Know your target customer and build for them.

Your target customer has needs.

Once you understand those needs you can cater to them.

A value proposition is what you offer your customer.

Value Proposition: Communicating Your Offering

As a brand you are competing for attention.

If a customer has a need, they have a mental map of possible solutions.

If your brand is not differentiated enough, it competes directly with other brands.

Your value proposition is a message you are sending to the customer by saying: "Our X solves your Y."

Unique Offering = Differentiation

A value proposition is also referred to as a unique selling proposition - a USP.

How can you communicate your brand's value in a unique way?

• Customer Need: I want to work out. I might need running shoes.
• Value Proposition (weak): Buy these running shoes.
• Value Proposition (strong): We enable you to become the best athlete you can be. Here are our running shoes - designed to the exact specifications of the world's best athletes. Just do it.

Which one would you buy?

Bottomline: Value Propositions Service the Customer Need

The best value propositions are the best answer to the customer's specific needs.

Your brand should be a painkiller and not a vitamin.

🩹

This post is an excerpt from my online course Fundamentals of Brand Strategy where you learn how to build successful brands.

The self-paced online course contains 5 hours of video material and teaches you how to use the Brand Pyramid.

You can hit me up on twitter. DMs are open.

Short Excerpts from the Course

These posts are short snippets of the course curriculum 👇

• A Pragmatic Look at Branding: What Is a Brand?
• Touchpoints and Brand Strategy: How do We Build Associations?
• Positioning and Differentiation: How to Stand Out as a Brand?
• Brand Vision: What Is the World That Could Be?
• Brand Purpose: Why Bother?
• Brand Promise: How to Communicate in One Statement?
• Mission Statement: How Do You Do It?
• Brand Attributes: How Does the Brand Present Itself?
• Frame of Reference: Where Is the Brand Placed?
• Target Customer: Who Is Your Audience?
• Customer Need: What Is Their Real Job-to-be-Done?
• Value Proposition: What Are You Offering?
• Reasons-to-Believe: What Are Your Proof Points?