When you set out to create a marketing and sales strategy for your organization, it is pretty essential that you start out by figuring out what your value proposition is.
As the world becomes more and more competitive and it becomes easier and easier to find a service provider for your needs, your marketing and sales efforts need to answer one specific question:
WHY SHOULD I BUY FROM YOU AS OPPOSED TO SOMEONE ELSE?
For too many businesses and people, the answer to that is often…because I am the cheapest and they drop the price to whatever they need it to be.
But that is a race to the bottom and you can’t really win that thing.
What you need to do to win in this competitive landscape is to create unique value.
You can’t win by being one of many for long…because you will get into a price war that leads you directly to the bottom, but you can win if you create an environment where you are one of one.
How?
Here are a couple of ideas:
1. Have a Point of View:
With all of the content being produced, and all of the marketing, and all of the noise…it is easy to get lost. And, to compound the challenge, too many marketers and businesses spend a lot of time and energy on trying to be a “me too” version of what everyone else is saying.
But the key to standing out and having a value proposition that you can sell is to have a POV.
Is everyone talking about how you have to have a content marketing strategy that pulls you inbound leads. Why don’t you talk about how you can use a content strategy to deliver outbound leads?
Or, if everyone is telling you that you have to avoid the phone to be a successful social seller? Why don’t you talk about how you use social selling to drive phone conversations?
I mean, those are just two examples and maybe not even good ones, but you get the point.
2. Always begin by focusing on the value that you are trying to create:
Too many people and businesses begin by saying that they will “do anything” and they fail because they have done the biggest marketing cardinal sin and that is that they have tried to make their market everyone, which means that no one is their market.
So to avoid this, you need to begin by focusing on what the specific value is that you are trying to achieve.
What are the tangible benefits that you offer?
What about intangibles?
3. Be consistent:
Consistency is at the heart of almost everything about marketing and branding.
You may have the best product or service, but if you don’t have anyone that knows about it, you are not going to get very far.
Why?
Because if no one knows about what you are up to, they can’t possibly know that they want to buy from you.
That’s why you have to consistently deliver your message to your audience.
Over and over.