Hammering a Nail with a Screwdriver

Awareness Building

Marketing, in many respects, is about building awareness. After all, if customers aren't aware of your offering, they won’t buy it.

Unfortunately, awareness building is perhaps one of the most misunderstood aspects of marketing, by both non-marketers and inexperienced marketers alike.

In your marketing career, you've probably received an ad-hoc request to run an ad, post a press release or write a brochure. Each of these has a place in the marketer’s toolkit, but far too often someone reaches for the tool before adequately assessing the situation. It’s like trying to hammer a nail with a screwdriver because that’s what you have – it might work, but the odds are against it.

Successful marketing communications requires discipline. While there are occasions when you need to run, say, a spot ad as part of an existing initiative, you’ll be better off if you've done the heavy lifting of developing your marketing strategy and plan. Every single communication should be thought through and evaluated against the selected target markets and customer sets and the value proposition, whether it is an individual Tweet or a comprehensive thought leadership campaign. As a marketing executive you can’t, of course, micro-manage every detail, but that’s where the awareness-building plan, with associated tasks and responsibilities comes into play. Everyone should know his or her role, expectations, accountabilities and how he or she will be evaluated.

Start with the value proposition

A value proposition is a clear statement of the promise of value (expressed as a benefit or business result) you will deliver in answer to a customer need or problem. It answers the question “why should a customer buy from us?” Writing a great value proposition is neither easy nor quick, but here are some steps that will help.

1. Clearly and precisely identify the target segment you wish to communicate to. You may have multiple segments which, of course, means you’ll need multiple value propositions.
2. Prioritize the customer’s needs or problems identified in your insights work. 
3. Then list the primary benefit your offering provides for the expressed problem. For businesses, these often focus revenue generation or cost reduction; consumers might see more benefits in terms of status, ease-of-use or service and support. A useful exercise, once you've developed the initial benefits list is to look at businesses as consumers and vice versa. 
4. Compare this to competitive offerings and list the key points of differentiation.

With this information, write out the value proposition. Here is a “starter” I've found helpful:

For [buyers in priority segments] who need [statement of customer's problem], we provide [statement of the solution / key customer benefits].

Unlike [primary competitors], our offering has / does [statement of major points of differentiation]. 

Then test the heck out of it, both internally (especially with product developers and sales personnel) and with a sampling of target buyers.

With a differentiated value proposition, your marcomms team has a tool to create a powerful awareness-building strategy through the available communications channels: traditional advertising, digital advertising, website, direct, social media, events, word-of-mouth and point-of-sale. Assuming they know their stuff, they'll do an outstanding job.

Next: Creating Meaningful Differentiation: How Much Do You Know About Your Competition?