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3 Easy Steps To Writing a Value Proposition That Sells

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A value proposition is a simple statement that tells your customers and prospects why you are in business. At its core, it’s the promise your company gives customers about what it will deliver and why they should choose your product.

Value propositions form the foundation of marketing campaigns and sales pitches, so they can’t be vague or too general. The stronger the statement, the easier it will be to sell your product or services.

Putting in the pre-work to build a rock-solid value proposition is well worth the effort and will help you include precise results that benefit customers.  By following these three steps, you can create a value statement that sells:

STEP 1: Define your target market and ideal customers

Start by defining the most likely buyer of your product or services. You can conduct formal research using a third-party vendor or informal research on the internet. Narrow down your target by asking answering the following questions:

  • Is your target a person or a business?
  • Where are they located? 
  • What do they think or know about your current brand?
  • If a person, how old are they? What gender? What is their socio-economic background? 
  • Who else is competing for their loyalty in your market space?
  • Where does your target go to find information, e.g., Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter? 
  • What are their pain points?
  • What do they value?

STEP 2: Identify the problem you are trying to solve

How will you know if customers will buy your product or service? The answer is you must identify the problem(s) you are trying to solve. Otherwise, your solution won’t resonate with the customers you specified above. 

To clearly articulate the problem, think of your customer pain points as unmet needs. Then, answer the question, “How will your product or service specifically meet those needs?”

Examples of customer pain points include:

  • Inconsistent customer experiences
  • Poor quality of service or products
  • Complicated buying process
  • Not available on a preferred channel
  • Too expensive for what it delivers

STEP 3: Identify your unique market differentiators

To outperform competitors, you must identify distinguishing characteristics that only your company can own. These should be unique. If potential customers believe all available offerings deliver the same value, they will buy whatever’s available at the lowest price.

Ask questions that identify what benefits customers will gain from working with you. Examples of market advantages include:

  • Reputation – Employees, customers, partners, and the public hold positive opinions about your organization.
  • Innovation – The capability to develop new approaches using new or proprietary technology.
  • Customer Satisfaction – Processes and approaches consistently pleasing customers and resolving issues quickly.
  • A unique geographic location – Easier access to services for customer convenience.
  • Recognition – A logo and Brand image are quickly recognized and associated with quality.

Need more help? You can find free value proposition templates on marketing sites like Hubspot or check out this post from the Amendola blog.

Programmatic Advertising The New Drip Campaigns

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Earlier this month, eMarketer covered research from Dun & Bradstreet about the growth of programmatic marketing and how it will influence account-based marketing. Interestingly, 63% of B2B marketers in the research were using programmatic buy in their efforts and 48% were using personalization for their ad placements.

The example of how B2B marketers are using this type of ad placement showed they start generic. Then, as the person interacted with the brand, the ads became more focused on product details with the goal to close the deal.

Over the last decade, the evolution of this type of marketing has been fascinating to me. In the mid-2000s, I can remember working with clients to purchase and scrub email lists, then combining them with client lists and a list curated from tradeshows to blast emails about webinars or new product information. Today, we can use a multitude of tools to target our current prospects and even target prospects we are unaware of with lookalike profiles based on profitable clients.

While this evolution has been wonderful and tailormade to get the information into the hands of decision-makers or influencers at the exact right time, one comment in the eMarketer article really stuck out to me. Steve Weeks, director of media strategy and planning at Adobe, stated that you have to serve “relevant content” and that you can’t “overexpose people to one message.”

As I sat and thought about this comment, I felt that this is the ongoing battle mar-comm and sales have been having in B2B companies since the start of drip campaigns do you hit the target over the head with your message and product or do you steadily make yourself a go-to resource that educates the target market about trends?

I personally see the value in the latter approach, where you become the go-to resource that not only looks at trends but also educates the industry about the impact it will have on their business. With a variety of resources ranging from webinars to white papers to online ROI calculators and more, if brands build themselves up as educators, prospects will trust them more in the long run and hopefully you will be the source they turn to when they need new technology.