Is your brand aligned with your value proposition?
What you promise and what the customer experiences must be in agreement.
Does your brand promise match your brand experience? How do you know?
A brand in its simplest form is a name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that identifies one seller’s goods or services as distinct from those of other sellers. (Source: American Marketing Association)
“Distinct from those of other sellers” – is where your brand promise or value proposition comes into play. If the promise doesn’t match the experience, or if what makes you different isn’t resonating with key audiences, you may have brand misalignment. And it doesn’t matter how much you talk about your brand and what makes it different. You must deliver.
How?
First, let’s look at what a value proposition is and what it isn’t. Your value proposition is the promise you make to your customer that what they will experience will match what you are promising. This promise or value proposition is articulate, brief and clear. You should be able to state your value proposition in a short sentence.
Consider this example from Hyatt International: We care for people so they can be their best.
It’s broad yet simple. It’s a brand promise they can scale to their guests, investors and employees. Everything they do should encompass their commitment to care for the people they serve.
Next, look at this example from locally.com, a company that helps brands win “near me” searches on Google, thus creating local shopping experiences for customers and brands: “It’s not omni-channel without local shopping. We help our clients guide shoppers through delightful online-to-offline shopping experiences that keep them engaged all the way through a successful in-store purchase.”
Again, it’s brief and it tells the customer exactly what they can expect to experience as a customer of locally.com. The challenge now is for these brands to consistently deliver on their promises as intended.
How does your value proposition or brand promise align with your customers’ experiences? And before you answer that, do you actually have a value proposition?
What is a value proposition?
A value proposition is not your mission (the reason you’re in business) or your slogan (your tagline for a specific market offering). It is yet another ingredient in your business plan. As you consider your value proposition, it is important not to back yourself into a corner with a specific product or service offering. Your brand may move beyond the core business offering and expand into new markets and sectors. In other words, the products and services may evolve, but the brand stays on point with its promise.
Look again at the example from Hyatt. Hyatt recognizes its global influence around the world and scales its brand experience beyond the hotel guests and includes its employees, its investors and the communities it serves. The brand promise does not change with the intended audiences, but flows through each category, with specific ways to deliver their promises – beautiful properties, employee experience and community service.
Another everyday example often highlighted is Netflix. The brand originally provided DVD rentals and recognized the need to pivot to streaming video. The tangible product changed, but the experience – the brand and the promise to deliver movies on demand, 24/7 – did not.
A Brand Promise Audit
As you review your value proposition, think about what experience you want your customers to have when they engage with your brand. Next, develop a brief statement based on that promise and then develop your entire brand identity around that promise. But remember, make your value proposition too brief and you will have no way to focus your efforts. However, make it too prescriptive and there’s no room to scale the brand if you take it to new markets or new sectors.
If your current value proposition does not align with your brand (you can do some light detective work on this by surveying members of your customer base and even looking at your online reviews), then you need to do the hard work of realignment. This will take time, resources and patience.
