Advertising
How to Craft a Winning Value Proposition
The business landscape is perpetually shifting, but the basic fundamentals of business rarely change.
Whether your company is a scrappy startup or an international juggernaut, it needs to find a way to consistently provide value to customers – and just as important, it needs to communicate that message succinctly and effortlessly.
At the foundation of these efforts exists the value proposition, a deceptively simple set of key messages that serve as an anchor for all sales and communications efforts for an overall brand or a specific offering.
Crafting the Value Proposition
Today’s infographic comes to us from Quick Sprout, and it covers the steps in establishing and communicating an effective value proposition that can help differentiate you from your competitors.
A quality value proposition is clear, easy to understand, and communicates the specific results a customer will get. It also must explain how the product or brand is different and better than competing ways to solve the same problem (i.e. competitors, legacy processes).
Nailing these criteria helps to create an effective foundation for all sales and marketing efforts, and it can also provide a useful compass for guiding any future messaging.
Discovering Value
While the concept behind a value proposition is pretty simple, that doesn’t make coming up with one a simple task.
There are literally millions of companies in the world, and likely tens of thousands that do something similar to your company. How do you stand apart from these competitors? How do you clearly articulate the value that you can provide?
One suggestion is to look at the customer experience methodically, and to fill out an exercise similar to this one created by digital brand strategist Peter Thomson:
As Peter skillfully articulates, a value proposition is the intersection between what you make and why people buy it. This intersection is what connects business strategy and brand strategy.
Articulating Value
What good is discovering value if it can’t be articulated clearly and concisely?
After you’ve explored the customer experience, here’s a way to put it into words:
1. Identify customer benefits
Make a list of all benefits you offer to your customers
2. Link benefits to value offering
Identify what value your products bring to your customer
3. Differentiate and position yourself
Make it clear who the target customer is, what you offer to them, and how you are different
Using these points, a winning value proposition can be crafted – and if it’s something that is being shown online (i.e. landing page, product page) it may make sense to include the following elements: a headline, a subheadline or paragraph, three bullet points, and a visual element.
The Tactics
Finally, here are some tactics that are relied on to further the effectiveness of the value prop:
| Tactics for developing effective value props | % Use |
|---|---|
| Clearly explain the value of products and services | 71% |
| Clearly explain why the ideal customer should choose your solution | 56% |
| Develop unique value props for separate products or services | 52% |
| Target specific value props for specific buyer personas | 45% |
| Competitive research | 40% |
| Testing value props through various media | 20% |
What other tactics do you use to craft a compelling message about your company or product?
Advertising
The World’s 100 Most Valuable Brands in 2019
Technology brands account for 20 of the world’s 100 most valuable brands in 2019, combining for a whopping 43% of total brand value.
The World’s 100 Most Valuable Brands in 2019
Brand equity can be a challenging thing to build.
Even with access to deep pockets and an innovative product, it can take decades of grit to scrape your way into the mainstream consciousness of consumers.
On the path to becoming established as a globally significant brand, companies must fight through fierce competition, publicity scandals, changing regulations, and rapidly-evolving consumer tastes – all to take a bite from the same piece of pie.
Cream of the Crop
Today’s visualization comes to us from HowMuch.net, and it showcases the 100 most valuable brands in the world, according to Forbes.
Here are the powerful brands that sit at the very top of the list:
| Rank | Brand | Brand Value ($B) | 1-Yr Value Change | Industry |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | Apple | $205.5 | +12% | Technology |
| #2 | $167.7 | +27% | Technology | |
| #3 | Microsoft | $125.3 | +20% | Technology |
| #4 | Amazon | $97.0 | +37% | Technology |
| #5 | $88.9 | -6% | Technology | |
| #6 | Coca-Cola | $59.2 | +3% | Beverages |
| #7 | Samsung | $53.1 | +11% | Technology |
| #8 | Disney | $52.2 | +10% | Leisure |
| #9 | Toyota | $44.6 | +0% | Automotive |
| #10 | McDonald's | $43.8 | +6% | Restaurants |
It should be noted that the list is ordered by brand value, a measure that tries to calculate each brand’s ultimate contribution in financial terms to the parent company. You can see that full methodology here.
