Your Business Value Proposition: What It Is & Why That Matters

A value proposition is not positioning, it's a subset of your competitive positioning that communicates the value delivered and perceived by your customers, leads and prospects. It describes your promise of value delivered and the customer's experience of value received.

Summarized it looks like this: Value Proposition = Benefits - Costs.

Did you catch the critical component? The value proposition is the financial description of your competitive positioning. It is going to reflect this reality: "our stuff is going to to help our customers":

• make more money;
• save money (which is the negative expression of make more).

Note that it is strategic, not tactical. It is expressed in terms of outcomes, tied to business goals and objectives. Determining it, and then communicating the value proposition to Sales is possibly the most direct route to dominating mind and market share in your category, and generating above average revenues and margins.

To take your market and hold them against competitive threat is much easier when your business is able to quickly and clearly communicate the compelling reasons to buy, and the consequences and costs of not buying. This is so powerful because probably 99% of the businesses have not articulated and worked through the value proposition for their stuff.

Being strategic in nature means working on the value proposition is not a popular exercise. However when conducted properly the determination of value can be used in all your communications to inform your ideal customer targets why your competitive market position is the best choice for them to achieve the greatest value for the funds expended.

Determining your value proposition is a fundamental factor in helping your business speak to ideal customers from the customer perspective. This is a strategic element of achieving your desired business goals.

What's the value in a value proposition?

It allows your sales and marketing messages to demonstrate a clear understanding of the customer's problem and how your stuff will solve that problem and what the business (money) results will be.

In value proposition terms:

"Custom content marketing campaigns help marketing departments achieve above-plan revenue growth for the business, through increased awareness in our target market, a shorter sales cycle, a reduced sales cost, improved customer retention and improved margins".

Because the value proposition is a subset of positioning, the description of value will become a customer-centric achievement rather than an internal goal.

By hooking your value proposition to your competitive positioning, you provide one of the strongest frameworks for building a brand experience your customers, leads and prospects will value beyond mere utility value. Upon completion, the value proposition should address the compelling reasons your customers, leads and prospects exhibit when buying.

Why this is important: most content lacks any compelling problem-solving scenarios. very little content uses competitive positioning as a tool to attract attention, and generate interest.

the vp is a tool sales and marketing require to make compelling case for purchase, repurchase and extended purchase.

vp can be slightly altered for different constituencies, ie customers vs employees vs prospects