This has to be the oldest and most commonly asked question posed to marketers. So why am I even bothering to address this issue given many of you already understand its nature? The reason is that many think they have an answer that meets the customers’ needs, yet we see a marketplace full of ineffective, unclear value propositions. It’s important to re-evaluate your current proposition to ensure it’s as effective as possible.

Why this market?

Some feel that it’s impossible to find a unique advantage in today’s oversaturated marketplace. But you’ve got to consider this: If you cannot find any areas in which to outshine the competition, your business is likely to flop. Solving product problems with marketing will fail every time without an effective value proposition.

Why this product?

There have been ten million articles written about how to build a positioning statement or how to get people to buy from you. What most people miss is that a value proposition is not hidden. It’s just unnoticed. It’s often already been discovered by the customer. See who is buying or not buying and what benefits seem to solve customers’ problems. The most difficult thing to do is to think like customers and appeal to all of them. Most of them do not even know why they buy and couldn’t tell you if they wanted to. They are not honestly aware of their purchase decisions most of the time. Studies show that only 1 percent of the population is self-actualized while 70 percent sit at base-level consciousness and live life by going from one thing to the next with not much thought to it.

Why this customer?

So how do you gain access to consumers’ purchase criteria? You have to design systems that elicit behavior, not words, from your customers. Watch what people do, not what they say they do; they may say one thing and do another. Here’s an example. Let’s say a new gym opens. They survey members asking if they want a pool and if they would pay extra to use it. All the members said 'yes.' They built the pool for $50,000 and waited for people to use it. No one used it.

What happened? No one knew. Everyone said they wanted it when asked. Instead, they had to fill it up with concrete and use it for something else. What a waste of money. What if they had touted the pool as a marketing tactic? It would have fallen flat because what people actually cared about was very different than what they said. When it comes time to part with hard-earned cash, people behave differently. The cheapest way to save money is to use the Internet as a testing ground.

Reviewing metrics will allow you to view behavior, and from that behavior you will gain insight into why someone buys from you versus your competitor. From that insight you will learn your true value — and people will pay for that. You are basically mining for gold. Without that gold you will not know why anyone buys from you.

In closing, the marketer needs to spend more time detecting value from the customers’ perspective and communicating it effectively. You will find that time spent on these high-leverage activities will have the greatest impact on the success of your efforts.