5 steps for bringing your value proposition to life

Before you decide to dive right in to writing your value proposition, it’s important to begin by carrying out some very important background research into your audience. Asking your audience to provide feedback about how they feel about you and your services provides you valuable insights into their needs and how well you’re meeting them.

Holding audience workshops is one great way to do this. When we worked with Wiltshire Council to create a brand identity for their fostering service, we began by holding audience workshops with their current foster carers to find out how they felt about the service. We asked them what made them decide to foster with Wiltshire Council, and how they felt about the service. Their answers helped us to define a clear value proposition for the Council, defining what made their service stand out against others in the area.

Once you’ve taken a deep dive into who your audience is and how they feel about your organisation, you can summarise your findings and go about creating your value proposition. You’ll want to design it with your audience front of mind to make sure that it’s appealing, relevant and accessible to them. Most importantly, you’ll want to make sure it answers how your product or service is relevant to them, and what makes it better than what other organisations are offering.

Your value proposition should be authentic, so make sure that it’s both original and sounds like you. And crucially, make sure that what you’re saying is both accurate and achievable.

Once you’ve articulated a clear value proposition for your organisation, you’ll want to embed it into your organisation and create an audience-centric culture. This is an ongoing task, and will require you to communicate regularly with your staff to make sure they’re aware of your value proposition, why it’s important and how it applies to their role.

Your value proposition should be embedded in your organisation’s vision and strategy. It also needs to be aligned to your systems and processes like training and goal setting so that all the staff across your organisation are aware of how it applies to them, no matter what their role is.

There are lots of ways you can communicate your value proposition with your audience. An obvious place to start is by making sure it’s present on your website, and beyond that it should also have a place on your social media, marketing collateral and advertising materials. Just make sure that you’re communicating in the way your audience expects. For example, would they rather receive messages through social media or are they the kind of folk who like to receive physical post in the mail?

It's also a good idea to assess how your competitors are communicating their value proposition. This could help inform you of any best practices in your industry, as well as indicating how you could do a better job spreading the message far and wide with your target audience.

It’s important to bear in mind that as your organisation changes and grows, your value proposition may well need to be updated and changed. So it’s important to review your value proposition in line with annual planning cycles to make sure that it remains both current and relevant to who you are and what you do.

These four elements provide a very helpful framework for evaluating the suitability of your value proposition:

• WHO: Is your audience the same? If so, have their needs changed?
• WHAT: Is your service still the same? Have you developed anything new that you need to articulate?
• HOW: Is your offer still adding value in the same way? Is there anything additional you might be able to say about how your audience will benefit from your products or services?
• WHY: Is your offering still better than other competitors? Are there any new competitors on the scene? Or have existing competitors upped their game?

At Eleven, our experienced strategists and consultants can work alongside you to navigate through these five steps. We’ve delivered audience surveys, carried out research and consulted in strategic projects for our clients across a wide range of sectors.

If you’re looking for strategic support to help bring an audience-centric value proposition to life, get in touch and we’ll be delighted to work together.