Standing out and clearly differentiating your business from everyone else that says they do what you do is job number one when it comes to the strategic side of marketing.

Until you can offer a value proposition that resonates with your ideal client and clearly sets you apart you may be destined to compete on price or struggle to get people to switch to your “clearly” better offerings.

As you develop a marketing strategy for your business you must proactively make a case for “why us” and build all of your marketing messages, products, services, processes and follow-up communication around supporting that proposition.

This is how you use strategy to dominate your market. This is how you define value in terms that matter to those you are trying to attract.

Below are seven proven approaches to establishing and communicating your core value proposition.

1) Grab a niche – So many companies try to serve mass audiences. This is tough for any organization, but can be next to impossible for a small business just getting started. One very powerful way to create a point of differentiation is to carve out a narrow segment of a market and explain through every communication that you are the experts in serving that market.

Divorce attorneys that specialize in representing men are an example of this type of approach. Obviously, you won’t attract female clients, but a man going through a divorce might feel you have specialized knowledge and experience that other, more generic divorce attorneys, don’t possess.

2) Solve a problem – Creating a product, service or approach that clearly offers a better way to get a result, particularly a result I desperately need to get, is another strong way to demonstrate value and promote a business.

Pretty much everyone struggles with processing too much information. Many have developed all kinds of systems to remember things, track things and keep to do lists under control. Evernote created a better way to do this and made the process simple, accessible and manageable on the devices that millions already used, so it’s value proposition offered a very recognizable way to do something better and the company has grown measurably because of it.

3) Create custom experiences – Some segment of just about every market craves things that are custom made. The more markets are inundated with mass produced items, the more opportunity exists for things that are made to order or made by hand.

I believe the popularity of a platform like Etsy is due in part to this need for some to find and possess things that are one of a kind or made just for them.

If you can find a segment of your market that values this approach it can be a highly profitable proposition. I asked the owner of a men’s clothing shop I frequent about the market for suits these days and he said there are really only two segments left. The low end off the rack suit and the very high end custom tailored suit.

4) Open up an industry – Another interesting value proposition is to take a market or demand that already exists and disrupt it by creating access that isn’t generally available.

Peter Shankman founded a service called HARO or Help a Reporter Out, based on this proposition. PR professionals and marketers had long paid thousands of dollars a year to gain access to a pool of journalists looking for sources to specific stories.

HARO built a database and service based on this concept and made it available to anyone that wished to subscribe for no cost. The service became so popular that it began to attract significant ad revenue and Shankman later sold it to another industry disruptor Vocus.

5) Blow up the price model – Offering a market ways to save money or lower risk will always be a strong way to differentiate a business. Now, understand this is not the same thing as offering a lower price. The key to this proposition is to demonstrate how your product or service will clearly allow them to save money through the use of what you are offering. A version of this proposition is to show them how they can lower the risk of losing money as well.

Many of the cloud based Software as a Service offerings such as Dropbox do this very well. Dropbox allows many people to more easily share and store files without the need for server hardware and eliminates the risk of losing data by automatically offering backups.

6) Save time and frustration – Come up with a product, service of business that makes it more convenient to do something that people are already used to doing and you’ve got the makings of a winning value proposition.

I read a lot a books and the Kindle device for me is flat out the most convenient way to find, buy, read, store and carry lots of books around.

7) Differentiate with design – Great design is actually very hard to do, but when you invest in it as a core value proposition, it can actually be a tremendous way to stand out and attract a market segment for whom form and function are equally important.

Apple has entered and dominated several markets in which they had no history, mp3 players and phones, using their design value proposition.

Building a business model and marketing strategy based firmly on any one of these proven proposition will allow you carve our your place in the market. However, if you can combine several of these propositions you’ve got the foundation for something downright disruptive.

John Jantsch is a marketing consultant, speaker and author of Duct Tape Marketing and The Referral Engine and the founder of the Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Network.

An effective marketing strategy is the single most important aspect of any marketer’s role and failure to accomplish this can be the greatest threat to moving forward with one’s business.  Characteristics of some of the most powerful approaches to this strategy often have little to do with what a business does and much more to do with how a business goes about doing it.

Explaining this higher level of purpose as your marketing strategy can be challenging at first.  You can make all the grand plans possible about delivering an entertaining, inspiring, simple, surprising or mission filled strategy, but you won’t make it happen unless it comes from within – at the hands of fun, inspired, motivated, surprised and connected employees.

Below are a few powerful ideas on how to take your message from a high level purpose to a clearly painted marketing strategy.

Your Next Hire

It has become pretty standard business advice to suggest that you need to “hire for fit” rather than focusing only on experience or job skills.  Your recruitment process should aim to attract people that share your mission but also fit in the culture of your business.  Doing so will help allow your employees to tell and relate to your story.

Fail in the Favor of the Customer

Companies that really get this know that mistakes will be made and only ask when they make a mistake or are faced with a tough customer related decision, make it in favor of the customer.  This mindset doesn’t ask you to encourage mistakes, but it may be the ticket to actually empowering your staff.

Customer Touch Points

Review the entire process from getting customers to know, like and trust you to moving them into try, buy, repeat and refer.  Create a diagram consisting of these stages and map out every touch point you have or should have in order to ensure that nothing is falling through the cracks and every step is consistent with your companies’ culture.

Strategy Scorecard

You have to find ways to keep real strategy alive in the everyday language of the organization.  If you can turn it into a living, breathing, acting character in your business, it will become one of the most valuable assets your business possesses.

One of the best ways to do this is to turn strategy thinking into a game. Create scorecards that reward people for thinking, employing and acting with marketing strategy.

Courtesy of John Jantsch, Duct Tape Marketing. Republished with permission.

When it comes to attracting your ideal customer you should be able create a picture in your mind as you describe them. Using images of a real life customers can prove an effective way to help everyone in your organization narrowly focus on and communicate in ways that more directly appeal to your specific ideal customer.

A detailed profile, one that includes photos and stories of real customers, should be part of your marketing action plan documents. You may never share this type of document publicly, but it can be one of the most important internal training documents you ever create.

In order to create your profile you need to understand as much about your ideal customer as possible. Remember the key phrase here is ideal. I suggest looking long and hard at the characteristics of your most profitable customers that also refer business to you, that’s the model of an ideal customer.

Once you dig deep and profile the common characteristics you should also start asking yourself some questions about these folks.

Here are some starters.
• What brings them joy?
• What are they worried about?
• What challenges do they face?
• What do they hope to gain from us?
• What goals are they striving to attain?
• What experience thrills them?
• Where do they get their information?
• Who do they trust most?

The answers to the types of questions above are not always available, but pondering them in relationship to your ideal customer may allow you to more fully address their wants and needs in every interaction and communication.

Complete the profile, add a real photo, and hang it up in your office for all to see. Simply hanging photos of your customers around the office, may be the reminder that everyone in the office needs to connect with what your business is really about, what their work is really about, and who really pays everyone’s salary.

Courtesy of John Jantsch, Duct Tape Marketing. Republished with permission.