Insights

Beyond the Tagline. Building your Value Proposition to drive business growth.

You know your business, your products and services and why you’re different. However, is this consistent across your business and do your customers understand why they should choose your business?

Even if you have developed your Value Proposition previously, you may have recently launched a new product, altered your strategy or are targeting a new audience. Your Value Proposition should evolve with your business and work to suit your next phase of growth.

What is a Value Proposition?

A Value Proposition is the backbone of how your business explains its value in the market. It explains how your product or service solves customers' problems or improves their situation, outlines the specific benefits your business provides and tells your customers why they should choose you over the competition. Essentially, it defines what makes your offering unique and valuable in the eyes of your target audience.

It’s much more than a statement

A well-crafted Value Proposition acts as your backbone for your messaging and decision making. It will define the way you explain your business in the market, whether in conversation, on your website, sales proposals or business collateral. It helps you to;

  • Confidently communicate what your business does and why it matters to your customers

  • Differentiate from the competition, giving customers a compelling reason to choose your business

  • Attract the right customers and build loyalty while you continue to deliver what matters to them

  • Sharpen your business focus by aligning your decision making to your strengths

  • Improve marketing and sales effectiveness by leading with a clear and consistent message that resonates with the right audience

How to build your Value Proposition

To build your Value Proposition you need to focus on what your business does now, what it does well, what makes it stand out from the competition and what resonates with your customers.

Know your customer target audience

Before you can build the value to them you need to be able to identify your audience, their personas and what they value

Define the problems you solve and translate them into clear, meaningful benefits

Be critical of this list. Remove anything that is a ‘nice to have’ or doesn’t resonate with your target audience. Look at it from your customers viewpoint and not your internal team’s view.

For example, you may have designed a kettle that sings a nice song once it is boiled, but if your customers want your kettle to boil water quickly, to use less energy, hold at least 1.5L of water and to be quiet, the song isn’t of value to them. This is where a third party can help and remove the emotion attached to the benefits you provide

Create succinct value statements that align to each Value Proposition item.

They need to be factual, emotive and highlight why it is different to the competition. For example, if your kettle is quick to boil, holds 1.7L of water, uses less energy and is quiet then you need four statements that highlight the value of each component.

Using a punchy short statement like “Our kettle uses less energy” may work on a social ad, but your Value Proposition statements should have more depth to allow your sales and marketing efforts to tell more.  “For energy-conscious households, this is the most efficient kettle on the market. It boils water quickly and quietly and at just 1200W, you use less power and lower your bills without compromise”.

Test your statements

Do they resonate with your target audience, do they provide enough for your marketing team to build effective communications and are they consistent with your brand language style and tone.

Create an overarching statement

This combines the sum of your separate Value Proposition items, demonstrating the strength of your overall proposition. This tests that your proposition resonates with the audience and how you stand out in the market.

Embed the Value Proposition. The part that can often be missed.

For your Value Proposition to work to its maximum capacity, your teams should be able to clearly articulate why you stand out in the market. Don’t put the energy into building it for it just to sit on a PowerPoint or poster, make sure it comes to life and becomes natural language for your whole team business.

How we help you to create a Value Proposition that has impact

Building a Value Proposition takes time and consideration. It should bring together different teams across an organisation that work together to define, align and advocate for the proposition. At Marketree, we partner with you to build and embed your Value Proposition;

  1. Work with you to understand the current need and gap that a considered Value Proposition will fill

  2. Conduct interviews and facilitate workshops, that bring your teams together to define and align your Value Proposition

  3. Build the right language to create succinct definitions that resonate with teams, stakeholders and your customers

  4. Create programs and systems that will embed your Value Proposition across your organisation, allowing them to understand, recall and use the Value Propositions with customers

  5. Work with your marketing, sales and customer teams to build ways for the Value Proposition to be demonstrated across all customer interactions