IT service companies know their supported technologies, security, cloud computing, data storage best practices, and sometimes virtualization. Yet many do not yet know and appreciate the importance of defining a value proposition that positions their brand in the marketplace.
Value proposition design should guide marketing efforts. This singular, concise statement quickly captures the clear, compelling value of your service or product. Done well, a strong value proposition will:
Simply stated, defining your value proposition helps to compel potential customers to buy your product and service and feel secure in their decision.
Additionally, value propositions unify how your company stakeholders and sales teams talk about your enterprise. This alone is an advantage, as it brings everyone together in communicating the same message about your IT service and thereby reduces confusion, misunderstandings, and misaligned expectations.
Defining a value proposition as an IT service provider forces you to do these as well:
To succinctly convey your service’s value, you must consider the challenges your customers face, envision their future directions, and examine where you fit in their industry landscape.
Any inbound marketer knows developing buyer personas can help better address leads and generate quality leads. But this step can be overlooked. Start by creating your ideal buyer personas. You’ll also see benefits in your business blogging, workflow triggers, and nurturing of leads through the sales funnel.
Related Article: Ideal Customer Profiles vs. Buyer Personas: Defining B2B Buyers
Explaining what your service does is not addressing its value. When designing your value proposition, detail how your service will generate greater revenues, reduce costs and expenses, bring competitive advantage or greater convenience, and offer better results.
For instance, Hubspot’s “Grow Your Business” is a simple, attractive promise, while Scribd’s “Read Like You Own Every Book in the World” is clearly benefit-focused.
Of course, you research your competitors on an ongoing basis. Nevertheless, defining a strong value proposition for your IT service demands a deep investigation of what your competitors are doing and what you have that no one else offers.
Your value proposition should determine how those distinguishing factors offer advantages to your target customers.
By defining a value proposition, you will have a better chance at driving leads that are more relevant, ready, and in need of your service offering. Value propositions allow your marketing efforts to target the right people with the right content.
Better IT sales leads make sales teams more successful and help to improve sales conversion rates and deal sizes.
31% of B2B marketers say sales lead quality is the most important metric used. — B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends: North America
One last tip:
Be sure your message resonates with the right people. Keep in mind that people have difficulty articulating what they want. Even more problematic is they tend to act differently than they say they will.
So, establish testing metrics to measure your value proposition’s success. Then, be willing to make changes to capture the problems you address, benefits you offer, or values your service adds.
Related article: 5 Demand Generation Best Practices for IT Service Companies
Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation (2007). Value Proposition. https://www.entrepreneurship.org/resource-center/value-proposition.aspx
Thomas, J. (2015, October 20). 25 Companies Who Absolutely Nailed Their Unique Value Proposition. https://www.lean-labs.com/blog/25-companies-who-absoluteluy-nailed-their-unique-value-proposition
B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends: North America (2015, Sept. 15). https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/2016_B2B_Report_Final.pdf