Don’t confuse your unique value proposition with brand positioning.
If your value proposition defines your unique customer promise, your brand is how you communicate it uniquely.
Whether you are a marketer, entrepreneur or business owner, it can be really confusing to understand the nuanced difference between a unique value proposition and brand positioning. So here is some insight into how they are different and what it takes to have a brand position that doesn’t suck.
Unique Value Proposition
In this comparison, I like to think of your unique value proposition (UVP) as the “what.” Your UVP should be answering the questions, “what is your promise to your customers? What value you bring them and what they get when they use you to solve their problem that they won’t get anywhere else.” You’ve fallen in love with a problem, and your amazing value proposition that you’ve crafted demonstrates how you uniquely solve that problem from the customer’s point of view quickly and effectively.
A good value proposition will be at the heart of your existence and communications as a company and engagement from sales to building relationships with investors to brief your marketing team to develop your brand.
Find out more about why a value proposition is so important here.
Brand value positioning
In comparison, I like to think of the brand value message as the “how.” How will you quickly tell your customers who you are? How do you tell people how different you are and how you want to be perceived. And how you want the brand to make them feel. With your brand value position, you define the piece of mental real estate in the customer’s mind that you want to occupy.
Hubspot uses a great example when explaining a brand position. Coca-Cola clearly shows how you can define a position or place in the mind. “More than a century ago, a soda company decided to offer a never-before-seen product: the first-ever cola drink. In doing so, it successfully positioned itself as the original. Now, Coca-Cola benefits from millions of sales around the world and is a household staple; it’s positioned in our minds as the gold standard of soda.”
Picture credit from Marketing Week.
There are many “mental real estates” you can look to own such as the first, the leader, the fastest, the cheapest, the most premium. What you must do is link it back to your UVP. There has to be an authentic connection with the promise you are making to your customers and the value you are committing to provide them, and a fundamental understanding of the unique promise your business makes to them.
In today’s crowded marketplace, your brand positioning becomes even more important. It’s a mistake to believe that imitation is the greatest form of flattery in the brand development world. Please do not copy or do what everyone else is doing, no matter how good it is.
First, you need to understand who your competitors are or who your customers believe are your competitors. And then, you need to make sure that you find your little bit of brain space paradise in alignment with your UVP. And from that place of paradise, you can authentically and with passion (followed by expertise, experience, and authority) be different from them.
You simply can’t be anything but different to survive today.
Avis is one of those tried and true examples, but it’s because they did it so well. They were clear on who they were and what value they were going to provide. They wanted to declare that they were the company that went further, did more and treated their customers better than the competition while taking ownership of where Avis sat in the competitor landscape when they told their audience, “We’re Only Number 2, That’s Why We Try Harder”. Their promise that they would work harder for their customers than their competitors.
This also highlights why you need to consider how this plays internally within your business as much as externally. If your unique brand promise can’t or doesn’t align with the internal capability, values or vision, then the inconsistency will ultimately be felt as inauthenticity, a brand engagement killer. Again, going back to the Avis example, if they promised to try harder, the organisations from top to bottom had to be designed and aligned to fulfil that promise.
Watch out for pitfalls
There are two challenges that many fail at conquering during the process, so watch for these pitfalls.
The trap of using white-noise descriptors or concepts that mean virtually nothing because everyone uses them or has used them. These are terms such as “unique or best” or even things that all solutions in your similar space should do, such as “increase your profitability.” The more human and authentic you can be, the better. People in both B2B and B2C scenarios pick the brands they want to engage with; everyone has access to multiple choices or ways of solving their problem, including choosing not to solve it. The stronger you can connect in a human, authentic and empathetic way, the stronger and better the engagement and ultimately sales.
And believing this is about you and your founder or company story. It feels good to want to tell your story, sharing what obstacles you overcame, how you built the company, and why. But that’s your story. Stories are brilliant; we relate through the characters, we see ourselves as we hear people struggle or have victories. Storytelling needs to be at the heart of your brand, but it has to be a story crafted outside in, not inside out. It’s from your customer’s view of the world. It’s about their emotions, their journey, their challenges and successes, not yours.
Only once you’re clear on your UVP and your brand vision can you honestly and clearly start defining the messaging, visual design elements like the logo or colours, or the other marketing elements like your campaigns, preferred channels, and even price. All of these items are impacted by how you strategically define your value and brand propositions in alignment.
Remember, your ultimate goal with your UVP and your brand is to be crystal clear on what you offer your customers and how you solve their problem in a way that no one else can because it’s the only way you can be relevant to them. Without relevance, your audience will walk on by to the person who does speak to them.