Eden Bidani - Creating a Killer Value Proposition

Episode 003 - Eden Bidani - Creating a Killer Value Proposition

 

Gavin Bryant

Hello and welcome to the Experimentation Masters Podcast. Today I would like to welcome Eden Bidani to the show. Eden is the founder of Green Light Copy, an agency that helps businesses to develop smarter messaging strategies to convert more customers. She's also trained in Anthropology and Sociology. In this episode, we're going to discuss "How to create a killer value proposition for your product?" Welcome to the show, Eden.

 

Eden Bidani

Thanks for having me, Gavin. It's nice to be here with you today.

 

Gavin Bryant

Okay, so I thought a good place to start with diving into value proposition territory would be firstly to understand what is a value proposition and an overview of value proposition?

 

Eden Bidani

Yeah, absolutely. So a good value prop.... So a value prop.... Obviously, we're just differentiating for a second between what a Value Prop is, or VP versus a USP or Unique Selling Proposition. Unique Selling Proposition is what makes one fundamentally different to any other business?      What is the one offer or the one outcome or the one audience that this particular business helps or the result that they're able to drive compared to any other business that could potentially do the same thing as they do. But value propositions are.... There's kind of a basic formula and the way you think about it, you can say I help [insert audience] to achieve [insert result] by means of [insert the product or service]. So it's really connecting the three different elements together connecting the audience, connecting the result or outcome that you're able to help them achieve. And then by means of which service or product that your business is providing.

 

Gavin Bryant

So in relation to important conversion factors, where does it sit in the conversion factor hierarchy? Is it King?

 

Eden Bidani

It's not King, I would say the USP is definitely King, the Unique Selling Proposition because it's not.... I mean, today, for example, if you look at the Martech landscape, there's 1000’s and 1000’s of Martech products out there, and all the Marketing niches that overlap as well. So, they all need to have a unique selling proposition what makes them different from all the other players and that's just Martech, so it could be anything for eCcommerce for fashion, clothes, food, etc. Just absolutely everything you can imagine. All the markets are very competitive. So unless you're launching in a blue ocean, we are launching in a completely new market with a completely new product, completely new positioning and everything.... Completely new strategic narrative, that's something else entirely. But having a strong... a Unique Selling Proposition is really, that's really King because that's what helps customers that, "Okay, so you can do X, this company does Y, and help them really make that final decision between different companies in the same field". 

 

Value propositions, though, are close second, because they really help the audience. Help them understand why you are good for them and how you can help them. So it aligns with not just what they might be looking for if their product were solution aware. So they might be.... They're looking for a solution or looking for something to help them with a specific problem, they know that there are products out there that can help them. A value proposition helps align with that stage of awareness. But it also helps align with people in other stages of awareness too. So if they're unaware of pain or problem aware, it just helps them grasp, so you're able to help people who struggle with problems like ABCD, and they see themselves in that value proposition and they're able to connect with the company and then there will... It will help them generate curiosity and engagement with the company.

 

Gavin Bryant

So what do we think makes a great value proposition?

 

Eden Bidani

A great value proposition is really something that's customer centric. So it really.... I would almost argue that the product or service or the how you deliver the value proposition that's something that can vary. So if we look at the core formula as we looked again, so, if you take I help insert audience achieve into you know, sort of to achieve a certain result or outcome, it should be connected to the product, but the product is all is secondary. So that's the that's the feature, though, to say we connect features and benefits. 

 

So we're really looking at making sure that the audience has a strong understanding of who you serve. So they can see themselves in the copy, you will see themselves on the page or in the content that you have published online. And then they understand what you're helping them achieve. 

 

So at the end of the day, we know that people don't look at jobs with them, people don't buy products, people don't buy services for the product or service they buy, because they're looking to drive a specific kind of transformation. So making sure to help by highlighting that you're helping them accelerate, to get to that transformation, that's what's going to help capture their attention. That service or product, the what of how you do it.... Again, that can change. So companies add new features, companies add new services, companies add new elements to their offers. But I think the real core of that is nailing it and getting nailing down the audience and nailing down the results that you're able to help them achieve.

 

 Gavin Bryant

Okay. And do you have any personal favorite Value Propositions that you often use as an example, or as an inspiration for how to articulate a value proposition clearly?

 

Eden Bidani

That's a really good question. Not something specifically off the top of my head. But there are many..... One of the best ways that I like to usually source these value propositions and so we'll get to.... I'll give a couple examples... Just a second, one of the best ways I find to get to them is by actually speaking with the customers themselves to actually having those one on one conversations or doing deep customer research, if that's review, mining, social listening and things like that as well, that can really help highlight what those core Value Propositions are. 

 

So I'll give you an example. I once worked with a hair company. A while back, they were creating an organic haircare product that was to help women regrow some of the hairs therefore they are women as they getting older than most of them start to experience some sort of hair loss because that's just one of the things that happens. But this company had a product that was helping strengthen and replenish the hair. 

 

So going through social listening, we realized that people weren't talking about having gorgeous hair back again. They were talking about, I wanted the hair of my teens back so they imagine they remember back to their teenage or their high school and their teenage and then remember that hair was thick, it was very luscious, it was very strong and healthy. And that's what the words that they were using, they were saying, "I want the hair of my teens back." 

