1. 7 Steps to a Strong Value Proposition
September 2018

2. Value Proposition
A value proposition is a positioning statement that explains what benefit you provide for who and how you do it uniquely well. It describes your target buyer, the problem you solve, and why you’re distinctly better than the alternatives.

3. Positioning
Positioning refers to what the audience thinks about your brand versus the competition.
Writing a Value Proposition is a strategic exercise and tool to help you focus so you can influence how people think about your brand.

4. Classic Form
For (target audience), Brand X is the (category or competitive frame) that (differentiator) by (reasons to believe).

5. 1. Identify Your Competitive Frame
Key Question: What business are you really in? Be ruthlessly honest with yourself about this.
Is Facebook in the advertising business or in the entertainment business?
Is UPS in the shipping business or the logistics business?
Does your company make nails or ¼ inch holes?

6. Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald’s, once asked a group of MBA students to tell him what business they thought he was in. The hamburger business of course, they told him. No, he replied, “My business is real estate.”

7. 2. Make sure there’s a benefit
Snap Spectacles launched in 2016 as sunglasses that let you record video, sync it with your phone and upload it to Snapchat. They cost $130. And failed. In April 2018 they launched V2 and raised the price to $150.
What’s the product benefit?

8. Purple has clear, strong benefits

9. 3. Think hard about the target
Think long and hard about who’s going to use the product and why. Do people like this exist in the real world or is it a fantasy? Only one of these products appealed to consumers:

10. Describe a human being
Stats and data and demographics are important. But always try to describe your target audience in human terms that bring a real person to mind.
HUMAN
ROBOTIC
Yoga Moms
Suburban women aged
Bearded Craft Beer Snobs
Domestic beer rejecters
Dog Lovers
210 index for “2+ pets per HH”

11. 4. Don’t delude yourself
Identify real consumer needs and wants. Benefits that fit your hopes and abilities aren’t enough. Unless you can create a need or a want, capture imagination or manufacture irrational desire like Apple, Tesla or the Wu-Tang Clan.

12. 5. Be different
It's best to be first or different. Then build a brand that can withstand the shaving of differentiation; often it becomes a distinction without a difference but for the brand.
Differentiation isn't just about the product features. It can be rooted in the experience, the attitude, the culture, the users/who it's for, the partners and products around it. 

13. “All progress occurs because people dare to be different.”
- Harry Millner, writer

15. 6. Use emotion effectively

16. 7. Use simple language
Avoid cliches, jargon or fuzzy marketing speak in your strategy.
Watch for words like:
Disrupt
Curate
Pivot
Synergize
“The Uber of _____.”
Write simply and clearly.

17. Positive Affirmation
You can write a great value proposition. It’s not that hard. All you have to do is some homework, lots of thinking and edit, edit, edit.

18. Let’s try to write one
For (target audience), Brand X is the (category or competitive frame) that (differentiator) by (reasons to believe).

19. Questions?

20. Please keep in touch Crystal Merritt Brand Consultant

21. 7 Steps to a Better Value Proposition
September 2018