Is Your Value Proposition Aligned with Your Customers' Values?

There are many stories of organizations utterly committed to a particular value proposition, confident in their knowledge of their constituents and highly disciplined in how and what they communicate about themselves. So what makes these organizations engage branding consultants?

In most cases, the answer is simple: lack of results. Something doesn’t resonate, doesn’t bring the leads, inquiries, closes. This problem is most often understood as the consequence of lack of awareness. “If they knew about us, they would be interested,” our clients say. Or, “If they understood that they had a problem, they would see us as the solution.”

These assertions may be accurate; in fact, they generally are accurate. Few organizations have sufficient resources to generate all of the awareness they need. And those on the cutting edge of an industry certainly experience the challenge of generating demand for something that hasn’t existed prior.

Branding solves the first problem, lack of awareness, on a tangent. Great branding doesn’t create awareness. It stands out and differentiates, however much or little the organization has to spend on awareness-generating activity.

By the same token, great branding can speak to something the target market already knows, and turn an assumption or belief on its ear to generate a new insight and lead to a new action.

What makes this all occur?

One simple thing: the ability to learn from the customer himself. Time and again, customer research has revealed to us unexpected deviance from closely held beliefs. The single-sex school learns that its constituents truly value this aspect of their education—or not. The technology company whose core product is envisioned to support online collaboration hears from its users that they want better print drivers. The consumer goods manufacturer discovers that its “secret ingredient” is most compelling when that ingredient’s identity is front and center—because there is fundamental dissatisfaction with competitive products in the category.

Market research can be simple or complex. Much depends on the circumstances. But first and foremost: market insight is essential. It doesn’t come from sales alone; it doesn’t come from anecdotes alone. Market insight comes from eagerness to engage and willingness to see beyond one’s own assumptions. With market insight in hand, the organization can make informed decisions about how it wants to present itself—how to wrap its own value proposition around its constituents’ values.