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Communicating the value of products... [Gulf Daily News (Bahrain)]
[October 06, 2014]

Communicating the value of products... [Gulf Daily News (Bahrain)]


(Gulf Daily News (Bahrain) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) In marketing your business these days, you have but mere seconds to communicate and influence prospects.

This is true when you are marketing using your website, developing content, in networking, and most other marketing efforts.

Despite this fact, most people don't have a clear value proposition - that is, concise statements about how you help others. This often leads to missed opportunities as prospects don't understand or perceive your services as too complex or unnecessary.



When you have a clear value proposition, grabbing a prospect's attention becomes easier and you cut through a lot of the details and get straight to the heart of your product or service's value. It's the primary reason why a prospect should buy from you. It helps explain, in layman's terms, how you solve problems, deliver specific benefits, and are different. It helps you stand out from competitors and move away from speaking about your product or service like it's a commodity.

Once you have a clear and concise value proposition in place, it makes it easier for prospects to understand how you can help them. For instance, if you are trying to sell car leasing services, you could easily say something like 'we lease cars'. But that does not explain how you solve a prospect's problem.


The prospect may not realise that they need to lease a car in the first place, and may think that they are happy with their current setup.

But once you start speaking to their issues, such as 'we help companies to save money and improve productivity with their vehicles', then you are speaking on a whole new level - one that will gain the attention of a target prospect much quicker.

There are three things to keep in mind when developing your value proposition: Use the right language. Your value proposition needs to use language that is familiar to your prospects. It should speak to the prospect the same way the prospect is thinking.

The best way to find out what language to use is to ask your current customers. Using social media is another way to understand the way prospects speak about the problems you can help them with.

Develop a structure. There is no one way to structure your value proposition. My advice would be to have one attention grabbing line that summarises the ultimate benefit of a prospect working with you.

I use the line 'we help companies to dramatically improve their marketing and sales results against clear and aggressive goals'. Then have a series of bullet points after that explain who you help, what issues you solve, the key benefits of working with you, and one or two examples of how you help others to provide proof.

Testing. The first time I developed a value proposition, I went out and tested it and had people almost laugh at me. In other words, it wasn't very effective! So I refined it a little (basically I toned down the language and made it more concise) and went out and tried it again.

The results were much better, and it got prospects talking to me about working with me much quicker. What I advise doing is having more than one value proposition and testing it until you find what works best.

You can test it in offline networking and in one-on-one meetings, and online by measuring click-through rates on Google AdWords or Facebook ads.

Here are some great examples of value propositions I have come across: Evernote: Remember everything. Evernote apps and products make modern life manageable, by letting you easily collect and find everything that matters.

iTunes: You've never so easily been entertained. iTunes is the easiest way to organise and enjoy the music, movies, TV shows, apps, and books you already have - and shop for the ones you want to get. You can even listen to free streaming radio stations with iTunes Radio.

Hubspot: The #1 marketing platform. Use HubSpot's top-ranked software to generate more traffic, leads and sales. Start a trial.

Mr Al Akber is the managing director of ACK Solutions (c) 2014 Al Hilal Publishing and Marketing Group Provided by SyndiGate Media Inc. (Syndigate.info).

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