Writing the Value Proposition: Part Three - Quantify & Qualify

“Without a specific reason for the consumer to behave, without a reward or benefit, the overwhelmed consumer will refuse.”

Seth Godin

The first two articles in this series, Customer Perception and A Point of Difference, covered the process I went through with the Netregistry marketing department to establish the core ingredients to be included in their new value proposition.

Now with a clear picture of how we wanted to be perceived (a thought leader, a partner) and with a quality that separates us from the competition (first with online business ideas), we were nearly ready to construct the final value proposition.

Being Specific

The final part of the VP puzzle was how we were going to indicate a specific, tangible quality to our point of difference.

Dominos Pizza had a clear time-bounded quality to theirs – "You get fresh, hot pizza delivered to your door in 30 minutes or less -- or it's free." The customer has a black and white statement that cannot be disputed. If the pizza isn’t fresh, hot or on time, the customer knows the outcome.

FedEx similarly have a time-bounded VP – the promise of overnight delivery being very clear in what to expect.

All the strongest value propositions have this clear quantified aspect to them. Nothing is left vague. How much, when, how long, how many – these are questions you don’t want the customer to be thinking after seeing your VP – the quality of your offer should be clear and absolute.

Quantifying an Idea

But this was a problem. How do you explain an idea in these terms? We can’t quantify them – ideas don’t come in fixed amounts or time frames. The point we were focusing on was that Netregistry develops fresh ideas for online business before our competition, but how do we qualify that so the customer can’t challenge the statement?

The answer came to us when we looked at some other campaigns that dealt with hard to prove statements. A very famous value proposition in the UK belongs to John Lewis – a chain of department stores. Since 1925, they have advertised that they are “never knowingly undersold.”

This statement, and the variations in use by many other chain stores, seeks to deal with the same problem when dealing with price. Although a slogan that claimed to offer the cheapest price may seem to be a pretty back and white statement, no company could prove that statement definitively without adding a further tagline. John Lewis did it by offering to refund the difference if an item is found cheaper anywhere else. Similar offers abound.

This was the key – a form of guarantee that assures the customer that the business is willing to stand by their statement and adjust to encompass any better offer.

The Tagline

So we came up with a tagline of our own. Netregistry would offer that if anyone found a fresher online marketing idea anywhere else, we would make it even better. We could do this in a number of ways – cheaper price r better service. The point was to assure the customer that we are determined to have the best ideas and the best offers and are willing to outmatch our competition.

Yes, it’s not as clear a qualification as Dominos Pizza or FedEx, but it allowed us to pin our commitment to new ideas to our chests and strive to be the forefront of the industry.

Now all I needed to do was find the words to say all this.

Return next Wednesday for Part Four – Crafting the Language

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