Positioning your message

A company’s value proposition is the single-minded claim to change the customer’s mind and cause them to do something. How you position your product in the market will ultimately determine its success. Now to create a value proposition, I use the five box positioning tool, as seen here. First, you define the current do. That is, what are the targeted customers doing today with respect to your product or service category? Then, given that current do, what must their current belief be about the products and services out there today? Next, given our strategy, what is it that you desire customers to do? Then what desired beliefs do you want them to have that will cause them to do (laughs) the desired do? Now when I say beliefs, I mean the beliefs about your primary benefit that you selected at the segmentation step. Do they think it’s important? How do they perceive your product versus the competition in delivering that benefit? Now the hard part. Given the current belief and where you need to take them to believe, the desired belief, what claim must you make? And what supporting evidence do you have? Here’s an example using men’s wallets. Given our strategy and our target audience, men with overstuffed, thick wallets, our current do is I use a traditional wallet, and it’s thick because of all the stuff I carry. The current belief is I believe my wallet sticks out a lot, but all wallets are the same. The desired do is I buy a slim wallet. The desired belief must be I believe having a slim wallet carrying all the same stuff is rather clever. The positioning claim is our wallets are better designed than traditional wallets to carry all the stuff you have now but be much slimmer. To support that claim, you will want to show a side by side comparison of your wallet versus the competition. In other words, you want your value proposition supported with strong reasons to believe. That’s good marketing.