Value Proposition, the Foundation of Every Brand Strategy
Almost every business has a vision to grow and become the icon of the generation. Think of Apple or Starbucks or Fashion Valet. While these brands are associated mostly to youths, they had proven to be a force in their respective markets and are enjoyed and known in almost all age groups.
Your brand needs a strategy in order to grow and be known because in this era of information overload, people are bombarded with information each time they go online or access to any media available. By having your own strategy, you can set a direction, an identity, and a vision to reach your marketing goals. You will have a focused method of reaching and convincing your target market.
One of the key components of brand strategy is your value proposition framework.
Big word right?
From the name, you can guess that value proposition probably means the type of values your brand proposes to provide, as if giving a proposal to the target audience and convincing them to buy your product or your service.
By definition, a value proposition or brand proposition is a set of values and benefits that consumers receive from your product. It is a clear statement of how your product solves a customer problem, satisfies a need or delivers an unmet need.
For example, email and marketing platform Sendinblue stated their value proposition short and sweet;
‘Marketing Campaign Made Easy’
With this simple slogan, they had develop a whole premise based on these four words. They aim to help clients connect to their customers through easy and organised emails that strengthened customer engagement. They’re saying that you don’t have to be a computer expert to create and manage a marketing campaign, they will make it easy for you.
So how do we come up with a value proposition?
We can use the Brand Ladder framework, where your brand would need three levels of benefits that you promise to provide. These benefits are physical attributes, functional benefits, and emotional benefits.
Physical attributes is the first level of your value proposition. It simply states what your product or service is. Is it BPA-free? Comes in varying colours? Vegetarian? Customisable?
The second level is the functional benefit, where you can state how does it work to solve the customer’s problem or add value to their life. A hair product can say their product produces a more voluminous hair in 30 days. An investment firm could say it has 55% ROI. If it’s BPA-free, the functional benefit could be reusability and safety.
The top level lies the emotional benefit. This is where you state how your product or service makes customers feel. Of course you want a satisfied and happy customer, but what are the ways to achieve their happiness? Thick luscious hair can make the customer feel more confident and attractive, for example.
With this Brand Ladder, you can now decide on a value proposition. It is helpful that your value proposition is unique to your brand in order for you to stand out better from many other choices your customers are exposed.
While Sendinblue is a good example of a business with a good and clear value proposition, it may too generic or broad. How is their service unique from other email and marketing platform, such as Mailchimp? Perhaps they can improve their proposition by stating something no other marketing platform provides, such as free templates or unlimited contacts. They may do this on the physical attribute level or at the functional benefit level.
Value proposition is essential for any growing business to set a direction and focus on getting the right product to the right people. In order to have a good brand value proposition, you will need to understand more in depth about the structure and details of each level.
Which is why we recommend you to read more in the playbook we had developed on how to build an effective brand. We tailored it just for you to read and participate in the exercises to develop your own brand strategy.
