What is Your Value Proposition?
Hello All,
I was talking to a young business owner in the field of digital marketing recently where we shared information about our respective businesses. As I was trying to communicate to him what I did, I could see his eyes glaze over until I said that it was crucial that every business owner, whether or not they have an accountant, to understand their numbers. Amid the the barrage of information I had given him , it was this simple statement that resonated. For me, it was a revelation as I realized that I had work to do on both understanding and communicating my own value proposition.
A value proposition (VP) is a way of communicating the benefits that your business provides or the challenges that it solves, as succinctly and clearly as possible. Ideally, it should be no more than two or three sentences.
A great place to start is by using the simple formula, postulated by a startup guru Steve Blank, which is “We help (X) do (Y) by doing (Z)”. In my case I help small business owners (X) better understand their finances (Y) by providing a variety of educational resources. This clearly needs work, but it is a good place to start.
The primary benefit of doing this exercise is that it forces you to think beyond the features of the product or services that you are providing and shift focus to the value that it brings to your customers and why they would choose to buy from you. Another way of formulating your VP, according to this article from Harvard Business Review is to ask the following questions:
What is my brand offering?
What job does the customer hire my brand to do?
What companies and products compete with my brand to do this job for the customer?
What sets my brand apart from those competitors?
You would then summarize the answers to these questions into an elevator pitch of sorts that is clear and resonates with your target audience. Once crafted, it can be incorporated into your brand messaging (making copywriting a lot easier), used at networking events, on your website and social media etc. And once you become clearer on your own value proposition, it helps you to focus and direct your business activities so that they align with your vision.
