What’s Your Value Proposition?

When marketing to your customers, it’s important to connect with them based on what they want. It’s essential to really get to know your customers and understand what they may or may not be struggling with and where they are succeeding. Because marketing to your customers means addressing their pain points and gains, not your own.

Empathizing with your customers is a great way to align yourself with their situation, and there is an exercise you can do right now to put yourself into your customer’s mindset. For our clients, we do this exercise often and for all their targeted audiences. You’ll need some large sheets of paper, markers and knowledge of your experience with your customer. Write “How We Help Our Customers” on one sheet and “What We Give to Our Customers” on the other.

How do you help your customers?

Think about inconveniences or annoyances your customers have during any part of the process of completing a task or a job, whether before or after it is completed. These can include obstacles and risks that can prevent them from getting a job done. List these as clearly as possible on your sheet. To help get you started, here are some questions to ask that may help you identify these inconveniences:

  • What frustrates or annoys your customers? What problems are they having in relation to what you offer?
  • What do they need help with? Where do they need this help? How do they need this help?
  • How do your customers feel about the process of working with your company? Good/bad?
  • What do your customers want to see for results?
  • What do they want to pay?
  • What might customers find off-putting?
  • What makes your customers’ lives hard?

What do you give your customers?
Now, think about what benefits you provide to your customers. Do you give them what they want? These are the positive outcomes of your service or product. These outcomes give you information for how you can further build upon what your customers want and value from you. Here are a few questions to get you started:

  • What makes your customers happy? What would make them happy(ier)?
  • What do your customers like about working with you?
  • What kind of service are your customers looking for? Is it yours?
  • What would make things easier for your customer?
  • How can you better cater to the needs of your customer?
  • What do your customers want in every step of the process when working with you?
  • What would your customers like to see more of?

Now what?
Use these two lists to organize your research and conclusions about Brand Strengths, Customer Insights and the Competitive Framework, and combine them into a statement that summarizes the distinct position you want to hold in the minds of your customers. Put yourself in the shoes of your customers to understand what they would like to see from your services or products. You’ll begin to see what is lacking and how you can improve as well as what you are already doing right.

FOR:

[Audience/Segment choice]

Define your target customer. Are you focusing on a specific job title, market segment or demographic profile?

WHO:

[Face this problem]

Identify the critical business challenge that your offering will solve.

THE:

[Solution]

Describe your solution. It could be your company name, or the name of a specific product, program or service you offer.

OFFERS:

[Point of distinction]

Describe the key benefit or primary differentiator that demonstrates how your solution uniquely addresses the business problem.

PROVIDING:

[Ultimate value]

Describe the ultimate value your target customer will experience by embracing your solution.

After mapping out your value proposition, you will be able to make better educated marketing choices moving forward, rather than just playing a guessing game with your customers.