What a great brand value proposition can do for your business

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Alan Black

You’ve maybe heard about value propositions through the marketing grapevine. You think you should probably get one, but if you’re honest, you’re not really sure what one is or why you should spend your money on it. 

Sound familiar? You’re in the right place. Read on to find out just what a great brand value proposition can do for your business.

What is a value proposition?

A value proposition is the promise of the value that you bring to your audience. It’s typically the beating heart of your marketing activity, although the precise words may never be seen by the audience.

This is the official Blackad definition we share with all of our value prop clients. So have that one on us, and keep it in the back pocket.

In layman’s terms? A value proposition outlines your promise to your customers. It’s something they can trust you to deliver. It’s not just about what you say, but the way you approach things.

Why does my brand need a value proposition?

A brand without a value proposition is like a Sunday dinner without gravy. It’s edible, sure, but where’s the magic? 

Creating your value proposition isn’t about re-inventing your brand or making a bold statement. It’s more about giving your brand the credit it deserves for the things it’s already doing. The things you offer that your competitors can’t – or how you do it differently. How you solve your audience’s problems. Your approaches, personality and beliefs. 

How do I make one?

To be blunt: you don’t, we do. ‘We’ as in your friendly neighbourhood content consultants. We should emphasise that no one knows your brand better than you and the rest of your team, but like a lot of great brands, you may find it difficult to put the value you bring to the market into words. 

This is kind of the point – you’re already knee-deep in your brand. You need an outsider to extract the information needed to make a killer value prop. At Blackad, this involves workshops, interviews and conversations with everyone from the CEO to the shop assistant. We could go into more detail here, but that would be telling. What we can say is that every session is completely tailored. To be honest, we genuinely can’t imagine it working otherwise. And, with a warm, friendly tip of the hat to our competitors, we’d strongly advise side-stepping any agencies who disagree. 

How does a value proposition work?

Let’s take a time management app company as an example. Their values could include:

  • We make our customers’ lives simpler
  • We help people achieve more in less time
  • We make work more enjoyable

We’d want to consider way more components than this, but based on these values, their leading value proposition line could look something like:

Your time, spent well.

This would usually be supported by a few sentences and ‘theme pillars’. These, along with the leading value proposition line, is now the company’s to keep and use. They don’t need to display it on their website or make it explicitly known to their audience. But they do need to make sure all of their actions and communications embody it. And by ‘all communications’, we mean all communications. Web pages, social copy, email correspondence – the lot. 

They can do this with a detailed brand narrative document to guide them, possibly complete with a brand messaging matrix. There’s a lot of marketing chat here, we know, because these supporting resources should be completed by your chosen content consulta ncy and outlined to you clearly, with room for feedback and amends on the way.

Got it. How do I find out more? We thought you’d never ask.

Next steps in brand messaging

A value proposition is typically the beating heart of your marketing activity. All we need is four weeks to get to the core of your brand.

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