip.

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After my last arti­cle on viral mar­ket­ing, some emailed me want­ing more infor­ma­tion about how to cre­ate the per­cep­tion of uniqueness.

Let me give you a few tips, largely based on the “Law Of Lead­er­ship,” one of The 22 Immutable Laws of Mar­ket­ing from my two favorite men­tors, Jack Trout and Al Ries.

The law sim­ply states that it’s bet­ter to be the first in your mar­ket or prod­uct cat­e­gory than it is to be the best in one.

Often, many busi­nesses build their entire mar­ket­ing strat­egy around a par­tic­u­lar brand and its “bet­ter” qual­i­ties. Claim­ing supe­ri­or­ity smacks of being untrue and is often a very risky endeavor. If you claim you’re the best, your state­ment will likely be suspect.

A men­tor once told me some­thing that pro­foundly affected how I think about marketing…

“Impli­ca­tion is more pow­er­ful than specification.”

I real­ized that this, in itself, implied many things as well. Whether he intended it or not, what I pulled from that state­ment is, it is more effec­tive to imply supe­ri­or­ity — to be per­ceived as being supe­rior — than to being or out­right stat­ing that one is superior.

The ques­tion then becomes, how do you cre­ate the per­cep­tion of supe­ri­or­ity? How do you get oth­ers to think you’re the best with­out stat­ing it out­right, much less pro­mote it?

The fol­low­ing are a few point­ers to guide you in that direction.

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Michel: The sec­ond law will never believe any­thing at first. And the third law is peo­ple will never do any­thing at first. So the three steps, I call it the three P’s. Pull them in, prove your case, push them back. And copy, when you should pull them in, the head­line, peo­ple will scroll down a web page.

So you’ve got tons of things that you can do to pull them in. Head­ers through­out the copy, the story. Prove your case is of course cred­i­bil­ity and proof and all that stuff, and your offer and value buildup and guar­an­tees and tes­ti­mo­ni­als. And push them to act is of course ask­ing for the order, mak­ing the offer.

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Michel: We have every­body here now we’re going to start. And I, I want to wel­come you all to the call because tonight is going to be an amaz­ing call that’s noth­ing short of aston­ish­ing and it’s going to be some­thing that I, I really am proud of because you see if you want to learn how to write killer copy there’s some­thing that you need to learn above all that.

And, and this is so impor­tant because if you want to learn how to write killer copy that mes­mer­izes your audi­ence and almost rips the money out of their wal­lets and, and make them feel good about doing it too, you’re in for a real treat. Because the per­son that’s going to be on tonight is a per­son that can actu­ally teach you how to do that.

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