From the course: Marketing Foundations: Integrated Marketing Strategies

Build your brand value proposition

From the course: Marketing Foundations: Integrated Marketing Strategies

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Build your brand value proposition

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- [Male Lecturer] Golf is all about practice. Without a basic ability to execute the fundamentals of proper grip, and athletic stance, and an inside out swing, you're likely to have a frustrating day out on the course. In marketing, your Brand Value Proposition is a lot like your golf swing. It's easy enough to understand, but it takes countless hours of patience and practice to master. A strong BVP doesn't just give your customers a reason to choose your brand, it also drives things like messaging, special offers, sponsorships, and community events, and even R&D. So just as the golfer gets out to the driving range for practice, let's refine our BVP game with this five step process. Step one, set project objectives and scope. A good BVP starts with a clear plan, central to this process are two questions. What value do we deliver to our customers, and why do our customers buy from us? Your answers should not only be reasonable, but also actionable, and with unwavering focus on your target personas. When considering scopes, start designing a balance strategy that includes marketing, social employee advocacy, and both traditional and earned media. Step two, define your possible BVPs. This is the first thing people associate with your brand. For instance, Apple offers peer-less design, Nordstrom offers superior customer service, and Walmart offers the lowest prices around. What does your brand do? Whether your BVP is functional or emotional, your customers must relate to it, if you're a tech company for example, do your customers care more about performance and simplicity? Or your commitment to green and renewable technologies? In this phase focus on idea generation and keep your options open. Step three, refine your BVP, narrowing this down begins with qualitative analysis, mainly talking to customers. What about your brand resonates with them? What about your competitor's brands resonates with them? Don't for get to monitor social channels to get a better understanding of current conversations surrounding both your brand and your industry. Next, use quantitative analysis to supplement your findings, current market research, customer needs data, net promoter scores, competitive analysis, and insights from your marketing team, all offer great data sources. Step four, develop messaging architecture for key segments. So now that you've refined your BVP, it's time to get the message out, but how? Your messaging strategy should account for industry standards, your customers' known preferences, and a little bit of good old fashioned creativity. So remember, your goal is to foster a fundamental belief system about your brand that is deeply rooted equally in both data based strategy and authentic story-telling. Step five, determine your expected outcome. As Seth Godin says, in a world of too many choices and not enough time, it is easy for people to ignore you, you need to be remarkable. In other words, Godin likes to say, your brand needs to be like a purple cow, both conspicuous and intriguing. Recently CVS decided to pivot strongly in the direction of health and wellness, so they changed their name to CVS Health and stopped selling tobacco products. Thus fostering a belief that their brand was more concerned with people than with profits. So as you set out to build your own BVP, ask yourself, what lasting impression do you want to leave with your customers? Why should they choose your brand? And why should they keep coming back? So like the golfer, by practicing and continually refining your game, you're sure to come up with a compelling answer that strikes your customers just the right way.

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