This critical question is challenging to answer, but doing so strengthens your marketing. If you had just ten words with which to describe why people should buy your company's products or service, what would you say?
Your value proposition, whether spoken or written, is one of the key indicators of your business that requires simple, clear and brief articulation.
But what is a value proposition? Why is it important to your business? How can you find the right one for your business? And can an existing company find a new value proposition?Value propositions tell your prospective client or referral source in a clear and concise way what value you will deliver and-how they will be better off.
Unfortunately, most marketing professional services cannot succinctly describe the value their service provides. They can describe what they do but not what the essential value is of their services. Most professionals will tell you they know what value they bring, but when asked to articulate its worth they need three paragraphs to describe it. By then, however, the listener has losy interest.
Not only does a strong statement help you capture the attention of prospective buyers, but it also goes a long way toward differentiating you from your competition. The advantage will be yours if you can clearly communicate how the client will be better off because of you, as opposed to simply describing a transaction. In this post I will share with you my personal thoughts on what I believe are the essential elements of a value proposition.
The essence of marketing is the message, and the essence of the message is the value proposition. Unless you understand how to form a clear and forceful value proposition you will be shouting nonsense in a crowded marketplace in order to achieve some semblance of an objective.
The articulation of the value proposition emphasises the elements that most motivates your audience and emphasises with quantifiable data what matters most to your audience. These are critical issues designed to touch what matters to your audience. The value you give to your audience must be laden with specifics. The value proposition is about getting people to say YES, in reality it's a series of micro yeses, to whatever you offer and the key to that is the force of value proposition.
I cannot address or give answers to specific audiences: there are too many. What I can share with you are the common denominators that increase conversions through a forceful value proposition and, more importantly how to weigh the value proposition more forcefully.
An essential factor in creasing conversions is to "stand in the mind" of your customers. That's an important issue, and it can be expressed in this manner: you will increase conversions if the perceived value of your offer outweighs the perceive cost. In other words there must be more advantages, benefits and value in the offer that there are associated costs. When you meet your prospects expectations when landing on your website, when reading an email or browsing through an article, you will without doubt get a positive response.
Meeting your prospects expectations must be done within seven seconds of landing on your page.
THE FIRST PHASE OF ONE TO TWO SECONDS:
...Are "moments of disorientation". The prospects lands on a page and scans it to find what he/she is looking for and its vital here to visually connect with the prospect immediately with a compelling headline and sub headline. This does two important things:
1. It halts unsupervised thinking
2. It will grab your prospects attention.
THE SECOND PHASE OF TWO TO THREE SECONDS:
...Involves moments of conversation. The prospect reads your headline and or sub headline and reads on. You must further engage the prospect with a compelling opening paragraph that emphasises how you solve issues and the benefits you provide to solve them.
THIS LEADS TO THE THIRD AND FINAL PHASE OF TWO OR THREE SECONDS CALLED EXCHANGE OF VALUE. In the content that follows in this phases you must emphasis the elements of value: appeal, exclusivity and credibility.
CRITICAL QUESTIONS TO ANSWER:
Each piece of content, whether it's an email, a web page or a printed advertisement, must answer these questions:
Where am I? What should I do here? Why should I do?Value propositions are fundamental to success. When constructing a value proposition you must first find the understanding of this question:
If I am your ideal customer why should I buy from you and rather your competitor?
This is fundamental because using the first person "I" puts you in the minds of your prospects and gets you to think about your prospects solutions. Using the word "why" is always followed by a "what". This promotes expressions of value that must be stated clearly and simply.
Your company or product cannot be all things to all solutions. A true value proposition is cognitive and accepting of trade offs. You can't serve everyone and you can't be the best solution to everyone. In fact choosing your customer set by market or customer segmentation is the surest way to develop your best solution.
A value proposition must be framed within the challenge of a competitive environment. If you are not unique in one dimension of value (appeal, exclusivity and credibility) then you don't have the potential to be the best solution as the internet has positioned itself for many of us to be one click away into cyber space never to be found again.
AN ALTERNATIVE APPROACH
The question isn't whether you bring value, but how to communicate it quickly and clearly. The more succinctly something needs to be, the more challenging it is to develop-and the more thought that needs to be given to it. In this way, value statements are similar to taglines-because they're short, they look deceptively simple to create. You see a lot of generic taglines, e.g., "a commitment to excellence," because businesses and professionals give up when they realize the amount of thought, analysis, and cost it takes to develop a worthwhile tagline.
VALUE STATEMENTS ARE NOT TAG LINES OR SLOGANS
However, value propositions often differ from taglines, which have more of a promotional bent. Your tagline may be clever, catchy, and memorable, which is what it should be, but you have to consider whether it conveys what you do and the value the client will receive from purchasing your services. Additionally, your tagline and logo go hand-in-hand in your marketing materials. That's not always the rule with your value proposition. There is a place for both taglines and value statements in your marketing program.
I am concerned with promoting ideas to create a value proposition before you embark on a SEO project. What I'm concerned with is how to create your own value statement.
A FRAMEWORK TO CREATE A VALUE PROPOSITION
To develop a strong statement, begin by answering a few questions, whether individually or in a brainstorming session with colleagues. Consider what you do, and write down the essential value you bring clients. You can have a statement for each service line, then find the common thread and wrap them up into one. Don't censor yourself or your colleagues, and don't stop to wordsmith your thoughts. Just get the ideas flowing. Start with these questions:
• What do we do for our clients? • Why is that important to them? • What do they appreciate about our service? • What is the essential value we're bringing them? • What does our firm do differently than others? • Why do our clients think we're different?
FORMULATE YOUR VALUE PROPOSITION
In terms of identifying the value you bring clients, you want to dig deeper than just the end result. Consider that the benefit you bring clients is more than what you ostensibly leave them with.
The essential question, though, is: "What ultimate value does this bring the client?" The real value goes beyond the service provided; it includes the peace of mind that frees clients to focus on other aspects of business. Likewise, the real value of increased efficiency is ultimately a contribution to the firm's revenue potential.
Write down words that relate to the answers to your questions, e.g., efficiency, reduce, increase, smoothly, finely tuned, etc. Think in terms of action words and phrases, such as we generate, we create, develop, reduce, increase, etc.
THE FORMULATION OF YOUR VALUE PROPOSITION
Now comes the more challenging part. You want to think about how to distil the answers to your questions into one statement that encapsulates the thoughts you've generated. Your statement should be short ideally 10 to 12 words; however, don't worry about the length at this point. Play around with sentences. Again, don't censor. One imperfect sentence can lead to a perfect one. Ask others for their input on what you've developed.
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