🏆 VALUABLE VALUE PROPS

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DEEPFATE 🏆 VALUABLE VALUE PROPS

Attention founders and marketers: Here’s a clever new way to segment your audience, and write a specific value prop for each, in one move

MARKETERS SPEND A lot of time and energy pinpointing their brand or product’s “value proposition.”

• That’s good.

• If you’re running a brand —or raising money so you can get one off the ground— putting what your company does, and why someone should care, into succinct language is fundamental.

BUT. A SHOCKING number of firms don’t do this very well.

• You’ve seen countless examples of that.

• Ever visit a website whose headline leaves your brow furrowed, and you thinking, “what the @#$% do these guys do?”

• They haven’t pinpointed their value prop yet.

IF YOU REALLY want to lock down your messaging, solidifying your value prop is actually the beginning of the story, not the end.

• Regular readers will know how valuable I think audience segmentation is.

• Dividing your audience into smaller and smaller sub groups is one of the most powerful tools in a marketer’s kit.

• You can segment your audience by anything, including demographics, or geography.

• But LinkedIn user and software marketing expert Robert Kaminski has another way to do it.

• A recent post of his suggested that startup and scale up founders segment their audience by “stage of awareness.”

• Robert’s post is a short but elegant masterclass on segmentation, messaging, and what marketers call “demand gen”.

• Meanwhile, the comments underneath the post read like a lively, post lecture Q-&-A.

• Let’s check it out, shall we?

ZOOM OUT: THIS approach is similar to the sales funnel, a framework that helps brands make sense of their marketing messages.

• “The funnel” encourages you to place your audience members on a vertical spectrum, from “unaware of you,” at the top to “almost ready to buy” at the bottom.

• The idea is that your marketing should move potential customers through the funnel, en route to a purchase.

• But, as I’ve written, there’s a backlash to the funnel brewing.

• Some observers say the funnel is overly simplistic, or unnecessarily rigid, or just doesn’t map to the way people react to advertising in real life.

ROBERT’S SYSTEM IS better than the funnel in some ways, because —in addition to helping you segment your audience— it tells you what your message should be to each segment.

• This is important for a very simple reason.

• Marketing is overwhelmingly hard, especially in 2023.

• As I’ve written, everything is marketing, and marketing is everything.

• This isn’t philosophical yogababble. There are literally dozens and dozens of marketing disciplines today, and it’s impossible to be an expert in all of them.

• So, any simple, intelligent framework that can assist marketers in any way, is super welcome.

OK, SO WHAT is it already?

• Robert identifies four stages of awareness for any product/service.

• I think these awareness stages serve as four excellent audience segments for any startup.

THE FIRST IS “Problem Unaware.” 

• This awareness stage/audience segment is literally only aware of what they’re currently doing. They don’t even feel a problem.

• Therefore, leading your messaging with the problem, or —even worse— your solution, could totally backfire as your audience concludes “well, that’s not for me.”

• Instead: lead your messaging to the “Problem Unaware” crew with the currently used alternatives to your product, and why they’re inferior.

• “Wasting” valuable marketing time and energy talking about what’s currently being used, instead of talking about your product, might sound counterintuitive to some.

• It’s not.

• Remember, these people don’t feel a problem yet.

• Show them that you understand them.

• Then you can start a conversation with them about a better way.

THE SECOND STAGE/audience segment is the “Problem Aware” people. 

• As the title suggests, these folks know they have a problem (the one your product or service addresses) but they don’t know how exactly to solve it.

• Here, your messaging should very explicitly reference your audience’s specific problem.

• This builds credibility.

THE THIRD SEGMENT is “Solution Aware.” 

• These people are already looking for the right —or best— solution to their problem.

• So: talk to them about your specific capabilities.

• You’ll earn the trust that you need to dive deeper into the problem, and show how your product/service is the best answer to the problem that they have already identified for themselves.

• Sidebar: while talking about your capabilities is the perfect message for the “Solution Aware” people, you can totally see how talking about your capabilities would backfire if you said it to the “Problem Unaware” crew. What you’re saying would literally go right past them. Remember, those folks are not even aware they have a problem.

THE FOURTH SEGMENT is “Product Aware.”

• These people already know about you, and what you do.

• That’s great —but they’re not customers yet.

• You should probably lead with some hyper specific features, or maybe even a special price.

THERE YOU HAVE it. 4 audience segments and 4 messages in one move.

• The best part is, you could put this to work in just 15 minutes. Seriously.

• If you run a brand, as an exercise, grab a cup of coffee, turn the music on, and segment your audience into these four groups.

• Then experiment with writing a different message to each group, based on the framework above.

• Any questions as you go about doing this?

• Simply reply.

• We love talking about this kind of thing.

More

Robert Kaminski’s LinkedIn post, and (equally valuable) comment thread »»

Written by Jon Kallus. Any feedback? Simply reply.