Creating a ‘value proposition’

You should now have your customer profile sheets laid out in front of you or stuck to your wall.  These people are going to become your best friends, but be aware that all might not make it!  The key to marketing (and business in general) is to test, learn, change and test again.  A month into your marketing plan you might unearth a new kind of customer that’s going to give you better results – like the example of the cleaning products company in the previous chapters who discovered that yoga studio owners had the potential to be their best customers.  If this happens, call them, get to know them, create a new profile and shuffle the deck.

But let’s start with the ones you identified.  These should be your core customer types and you should know everything you can about them.  And as long as you’ve put the work into getting to know these people, then the next step is actually going to be quite easy – we’re going to do create what marketers call a ‘value proposition’. 

A value proposition is the thing that a customer actually wants to buy from you, and this isn’t necessarily your product.  Most customers are looking to solve a real problem in their lives, and if you can convince them that you or your product can solve that problem then they will give you money to solve it.  For example, someone doesn’t look for a fitness coach because they want to ‘get fit’.  Their problem isn’t fitness: their problem is that they want to improve their confidence, drop a clothing size, have more energy or look good for their wedding day.  No-one looks for a fitness coach because they want to get better with kettlebells, even though twice-weekly kettlebells sessions might be the actual product they will be receiving.

So, how does this tie in with how you market your business?  Well – let’s imagine you own a vegan bed & breakfast guesthouse.  From creating your customer profile sheets you might have decided that you have three main customers:

1. The mum booking the family holiday
2. The couple booking a romantic weekend
3. The vegan business traveller who only stays one night

You can already see how these three people would be looking to solve different problems when choosing somewhere to stay and how your message to each needs to be different.  This doesn’t mean that you need a completely different website or brand for each, but you might create a separate page on your website or a separate package for each.  Start with your message to the family.  You want to talk about what there is to do in the area for families as much as you would talk about the B&B itself.  You would use photos of the local attractions, highlight how much can be done just a few minutes walk away so they can leave their car behind if they want to.  From your research you can dig deeper still.  Are they likely to have pets that makes going away difficult?  Tell them how animal friendly you are.  Are the whole family likely to be vegan, or will it just be mum who is vegan and she’s the one making the booking?  Give them lots of amazing photos of your award-winning vegan breakfast using Richmond Meat-Free sausages that mean omnivores won’t know the difference!  Because you now understand your customer inside out you can change your messages to fit them.

Compare this to your vegan business traveller customer.  They might not be your main source of income, but they tend to travel mid-week when you have vacancies and it might be that they need to have the same business trip each month so they are good repeat customers.  If they come to your website (or your listing on a hotel comparison site) and all they see is that you’re dog friendly and in walking distance of the castle, then this doesn’t address their unique problems, which are needing early checkout and reliable WiFi.  They are likely to go book a room at the Premier Inn instead who they know offer this – even if they are vegan.  However, if you give business travellers their own page on your website explaining your great WiFi connection in all rooms, that you have irons and ironing boards available and can offer early checkout or packed-up breakfasts for them to eat on the go – oh, and EVERYTHING just happens to be vegan and they are supporting a vegan business by staying with you – then that is an offer that’s hard for the chain hotel to beat, even if you charge a little more.

The important thing to remember is that you might already offer all this to business travellers, if only they had bothered to ask.  But now the world has gone digital you are no longer in charge of that conversation.  Most people make up their mind by what they find presented to them online, and if something doesn’t seem to be talking directly to them then they will go and find something else that is.  This is what I mean by creating a ‘value proposition’.  You are telling people what value they are going to get from you and making sure that value aligns with what they actually want.  Each type of customer will connect with a different value proposition, and this is why researching and creating your customer profile sheets is so important.  If you don’t know your customer and what they want, you cannot make an effective value proposition for them.