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What makes a strong value proposition
Defining or redefining your value proposition
Questions to ask when building your value proposition
Conversations, data, and research to consider
Communicating a value proposition
Your organization ideally has a vision. A great value proposition perpetually supports the path to achieving that vision, and along the way provides solutions to members’ largest pain points. It is a dynamic and shifting target, which means evaluation should be done annually.
1. It Focuses on Benefits and Outcomes
Why does your organization exist?
This question might seem unnecessary, but it’s a valid question that prospective members are likely to ask. Your value proposition should define why you’re here and what current, relevant industry pain points you’re working to solve. What are you improving in their industry? In their lives? And most importantly, why should they join? When value propositions focus on the end result for members, those members will be more inspired to join, engage, donate, participate in an event, or purchase a product.
2. It Uses Specific, Meaningful Language
Your value proposition should avoid meaningless jargon, phrases, and filler. Skip the generic platitudes. “We’re helping build a better world” is broad, vague, and unmeasurable. You must speak the same language as your members to show you understand and are listening. (Read the section “How to Learn What Your Members Really Want” for guidance on assessing member needs.)
3. It’s Not Just a Catchy Slogan
Yes, a value proposition should be creative, carefully thought out, pressure-tested, and formed using member testing and feedback. It should even be memorable. You should proudly and confidently include it on your website, your emails, and in all your other outreach efforts. And while it’s okay if it’s “catchy,” that can’t be its sole strength. It must also be substantive. It is, after all, the driving force behind why members join and stay.
Your organization ideally has a vision. A great value proposition perpetually supports the path to achieving that vision, and along the way provides solutions to members’ largest pain points. It is a dynamic and shifting target, which means evaluation should be done annually.
1. It Focuses on Benefits and Outcomes
Why does your organization exist?
This question might seem unnecessary, but it’s a valid question that prospective members are likely to ask. Your value proposition should define why you’re here and what current, relevant industry pain points you’re working to solve. What are you improving in their industry? In their lives? And most importantly, why should they join? When value propositions focus on the end result for members, those members will be more inspired to join, engage, donate, participate in an event, or purchase a product.
2. It Uses Specific, Meaningful Language
Your value proposition should avoid meaningless jargon, phrases, and filler. Skip the generic platitudes. “We’re helping build a better world” is broad, vague, and unmeasurable. You must speak the same language as your members to show you understand and are listening. (Read the section “How to Learn What Your Members Really Want” for guidance on assessing member needs.)
3. It’s Not Just a Catchy Slogan
Yes, a value proposition should be creative, carefully thought out, pressure-tested, and formed using member testing and feedback. It should even be memorable. You should proudly and confidently include it on your website, your emails, and in all your other outreach efforts. And while it’s okay if it’s “catchy,” that can’t be its sole strength. It must also be substantive. It is, after all, the driving force behind why members join and stay.
Ask the right questions. This helps you discover your members’ highest pain points.
Listen intently. You should be listening for recurring themes from members.
Innovate with solutions. Come up with new ways to solve the problems they’ve expressed.
Value creation. This happens when you can provide good solutions to what members need.
Engage with excellence. Once these steps are in place, start communicating about your value, getting members’ feedback on your value, and continuing to engage them.
If your research leads you to the conclusion that you need to revise your benefits, consider creating an online community for your members. Higher Logic Thrive, the leading member experience platform for associations, gives you built-in community software so your members can connect 24/7.
This is about aligning the solutions you already have to the pain points or needs of your members. Some tips:
A. Avoid adopting a self-image as a “Jack of all trades.”
It’s tempting to say you have the solution for every problem you hear about, but you can’t do everything for everyone. Don’t be afraid of niches. Narrow down what you excel in doing for members. This makes it easier for them to quickly identify a value proposition that speaks to them.
What is the main benefit of what you do? Sure, there are sub-benefits, but focus on the main benefit in your value proposition. Example: In-person training for marketing professionals on creating videos.
MAIN BENEFIT: Providing the strategy and skill set to create amazing videos that promote their business and attract customers.
SUB-BENEFITS: Meeting others to brainstorm with, fresh ideas to promote your business, exposure to new technology or tools, etc.
