What is it?
Your value proposition is how you make your product or service attractive to the market place so people will buy it! Essentially it is the reason why a potential consumer will buy from you rather than your competitor – it is the reason why your product or service better solves your client’s problems and frustrations.
Why do it?
Understanding how you deliver value to the market is important, as you build your brand and interact with the market. It’ll bring clarity to decisions about your pricing, your distribution, your creative, your messaging, your marketing campaign design, your brand and your people.
How you do it.
- Your broader value
First think about your broader value in the market place – your primary value proposition.
Use the table below to guide your decision:
| Product Leadership |
Your focus is innovation: new technologies, better products/services. Because your products are new, different and unique, your prices are likely to be higher than those of your competition, but you’re delivering a superior product/service. |
| Operational Excellence |
You can deliver your product/service at a lower cost than that of your competitors, thanks to better manufacturing processes, better economies, or other advantages. Your product/service is typical for the category – not the best and not the worst. In mature industries, most companies are competing on operational excellence (costs); those companies that cannot produce at a lower price will lose in the market. |
|
Customer Intimacy |
Your goal is to solve your customers’ problems with a broad portfolio or a customized set of products/services. You’re selling a relationship that is superior to the relationship offered by your competitors. |
Source: marketing mo
Most companies/products/services focus on one or two value propositions; it’s impossible to deliver on all three. Why?
Here’s another way to think of it. Can (or would) you deliver a product/service that is all of the following:
- best in the market
- cheapest in the market
- most comprehensive in the market
You would probably go broke pretty quickly if you tried to deliver on all three!
Do you want to be more about service and less about volume? Less about KPI’s this week and more about lasting impact? More about the right customer and less about lots of customers?
- The nitty gritty – roll up your sleeves and get down to business!
So now you understand what a value proposition is and why it’s important and also you have a general sense of your broader value delivery.
Now you need to look at the all-important details that your client will use to separate you from the pack, the real benefit of working with you.
The emotional – how they will feel during and after they have purchased from you and what you will enable them to do.
The rational – what they get, what it does, how it works, and how much it will cost.
You will probably not be able to quickly and immediately articulate your value proposition in the market. That’s ok. It really is better that you have a chance to ponder this aspect of your marketing, as it really is a critical and key foundation to everything.
If you are a new business you will probably need a little time to interview your prospective clients and reflect on what it is you really offer in the market place.
By far the most overlooked part of this process is listening before pitching! It’s much easier to focus on building something people want, rather than what most of us do and that it to make people want what you have created…
You really need to consider how you are going to build your marketing into your product and service not just add marketing on as an afterthought!
This is how you build an amazing value proposition for your client!
If you listen to your clients, your competitor’s clients…just listen, you begin to truly understand your customers goals – their challenges, frustrations and how your product or service really helps them!
– what would your customer’s world look like without you and your particular way of working?
Some questions to consider:
- Do people want what I am planning to make to offer?
- How can I create and deliver it at a price they are willing to pay?
- Can this product or service deliver on the promise I make to people?
- How will I let people know about what I’ve created?
- Can I generate enough money to build on my idea?
- The last part
The Value Proposition Statement
My________________________________________________________
(products/and or services)
Help (s) _________________________________________________________
(ideal customer)
Who want to _____________________________________________________
(outcome to be achieved)
By __________________ __________________________________
(verb e.g. reducing/avoiding) (current frustration)
And ____________________ ________________________________
(verb e.g. increasing/enabling) (current want)
(unlike___________________________________________________)
(competing value proposition)
That’s it, well done you have a value proposition.
You will need to evolve and change and tweak as the market changes but you now have your foundation in place. In a crowded market place with human attention spans diminishing seemingly by the day (or is that just me!) you can now clearly and quickly articulate your value to your client.
If you want to look at how Apple went on to rule the world through great value proposition design read this article; how to use Apple’s marketing method to grow your business.
And if you need help to build your value proposition, we can work together on this – get in touch!
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