Finding Your Sweet Spot | How to identify and sell your company's unique value
Before you launch a marketing or advertising campaign, you must commit to one absurdly obvious exercise. It happens to be the one we often overlook or disregard.
Your task is to determine which key attribute distinguishes your company from its competition; in other words, your "unique value proposition," or UVP. You may find this intuitive, but it's remarkable how often an insider perspective doesn't match objective reality. To correctly identify a UVP, you must envision your company's product and service from the customer's point of view. This process is not for the faint of heart, but it's essential to the success of any marketing campaign.
I often meet with marketers who tell me they've spent tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on advertising, but get marginal results. Generally, they blame the media, but an objective analysis usually determines that the media is not the problem. Often, in the effort to just "get one's name out there," the company has placed an ad campaign without carefully considering what the specific, targeted message should be. The content is unfocused, off base, or it tries to say too much at once. This is a very common mistake.
To determine your company's key value, look at its best attributes and most salient weaknesses, not from your point of view, but your buyer's. This starts with an honest internal dialogue and can involve any combination of objective measurements: analyzing your sales patterns against your competition over time, comparing your performance with industry trends, hosting a frank discussion or brainstorming session with your employees, conducting an intensive internet search for consumer comments or reviews, surveying your clientele, or contracting a professional research team and conducting focus groups.
If done well, your analysis will identify your company's key areas of strength, which will inform your UVP. The process may also uncover problems that, once identified, can be flipped into opportunities. Here are common examples:
• You're not certain your customers understand the full value of your service.
• Your product is not much different from your competitor's, but his price is lower.
• You're not really sure who your target consumer is or who makes the buying decision.
• Your product line is too scattered.
• You've gotten some bad PR lately.
• Your location is blocked by ongoing construction projects.
• New competitors have just entered the market and are eroding your share.
Each of these represents an opportunity to either correct or refocus consumer perception with an appropriate strategy. You can educate customers about aspects of your service they hadn't realized. You can divert the dialogue away from unavoidable weaknesses and instead promote your product's unique attributes. You can introduce your product to a more targeted market segment, or you might see new value in directing retail customers to your website, where they can shop more conveniently. You can choose to focus attention on the more profitable products in your line, or you may identify opportunities to strategically counter a competitor's advertising.
Look closely at your business and commit to a careful analysis of your unique strengths and challenges. Use your discoveries to formulate an appropriate UVP, acknowledge and overcome obstacles, and shape perceptions about your company. Your marketing will become sharper and more productive.
Jen White is president of White House Media Inc., a marketing consulting firm in Grafton. Contact her at jenwhite@whitehousemedia.org.
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