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What are you offering that is both different from what everyone else is offering and is still something your customer needs? That’s fertile ground for your value proposition.
Obviously, as with all marketing, you must start by understanding your customer—“What the Customer Needs.” Then you can move on to “The Marketplace Offerings” and “Your Offerings.”
With those understandings in mind, you can begin to understand how:
· What you offer is alike and different from what everybody else is offering
· What you offer is what the customer needs
· What the marketplace currently offers both satisfies and dissatisfies the customer
I admit, this is as basic as dirt, but when marketing communications and copywriting go awry, it usually starts with faulty answers to those three questions.
Isn’t it all about finding a unique position? Not necessarily
Some will say the value proposition should not reside where marketplace offerings and your offerings overlap. They will say the best value props stem from product uniqueness. Not altogether true. First, very few offerings are unique.
Second, the marketplace offerings are a good indication of what customers are buying now. If your product or service is unique, that doesn’t mean it will necessarily be successful. It is essential to understand how your offering is
similar to and different from the rest, and what customers really want. For example, you will never get a nonfiction book published if you tell literary agents it’s unlike any other book. They want to know how it fits into the
matrix of other works published on the subject—its unique contribution despite similarities to other works.
What happens when there is no difference?
In mature markets, product managers and marketing people will often throw up their hands and openly call their offering their “me-too entry,” or “parity product.” That’s when it’s often up to the
marketing or advertising folks to create a perceived difference or niche value proposition. Often, in this case, the value proposition will focus not on the product or service but on the kind of people who purchase the product or service.
We see this used in selling liquor, publications, even B2B capital expenditure equipment. “What kind of a person drinks/reads/buys…”
Don’t forget the emotional component
The biggest mistake many clients make is not accepting that customers purchase specific brands for wholly emotional reasons—try as they might to justify them with facts and figures. Often, the value proposition lives in a
“soft” place based on customers’ deep-seated feelings. Dell Computer is a perfect example. Even today, many people purchase Dell because the company’s products are considered cool. Obviously, if the products
failed to perform, or if they lost their best-price-performance position, cool would become irrelevant. Emotion is an extremely important part of the value proposition. It’s one ingredient that makes Dell Computer the best
value.
Value propositions in selling professional services
The hardest value propositions to hammer out are those in the professional services arena. I can’t tell you exactly how to do it. Though you follow the same methodology I describe above, it’s harder to craft a proposition
that doesn’t sound trite or me-too. Start with issues of quality service or responsiveness. You get there by immersing yourself in the customer experience and doing the best job you can of expressing how the service delivers value
to a customer’s bottom line better than any other.
It should be a team effort
Formulating a value proposition is usually the job of the executive team with the marketing person playing the lead role. In an agency environment, it’s the job of account management. I love working in these environments,
contributing ideas as appropriate and helping to refine the propositions. With some clients, it falls to me to put the value proposition into words—and I’m delighted to do exactly that.
Here’s how one client expressed my value proposition:
“Chuck Lustig is what I consider a Copy Spin Doctor. He can take any subject and work it until it becomes words that communicate a message. I have outsourced Chuck’s writing expertise on numerous occasions, ranging from
flagship/product sales brochures to editorial stories. Due to my time constraints, I requested that Chuck personally conduct all internal information-gathering sessions with the company's subject experts. I had nothing but glowing
reports regarding his professional approach from all of the company sources he contacted. None of the projects that required Chuck's involvement were easy, and I commend his expertise, persistence, and determination in delivering to me a
‘flawless’ product that I am proud to exhibit in my own portfolio! Thank you, Chuck, for helping me with some challenging projects at Mykrolis Corporation.”
--Sherri C. Weeks, Marketing Communications Specialist
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