If you have CEOs with 30+ years of experience, as well as entry-level professionals, and you’re serving both well, you likely have two different value propositions. The key benefits for these two different types of members probably isn’t going to be the same. So that calls for you to draft two value propositions, one relevant to each group.
B. Whatever you land on as your top strength, make it something you’re known for or that you clearly lead the industry in.
What are others in your industry excelling at that you don’t do as well? Understanding the strengths of these other organizations helps you get clarity on the areas in which your organization truly stands out. That will power your value proposition.
Is there something that both you and others in the industry do well? If so, you should define how you approach it differently (and hopefully better). Sometimes a different approach or philosophy is all it takes to attract certain members.
C. Evaluate your programs and services for their positive impact on members.
What are the areas in which you can demonstrably show you made a difference? Where have you not had an impact? Sometimes we wind up with products that no longer address the worst pain points most members have. You need to be willing to let those go if they are no longer relevant. Remember, value proposition strategy is about linking offerings to member goals.
That’s what associations think… but what do our members think?
How well do you know your members? What do they want? What motivates them?
Do you know? If you’ve spent all your time thinking about what you want to say to them and not very much time setting up tools and processes for listening to members, you are executing that age-old strategy of throwing stuff against the wall to see what sticks. You’re guessing.
To create an organizational shift from talking at your members to listening to your members, two-way conversations must be enabled. Your association needs ways to hear from members. The best way is to set up tools and processes for two-way communication.
Without technology, you can’t scale your conversations to service numerous association members. Maybe you’ll talk to them at a live event, but that’s often a small, skewed subset. And events are too far and few between to establish quality relationships. Digital tools are going to be your main method to engage and get the most out of your value proposition.
Email is likely the number one tool you use to communicate with your members. But are you tracking the other side of the conversations? Your members communicate back to you by opening emails, clicking on emails and subscribing or unsubscribing. There is a treasure trove of information in responses to your emails.
An online member community brings your members together in a central digital location where they can network with peers, help solve each other’s problems, find mentorship, access resources, and more.
By participating actively in the communities that you set up, you’re breaking away from the one-to-many exchange of information to organically hearing what the membership has to say back to you. Little is wasted. Nearly every conversation and interaction gives you new data about what your member base really wants from you. And sometimes they’re going to surprise you by bringing things up you never even considered before.
In the absence of in-person meetings, you can still have face-to-face options. For example, you could set up a virtual town hall style meeting so anyone can participate. To keep the flow of the meeting going constructively, make sure the agenda is well planned and of value to attendees, not just your organization. Use a moderator and give attendees an easy way to ask questions and add their own insight. At the end of the town hall, everyone should feel they had a chance to be heard.
You could also set up focus groups with a narrower audience, like an advisory council or committee. By asking the same questions of smaller, more niche groups, you can achieve the intimacy of in-person interaction, but with a higher level of conversation. After the meeting, send out a follow-up report of the discussion and how it’s being used to influence decision-making, so participants know that their time was not wasted, and their views are valued by the organization.
Any combination of the above listening opportunities will pay dividends. Again, it would be extremely difficult to put together truly effective value propositions for ideal audiences if you’re shutting them out. Revisit those value propositions often, and perpetually check in on membership wants and needs so you’ll be ready when the time comes to put pen to paper (or keyboard to screen).
TESTING YOUR VALUE PROPOSITION
Before you communicate your value propositions to the membership, it’s a smart idea to test them. If there are any tweaks required, you want to surface those before you communicate the value proposition to everyone, as opposed to having to communicate changes later. The reaction to that can unfortunately be, “Gee, let me know when you guys have this figured out.”
You’ve created targeted messaging to your ideal audiences. But how can you be sure those messages will land with your audience and result in the desired Call to Action? The answer is testing, which can be done in several ways, including:
A small email send to a representative sample of your audience for A/B testing. See which proposition your audience best responds to.
Just ask outright. Post the options in your online community or send them through email and ask members to vote for the value proposition that resonates with them most. Ask them to give feedback on what they’d change.
NEWSLETTERS
Instead of “Your Legislative Affairs Newsletter,” focus on communicating the results or outcome that the team is creating, such as “Building Better Policy for (your members).”
