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Value Proposition

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Digital Marketing - Study Notes:

Defining a successful value proposition

A value proposition is the ultimate overarching offering that you give your customers that adds value to them, their lives. It could be a service, or product that they then offer to somebody else. Ultimately, it's the combination of both the product and the experience that you give them.

The best analogy in this context is McDonald's – the product is a cheeseburger, and the proposition is the Happy Meal. It's the total sum of the experience, the toys, the service, the various things, and the ability to pick and choose what you want in your Happy Meal. All of these combine to form the component of the value proposition.

Ultimately you need to think about this from a consumer needs perspective. What exactly is a consumer asking of you? Are you delivering that to them in a robust way which offers the most value over and above other offerings that they can get in the marketplace? The marketplace offering is critical. Also, pay attention to how you communicate that offering and how you position it.

Customer application

You can apply this into the customer realm. The product and service ultimately fulfilled a certain task or job that you're asking it to do. That means basically having some level of value or need that it's fulfilling. You must be very clear about the value that your product is actually fulfilling and then be able to deliver more of that to the value.

One of the latest things that are now starting to come through is a jobs-based approach. View your product through what is the final outcome that a customer is using it for. What job are you fulfilling or what job is your customer filling as a consequence of using your product?

Your product will have incremental pain points and gain or satisfaction points for your customers. As part of that proposition iteration process, you must try and minimize the pains that you're offering that customer and try and increase the gains that you currently have. The key rationale for doing that is because if you get that right, customers will be more satisfied with you, stay with you for longer, want to purchase more of what you've got, and also become keen advocates of yours and the proposition that you are supplying them.

Characteristics and components

Let's think a little bit about the characteristics and components that make-up the digital value proposition.

  • Avoids business jargon: It's important just to be clear and concise with what exactly you will be offering.
  • Unique: It needs to be unique, given the level of transparency that digital products can have in the marketplace. It's so easy for consumers to be able to compare one product with another. It's important that your product stands out because of its unique nature.
  • Easy to understand: If the value proposition is not easy to understand, it's going to be difficult for anybody to want to actually make that purchase.
  • Clear: A convoluted customer journey, for example, or a convoluted product description becomes a barrier for people.
  • Specific: It also must be very specific about what need it is then fulfilling.
  • Fulfills customer need: Being specific about the customer need becomes a real differentiator. And, in fact, more and more people are communicating the need that a product is fulfilling or the jobs done that it's fulfilling than anybody else.
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Richie Mehta

Ritchie Mehta has had an eight-year corporate career with a number of leading organizations such as HSBC, RBS, and Direct Line Group. He then went on setting up a number of businesses.

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    ABOUT THIS DIGITAL MARKETING MODULE

    Introduction
    Richie Mehta
    Skills Expert

    This module introduces the key concepts underlying the Digital Marketing Institute’s 3i Framework for selecting and implementing the best digital strategy for your organization. It provides an overview of the key components in an effective digital strategy, which are expanded upon in much greater detail in subsequent modules. It also covers different types of business strategies, the difference between a business value proposition and a digital value proposition, and the importance of robust strategic management to maintain a long-term strategy.