A Quick and Easy Way to Create Your Own Value Propositions

Until now, my services and offerings have been for global content marketing, since my value proposition and ‘uniqueness’ is that I know how to help enterprises set up a process to scale content internationally. With the launch of my 2nd book, Effective Sales Enablement, obviously, I am going beyond global content marketing. I need to re-state my value propositions to include content marketing and sales enablement and showcase my unique experience and ability.

What is a value proposition?

The value proposition, in this case, is ‘How do I differentiate myself from other marketing consultants?’ With my first book, Global Content Marketing, I’ve positioned myself to help enterprises scale content across regions. Not many people can do that, so that is unique to me. Now, with Sales Enablement coming into play, what is my new value proposition? How do I redefine what I can offer to combine my knowledge of global content marketing and sales enablement?

Follow this quick and easy approach

This approach requires you to know yourself and service offerings well. For an enterprise, you need to know product features and their benefits relative to your competitors’ offerings. Once you know what’s unique to you, it’s easy to identify how you can better differentiate yourself.

Here are the steps I follow:

• Write down what is unique to you and your products
• Distill and internalize these points
• Create several <15-word statements that summarize the uniqueness
• Analyze each statement and select the one that fits best
• AB test and optimize your value proposition

Step 1: Write down what is unique to you and your products

For enterprises products, you may need to work with your product teams to identify a list of product features which can solve end-users’ challenges and pain points. As for me, I started looking inward and wrote down unique strengths or experiences that only I can offer. For example:

• 20+ years of corporate experience in various positions, from finance to accounting, from operations to product development, from marketing to sales enablement. I have a wide array of experience and understand how a company works.
• I have a unique process to teach people how to scale content across regions: The 4 P’s of Global Content Marketing.
• In addition, I understand indirect and direct salespeople. I have a unique point of view on what marketers can do to better support their indirect and direct sales team by evaluating different marketing elements and collaborating on account-based marketing, among other tactics.
• I have steps that people can follow to map content between the sales processes and the customer journey.

Step 2: Distill and internalize your uniqueness

At the company level, you need to compare your features with that of your competitors. Prioritize key features and name 3-5 features which are unique to you. Sometimes, it can be the same features as your competitors, but your products can do it faster, easier, or cheaper. It’s important to articulate their benefits clearly. Document several keywords, phrases, or catchy product names to describe your products. For me, I read through the bullet points I wrote several times and identified keywords and phrases that I want to use for my value propositions, such as sales enablement, content marketing, worldwide, enterprises, B2B, and others.

Step 3: Create 5-7 short (less than 15 words) statements

Now, you can work with your copywriters to come up with several statements. In my case, I worked with myself. Ha!  I came up with 5 statements which describe my differentiation and chose one, knowing that the single one I chose will also be used on my website, outbound communications, even editorial planning, and content creation.

So, here are the 5 statements that I came up with:

• Align sales and marketing to deliver a seamless customer experience
• Grow business by aligning sales and marketing with global content marketing
• Increase conversions through content marketing and sales enablement
• Enable sales with integrated global content marketing
• Connect sales and marketing to engage and convert audiences worldwide

Step 4: Analyze each statement and select the one

At the enterprise level, you will need to test the value proposition statements internally and externally. Sometimes, Legal also needs to get involved to approve them. For me, it’s not that complicated and I conducted an analysis on my own about these 5 value propositions:

I liked the last statement but, after choosing it, I continued to refine it. With the new book, I am looking to expand my audience to include the sales side. Therefore, I want to make an effort to include the sales team as part of the value proposition. However, as I am a marketer through and through, my intention is to educate marketing teams on how to better work with the sales teams. So, connecting sales and marketing teams make sense. In addition, I want to play to my expertise of scaling content across regions, therefore, I want to bring global into the value proposition. With that in mind, I revised the last value proposition to:

“Connecting sales and marketing to engage global audiences.”

I used it for my home page when I launched my website.

Step 5: AB test and optimize your value proposition

I tested these statements with select colleagues, friends, and clients. They all had their recommendations and favorites. At the end of the day, I am the one who has to live with it. The value proposition is not fixed. If your products are refreshed and new features are added, your value proposition may need to change. I know that this statement may morph if I come up with something more compelling. It will certainly change when I publish my 3rd book or expand my knowledge in fields such as AI and account-based marketing. 

This overarching value proposition works for me at this time. And it also guides messaging and copywriting for my new website. Check out the lessons learned from launching my website for the 6th time. With that statement, I was able to create other copy such as ‘Helping sales and marketing connect the dots’ and ‘Align communications and resources to get things done.’ ‘When marketing is done right, sales and marketing can co-exist beautifully.’ Copy such as this fits nicely under my over-arching value proposition statement.

With that, I also began to build out statements to explain my services and offerings, such as:

• Pam can help you find commonalities in misalignment
• Drive joint initiatives through account-based marketing (ABM)
• Craft a messaging framework and map content between the sales processes and customer journeys

I started with one value proposition, then built positioning and proof points to support it (below).

Quick summary:

In a way, I created a messaging framework from the value proposition, positioning and proof points. You can follow a similar thinking process to build your own messaging framework. For enterprise marketing managers, I have templates that you can follow. Enter the email below, I’ll send you a presentation and messaging template. Let me know what is the process that you follow to come up with your value propositions?

Fast forward to August’19, one year after I launched my website…

I changed my value proposition again after several rounds of testing. By talking to my audiences, I made it even more specific:

“Accelerating Marketing’s Contribution to Sales with Content Marketing, Sales Enablement, and Account-Based Marketing.”

I called out the fields that I can provide services. It’s clear with no confusion and optimizes for SEO. With this value proposition, I created different versions of it for:

LinkedIn Headline: Accelerating B2B marketers’ contribution to Sales with ► Content Marketing ► Sales Enablement ► Account-Based Marketing through ► Keynotes ► Workshops

Signature Tagline: Helping B2B marketing teams increase sales velocity through content, sales enablement, and account-based marketing

Your company is a “living being.” It continues to morph and grow, so should your value proposition.