Finally, it’s also worth mentioning that brands with only a token representation in the United States have been excluded from the rankings. This means companies like Alibaba or Vodafone are not represented in this particular visualization.
Tech Rules Again in 2019
For another straight year, technology dominates the list of the 100 most valuable brands in 2019 – this time, with six of the top seven entries.
Most of these brands saw double-digit growth in value from the previous year, including Apple (12%), Google (27%), Amazon (37%), Microsoft (20%), and Samsung (11%). The one notable exception here is Facebook, which experienced a 6% drop in value attributed to various struggles around the company’s reputation.
Here’s a look at how industries break down more generally on the list:
| Industry | # of Brands | Brand Value ($B) |
|---|---|---|
| Total | 100 | $2,231.9 |
| Technology | 20 | $957.6 |
| Financial Services | 13 | $198.1 |
| Automotive | 11 | $208.9 |
| Consumer Goods | 10 | $123.8 |
| Retail | 8 | $133.0 |
| Luxury | 6 | $124.1 |
| Beverages | 4 | $49.3 |
| Diversified | 4 | $56.8 |
| Alcohol | 3 | $69.8 |
| Apparel | 3 | $34.7 |
| Business Services | 3 | $33.5 |
| Restaurants | 3 | $73.0 |
| Telecom | 3 | $24.3 |
| Heavy Equipment | 2 | $36.7 |
| Leisure | 2 | $19.8 |
| Media | 2 | $34.8 |
| Transportation | 2 | $41.1 |
| Tobacco | 1 | $12.6 |
As you can see, technology brands make up 20% of the list in terms of the number of entries – and a whopping 43% of the list’s cumulative valuation.
In total, technologies brands combined for $957.6 billion in value. Even when including Facebook’s recent drop, this is an impressive 9.7% increase on last year’s numbers.
Will the double-digit increases for the world’s largest tech giants continue into 2020, or are brands such as Amazon and Google going to start seeing the same type of pushback that Facebook has grappled with among consumers and regulators?
Advertising
This Giant List of 100+ Marketing Stats Reveals What Actually Works
This massive infographic uses 100+ marketing stats to highlight the tactics that are working in modern-day digital universe.
In just the last decade, the marketing world has been dramatically transformed.
Spending on digital media surpassed television ads in 2017, and now global digital spend is anticipated to top $333 billion this year.
As a result, today’s entrepreneurs and small businesses are starting to think about marketing in almost exclusively digital terms – and to have a successful online strategy, it’s important to see the data on what tactics are actually working.
Visualizing 100+ Marketing Stats
Today’s infographic comes to us from Serpwatch and it highlights seven of the most important digital marketing trends to keep an eye on this year.
Along the way, it highlights over 100 useful marketing stats that help to reveal the strategies and tactics that maximize ROI in the online arena.
It’s well known that digital media tactics – such as using social media, SEO, search, email, and content marketing – all offer unprecedented levels of analytics, customization, and segmentation for the modern marketer.
However, with so much to think about when using these techniques online and at scale, they can also be quite overwhelming.
Luckily, the above list provides some marketing stats that stand out in potentially helping businesses make the most out of their digital campaigns.
Stats That Stand Out
Here are some of the marketing stats from the above list that we thought stood out the most, for each category:
- Search:
The top five search results for a keyword on Google get 70% of the clicks. - Social media:
80% of B2B leads come in through LinkedIn vs. 13% on Twitter and 7% on Facebook. - Video marketing:
Video will represent 82% of all internet traffic by 2021. - Cold email marketing:
Emails sent between 10-11am have the highest open rates. Tuesday is the best day to send cold emails. - Paid advertising:
The mobile ad blocking rate has increased 90% year-over-year. - Lead generation:
61% of marketers say generating traffic and leads is their top challenge. - Content marketing:
47% of buyers viewed 3-5 pieces of content before engaging with a sales rep.
Although the digital marketing space is vast, the useful statistics above may help create some clarity for marketers trying to get the most out of their efforts in 2019 and beyond.
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