RECRUITMENT CAMPAIGNS
Is there anything more thrilling than a “Join Now” button? Why put that button there at all if you haven’t answered the question, “Why should I?” Place the value proposition statement in the immediate vicinity of that button to reinforce that you’re the right group for them.
ONBOARDING CAMPAIGNS
Congratulations, you recruited a new member! Now make sure they don’t have buyer’s remorse or wonder why they joined the association in the first place by reinforcing the value proposition throughout automated onboarding messages. Consistently tying value propositions to newsletters and products will remind them why they joined and keep them excited about what they’re going to get out of their membership.
AUTOMATION
Having an automated email system doesn’t mean you can just check out and go hit the beach. Your involvement is still required. Always be revisiting, editing, and updating your emails to accommodate new or changes to value propositions. Scheduling a yearly copy review is a good practice to keep messaging from growing stale and irrelevant.
3. BOARD AND MEMBERSHIP COMMITTEE
Active board members are usually champions for your organization. They’re there to help and want to be of value to you. But in the immortal words of Jerry Maguire, “Help me help you.” Arming these board members with strong and clear value propositions will help make them better advocates. In fact, if your own board members don’t understand your value propositions, you obviously have some more work to do.
Remind them to focus on the results, benefits, and outcomes for members, not just feature details. This will help them successfully recruit new members and sponsors. And don’t let them “wing it” when it comes to the association’s messaging. Make sure they have clear statements available whenever needed.
4. SOCIAL MEDIA
Social media remains a powerful way to reach audiences on the platforms of their choosing. Adhere to long-held social media best practices by concentrating on images and/or video that showcase your value propositions. Establish a social media editorial calendar so that posts support current areas of focus and initiatives, be they events, membership drives, donation drives, or product promotion.
As long as someone is holding a laptop or mobile phone (and who isn’t?), you have an always-on open communication channel to your membership. Some social media content tips:
Be personal. Take a value proposition statement and connect it to a member testimonial for reinforcement that the benefits are very real. This can cause member prospects feel like they are missing out and could also benefit.
Keep it short and use imagery. The social media world has become largely about “short.” Keep social media content small and quickly digestible as users rapidly scroll through their social media feeds. Again, strong images are one of the few things that will make them stop and dwell longer on your content.
5. MEDIA
Just as you’re providing value propositions for your board member champions, organizational leaders and executives will also need to be armed with these propositions to use as talking points should they land a media interview, or if they’re invited to give a presentation at a conference. Having the anchors of the value propositions will keep all media appearances consistent and cohesive.
If a member has an opportunity to discuss you in the media, encourage them to come up with a personal story that directly ties into a value proposition. When writing press releases, apply the same rules as emails—make sure the messaging resonates with your value proposition.
6. REPETITION
In all your communication channels and touchpoints, make sure the message is consistent. Sometimes association marketers feel like they’re just repeating themselves and feel an obligation to shake things up. But repetition is not a bad thing. The Rule of 7 states that people need to hear a message seven times before they even start to remember it. In today’s world, recent research says that can be as many as 20 times. So yes, feel free to be creative, but do not stray from the root of the value proposition.
Of course, that doesn’t mean you should just email your value proposition to people over and over. But make sure the emails you are sending are targeted on what your value proposition can do for the recipient.
Strong value propositions can guide strategy and align all stakeholders behind key goals.
Don’t let your value propositions grow stale and irrelevant. Revisit and revise them regularly, as member needs change.
A great value proposition supports the organization’s vision, providing solutions to member pain points.
Strong value propositions focus on benefits and outcomes, uses meaningful language, and are more than just catchy slogans.
Solve members’ problems and they’ll never want to leave.
Leverage all channels to communicate your value propositions, including website, email, boards and committees, social media, and media.
A great value proposition answers the questions ‘what are we especially good at?’, ‘who is your ideal audience?’, and ‘what’s the strongest value proposition we can offer for each of our audiences?’
Don’t assume you got it right, test your value propositions with your members.
Don’t talk at members. Listen to them. Use digital communications to get the full picture.
Amy Hager, CAE, IOM, is a consultant with more than 15 years of experience working with local and national nonprofits. She works with volunteer and member-driven organizations to create revenue-generating engagement strategies.
