In this marketing clutter, what’s your value proposition? Is it working well? Is your ‘USP’ really working? Are you measuring it? Do you have a value proposition writers in your organization? Who actually does value proposition writing? Does he/she know how to translate your intrinsic and core values to the audience?
Looks at some questions to probe!
- When was the last time you have checked your value proposition?
- Are you sure with the current value proposition, you can differentiate yourself?
- Are you confident that your prospects ad customers can pay you for the values that you are providing?
- What is the value of your offer?
- What are the tangible results that a customer gets by using your products or services?
- Can they define their business results from your product?
- Is your service or product is generating positive impacts?
- Is your about us page defining your business story, Is it appealing?
If not COACH them, how to craft compelling values. Do not push your sales with just a features and benefits list. Just coach them to derive values. If you are an MSME / SME organization, you may not have separate team members for content marketing and value proposition. Then check out you can upskill your team. Coach your team to craft a value proposition to make sure that they get positive business results. Make them good writers too!
Value proposition
“A value proposition refers to the value a company promises to deliver to customers should they choose to buy their product.” The value proposition is at the heart of your business model; it plays the core of your business business. It also plays the purpose of your presence in the market. If your value proposition is weak, there is no purpose of doing business.
I remember one o the most popular book. ‘Differentiate or Die by Jack Trout. If you cannot stay different in your value proposition, better you should close your business. This differentiation is much required for survival in the era of competition.
Strategic marketers consultants can make it easier to articulate the benefits a product or service brings to a customer and help you look beyond the product’s functionality.
Strategic marketing and content crafters can derive the value proposition for your product or service. Once is derived that can be botted into different flavors and distribute
Those who will seek this help tell me that they are too close to the tree and cannot see the forest.
Value proposition Template
There are plenty of templates available on the internet to develop and define a value proposition.
Check out from Google Books
Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur’s business model canvas
Cooper & Vlaskovits’ Proposition Template
Geoff Moore’s Value Proposition Template
Venture Hacks’ Value Proposition Template
A compelling value proposition is meant to be precise and to a specific market segment; Persona-based.
Example: If any product developed to help cardiology surgery. How will you define it?
What problems are we solving for Cardiology surgeons? Note, it is NOT even for cardiology physicians, doctors, and internal medicine. It is for surgeons.
What value do we deliver this tool to cardiology surgeons?
What needs or wants or aspirations do we meet these surgeons?
What products or services do we offer for the short term and long term gains?
How do we replace? or How do we support it?
Here, the cardiology surgeon is the persona, who does only surgery is the target persona. We can define then add demographics attributes such as age, geography, region, culture, and titles.
Whatever be the answer, the key is to be customer-centric.
To precisely identify the customer’s needs to whom your product corresponds, you have to know it. When defining the product, behave empathetically and put yourself in their shoes to include their perspective.
We need to jot down all the value points the product features that alleviate pain and create gains for the customer.
Attributes that can help create irresistible value: Attributes contributing to the creation of value
Innovative: New technology, unique product/service
Performance: More efficient, faster product
Personalization: Custom made solution, designed for specific customers
Throughput: Improving productivity
Design: Look and feel, Aesthetic of the work
Ease of use: Plug and play, Ergonomics
The price: Premium price, Low-cost, Free
Low risk: Reduction of risk to the client, Switch-over-cost
Delivery and Support: Easy accessibility and convenience of the product
The fact is, whatever be the attributes, it must be to a customer segment: The customer segment has to be precise; you cannot generalize. It must be targeted, and persona orientated.
The value proposition with respect to your business model :
The total value of the product and service provided to the customer segment can be derived as per the business model.
Distribution channels: This covers the communication channel you will connect with the customer, including the delivery of your product and services
Relations with customers: Type of transactions that build long term relationship with the customer
The revenue stream: Different sources of revenue as well the price the customer willing to pay
Essential resources: This comprises of people process, systems, and technology that creates value and that is sold to the customer
Key activities: essential operations that the company must perform to produce the product and/or service
Key partners: This covers the business consistent and partners and suppliers who support the company to produce products and services
The cost structure: Here it is the costs of resources incurred by the company to operate the economic model
Profit: It is the result of the total sum of income minus the total sum of costs
Value proposition Design suggests that we explore five avenues:
Innovative ideas and implementation make you differentiate.
This innovation can be transformative, radical, or incremental.
It is all about developing, deriving, and designing the value proposition and then distributing the value.
1. Identify new technological, or social, or legislative trends that could constitute an advantage
2. Find out a unique value, study what the competition, an place your value away from competition
3. Propose a value proposition to the public that the competitors could not copy, alters within a time frame
4. Identify pioneering models from other sectors and adopt it in your industry to create values
5. Check out the blue ocean strategy y and find new segments or new customers
6. Find out products or by-products that can be positioned to your non-customers to bring out a new segment to conquer
7. New world of pandemic or virus can attack human health and businesses and the entire economy and society. Check out how you can introduce new products and services to this new normal world.
– What are the customers’ expectations and aspirations?
– What are their pain points and problems?
– What benefits are they looking for to solve their problems?
– What is the order of priority of the expected benefits?
Well, full-filling pain points is again a cluttered market. Many will jump into this spot as soon as the pain point is understood. The problematic areas are customers’ aspirations and expectations.
Personal or Emotional aspirations
Functional aspirations
Explicit Aspirations
Implicit Aspirations
Performance Aspirations
Technological Aspirations
Interpersonal Aspirations
Situational Aspirations
Social aspirations
Other aspirations
Value proposition writing is all bout formulate lasting value with the customer’s journey:
The value proposition describes how the products and services offered to create value. It is essential to make as much of a value proposition as the customers’ journey with you. At each touchpoint of the customer journey with your product or services, what is the impact? Does it generate lasting value? Value proposition writing experts can craft this customer journey and differtiate your company/product from the clutter/competition.