For any brand, leading with values creates broad points of agreement and shared goals that will resonate with your target audience. It shows that you understand their challenges and can provide solutions

To deliver value, you first have to know what that potential customer will find valuable. Simple right? Right. In this lesson, we're going to look at how you can dive deeper into your customer research, understand their challenges and create value propositions (the basis of value-driven messaging).

A value proposition is something that automatically brings your customer into focus and allows you to propose solutions to their problem from their own perspective. And to get there, we have to start with their pain points.

In this process, it is very easy to make assumptions. Whether you realize it or not, your preconceived notions influence your interaction with clients. I strongly recommend that you avoid doing so and actually go out and discuss these pain points with potential customers.

Step 1. Make a list

Make a list of companies and people in your ideal target audience who might be interested in your product or technology.

Step 2. Interviews

Interview at least five of these organizations and ask them the following questions to identify what they care about, how they define their challenges, and the words they use. Record the conversations and compile a list of the top responses. 

Discover the pain points

Pain points are simply: Problems. And because they're problems for our customers, they are opportunities for our brand — if we can solve them, that is. But first, we have to identify them.

A pain point is "an issue or problem causing 'pain' in an organization and requiring a solution. True business pain isn't a problem where the solution is a nice-to-have. It's a budgeted, pull-your-hair-out, have-to-get-it-solved, discussed-at-the-board-level kind of problem. Because they affect the bottom line, they must be solved in order for the organization to grow and function successfully."

These five questions are the ones I usually use for my clients:

1. What is the biggest challenge you’re currently facing?

2. What effect does this challenge have on your current business?

3. What has prevented you from relieving the pain?

4. What happens if the pain is left unchecked? 

5. Does this challenge lead to bigger problems in the future?

Make sure that you record the conversation so that you can listen back to their response. The words they use may prove invaluable.

Seek out gains and opportunities

Once you're finished asking your ideal clients their pains, let's flip it and ask them about their gains. 

1. What is the greatest desires your ideal target audience currently has (i.e., reduce costs, raise capital, hire more top tier candidates)? 

2. What effect could this have on their current business if achieved? 

3. Are these desires a nice to have (like candy) or a essential to achieving a goal (like going to the dentist)?

 Jobs-to-be-done

What jobs do your ideal target market need done? Jobs to be Done is a theory of consumer action: It describes the mechanisms that cause a consumer to adopt an innovation. The theory states that markets grow, evolve, and renew whenever customers have a Job to be Done, and then buy a product to complete it (get the Job Done).

1. What are the functional, emotional or social jobs or tasks that your target audience must complete on a daily basis?

2. What tools could help your target audience achieve these jobs?

Step 3. Analyse the responses

While certain pain points will be unique to specific clients, many will be more universal. In this step of the process, you'll want to identify these trends. 

Ask yourself: “What are the most common pain points for all of your customers, what do they have in common?"

Create a list of between 10+ major pain points which multiple clients experience. Rank them from most common to least common. 

As a bonus, make a list of the common terminology that they use; this will come in hand later in the process when you're writing your value proposition.

Step 4. Product features 

Next, make a list of all of your product's features. This step is important in creating your value proposition; by connecting your product's features with your target audience's pains, you can create strategic messages to solve these challenges.

Once you have a interviewed multiple people in your ideal target audience, review the responses to create the basis of your value propositions. What do they care about? What collective challenges to they have? These will help you develop a strategic message that adds value to their live.

Take all the pains, gains and JTBD and arrange them under three broad categories. These are your value proposition categories.

Step 4. Turn them into value statements

A value proposition is a promise of value to be delivered, communicated, and acknowledged. It is also a belief from the customer about how value will be delivered, experienced and acquired. Once you have a clear understanding of your customer's pain points, it's time to turn them into value propositions. 

For example:

• Pain Point: We are losing millennial customers due to environmental concerns. Value Statement: Minimize revenue at risk from losing millennial customers due to environmental concerns

• Pain Point: We don't know to measure our impact according to the SDGs properly and it's holding back our growth. Value Statement: Adequately measuring your impact in line with the SDGs.

• Pain Point: We are afraid our business is contributing to plastic waste issues abroad. Value Statement: Ensure that your business doesn't contribute to plastic waste issues in developing countries.

Next, take your VP category and reverse it; from negative to positive. For instance, if your category is to "reduce carbon consumption from transport" and your, your value proposition could be "zero emission delivery". TIP: Write multiple versions of this to iterate, use the vocabulary of your target audience, and test each.

Step 5. From value statement to strategic message

Create three different forms for each of your value propositions statements. These will be key in the process for writing everything from your brand's website copy, to product features, and awareness campaigns.

1. Tagline (5 words max)

2. One sentence statement (25 words): "Our company _____[value proposition] helps ________ [ideal target audience] with __________[pain/gain/job-to-be-done]."

3. One paragraph statement (100 words max): "For ____________ [ideal customer] who ___________[has this pain] that __________[wants to achieve/gain] to with our __________[what your company is] that provides______________[your value proposition]. With ______[your brand name], you can ___X_Y_and_Z___[list your main USPs]."

Now it's time to start creating content

When you have determined these values, you can speak directly to them & their attributing pain points. 

For example, the value statement "Minimize revenue at risk from losing millennial customers due to environmental concerns" can be turned into multiple bits of content: 5 Ways Millennials Can Boost Your Firm's Revenue in 2020, Why Some Firms Can't Quite Hook Millennials, and Millennials Can Smell Greenwashing From A Mile Away: Here's what to look out for.

You can use these messages across a broad spectrum of your communications, on your website, in webinars, on LinkedIn posts and when you talk to the press.

What's important is that you're actually demonstrating your ability to solve the challenges your target audience has, rather than promoting your own product or service.