How to Define/Redefine Your Value Proposition for Better Business Outcomes
A value proposition is a statement that reflects why a customer chooses your brand over another.
It’s a written statement that explains your brand’s angle in the marketplace.
It should contain the costs, benefits, and value that an organization can deliver to its customers.
Value = Benefits-Cost
Of course, you already know this. You can’t have a business without the value proposition, right?
Maybe you had a value proposition years ago, but it hasn’t been updated in a very long time. Often, that can be that your value proposition doesn’t accurately reflect the entire landscape of your industry.
Or maybe, you never consciously created a value proposition. It happens. Some companies might have never created one.
But there’s a difference between most companies and those that are the leaders in their industry. That difference is usually in the value proposition that you base your marketing and sales strategies
This post will teach you the essential questions you need to ask to redefine or define your value proposition.
First, you must determine the problem you solve. Idealism doesn’t help your business grow, and only issues that demand actual solutions will make your business grow.
If you look at your products and realize, these don’t solve any current issues, you’ll need to reevaluate your offerings.
Analyze what has changed in the industry. Some areas that might have caused the problem you solve to change are:
- Technology eliminated the problem
- Technology created problems with your solution
- Your target audience has changed
- The industry has changed
If the problem you’re solving doesn’t quite hit the mark, that means you’ll be spinning your wheels trying to solve a problem that your customers don’t have.
This can be fixed in one of two ways — revaluating your offering and reevaluated the problem you solve.
Sometimes, it’s just the wording that needs to be changed. Other times, the issue with the problem you’re solving starts with the product. You need your product and problem to align perfectly for your company to grow successfully.
Look at your current customers. Look at the people who read your blog posts and fill out your forms.
You need to examine the actual people whose problems you are solving on a day-to-day basis.
Figure out what their job titles are, their daily schedule looks look, how they use your offering to improve their work lives, and what words they use to write about their issue.
From there, building buyer personas that reflect who your actual customers are.
Again, when you answer this question, use real people as the guide to figure out who you’re truly serving. A faulty value proposition can come from idealistic notions of who you want your customers to be vs. who they really are.
Your customers are real people with real problems. The same can be said with future customers.
Check out your competition. No, not to copy what they’re doing, but to determine how they’re solving the same problem you do.
How do they approach the problem? How do they talk about the problem to their audience and customers? What language do they use? Where are they pushing their answers to problems?
Once you look at the competition, you’ll need to determine what makes your offering different than the competition.
Look at the questions above and answer them now, objectively, for your brand.
You need to see how you stack up against others and analyze anything you do differently.
Look at the answers and ask why you approach solving the problem the way you do. What expertise do you have that makes it work? What language do you use? Why do you use it?
There are a lot of different ways to write a value proposition.
But here’s a quick list to get you started writing your own.
- Who has the problem?
- What problem are they having?
- Your offering
- Touch on a unique problem-solving feature
- Unlike the competition
Answer each of these questions to determine your value proposition. It should be like an elevator pitch in length.
For example, let’s apply this for another company that has a solid value proposition already, Slack.
According to the five points listed above, Slack’s value proposition would look something like this: Office workers need to collaborate with each other quickly, Slack’s work chat and it’s many integrations make it easy to fit into all of your work processes.”
They write this on their homepage:
Sounds like a value proposition to me.
Try it with your brand. See if you can keep it under three sentences. Then, let us know how it goes. Maybe even share your value proposition in the comments section if you dare.
Let us know what you think:
- How did you come up with your value proposition?
- How do you use it for marketing?
- When should you redefine your value proposition?
brandingemailmarketingvaluevalue proposition
Acadia Otlowski / About Author
Originally published at www.hipb2b.com on March 21, 2019.