 

So we took that. And we turned that into a Value Proposition for the hair of your 20s, in your 40s 50s and beyond. So in that centre, so in that Value Proposition, obviously, it's very clear who the audience is. But it's also very clear what the outcome is.... Because it's talking about hair, it was already very obvious to them what kind of service or product was able to help them achieve that result in.... When you're looking at how the message was positioned. With all the other deliverables and elements around it was easy for them to understand how they were doing that sort of 'what' how they do the 'what’s', their features and how they delivered that. But that was the core audience element. And that’s how they achieved result that they were able to achieve.

 

Another one was when I worked with a company that created a product for insomniacs. So they had been previously afraid to own the fact that the product was 76% effective, but it was 76% effective, it was no pills, it wasn't any treatments, it was actually something that actually helped them learn to fall asleep by themselves. So it was actually something that they wouldn't have to keep using for the rest of their life to help treat their insomnia was actually going to help them get out of their insomnia by themselves without any kind of other medical intervention. And that was something that we found was really attractive. 

 

So we actually turned that into the Value Proposition 76% effective with no pills, and no using it for the rest of your life. And so that was actually something that was very attractive to them, because that aligned with what they're struggling with right now. But it also really highlighted what kind of results that the audience is going to achieve. It had, of course, it's for insomniacs, but also highlighted that core benefit, they're not going to have to use it, so no pills, no medicines, no chemicals, but that they also wouldn't have to go on using it for the rest of their life, which was addressing a fear that the audience had.

 

Gavin Bryant

Two great examples. Thank you. So just thinking about what a Value Proposition isn't.... So what are some of those elements when we think about a Value Proposition that is not?

 

Eden Bidani

I think a Value Proposition is not.... I would say it's not a feature, it's not a product that you offer, unless the product, or the feature of one of the services or the service that you offer, is that differentiated between one company to another company. So if you're differentiating by your product, or your service or feature of the product or service or the offer that you have, then you can use that as an element of the Value Proposition. Other than that, it's not.... Again, it's not something that's a particular use for the audience. It's not.... Again, as we mentioned, services and products and offers change all the time, people add new add new features to SaaS products, they add additional products to a line of haircare products, or they change the colors of the buttons, or they upgrade the hardware on a machine or the device for some insomniacs. So that changes from time to time. 

 

So I think that's less.... So when people say we offer you.... So when they're talking about specifically just the effectiveness or just the product itself, at least it leads to a point where everyone's competing on the same types of products. So someone will come out next time with a product that's 78% effective. So come up with a product that's 100% effective. So it's going to be very difficult to differentiate or it's going to be very difficult to keep the audience's attention and help explain why you're so different. If you're just focusing on the result, or if you're just focusing on the product, it's really that combination of the audience niche, and the problem with the results that you're delivering for them as well.

 

Gavin Bryant

When I was thinking about that one, a couple of other things that I thought about as well that can sometimes be confusing for product teams that for instance, a brand, a logo, or maybe a slogan as well, for instance Nike just do it is not a VP and also mission and vision statements. So it seems like there can be sometimes some confusion around those elements and their relevance to Value Proposition.

 

Eden Bidani

Absolutely, yes. So it's definitely never a slogan. It's never a tagline. It's never an anything that you'd find in a mission statement. And it's nothing that you'd find in. It's not really something you'd find in a strategic narrative or a brand story as well, either. These are really elements that are drilling down. So usually the strategic narratives and brand stories, they're internal. And they don't usually go into the depth of describing what unpacking all the different value propositions that a business has. So you're absolutely right, it's what we find as a result of customer research.

 

Gavin Bryant

Excellent. So that's a good segue into our next question. So where do we start? How do we help people get an on ramp to developing a killer Value Proposition and that starts in research? So what are some of the tactics and strategies that you use to unearth those jobs to be done, the needs and the problems to frame up the Value Proposition?

 

Eden Bidani

Yeah, absolutely.... And my two absolute favorite methods, time to speak with customers one on one as much as possible. And then also running anonymous surveys. So I actually like to balance the two of... From my studies in anthropology, that having those... Sorry for my studies and anthropology, that interviewing people one on one, and really sitting with them, and being able to ask them lots of questions and have them open up and really unpack what was happening in their lives at the time when they first realized that they needed help solving a certain problem, what they were looking to achieve, in terms of what result they were looking to achieve, and then how they came across the product, how they discovered it, what was the process, the decision making process that they went through, you know, how much time they spent in evaluation, just really being able to sit with them and unpack all those elements of the journey of gives you a wealth of information about their problems, about their needs, about what they were the transformation that they will ultimately looking for, as a result, so not just.... Again, also, it means I can sleep better. 

 

So what does that mean? 

 

That means you can sleep better, so it means you'll be more active have more energy during the day, which means you'll feel happy, more fulfilled, etc. So it's not just unpacking the walk, it's really taking them through their entire journey, as a result of using the product. I like to balance that out as well with anonymous surveys. 

 

The reason why I do anonymous surveys, I'm going to say anonymous surveys, it's usually I'd like to try and do that as well of the larger customer base. So whereas you can get a good handful of customer interviews anywhere between 5 to 10, really solid customer interviews, you can get a hundreds of anonymous responses, and people feel much more comfortable sharing their responses when they're anonymous. So I won't ask for someone's name. 

 

Specifically, I won't ask for the details specifically, so they won't be able to connect it, the company won't be able to connect it to a specific customer specific order or a specific client. But giving them that privacy lets them open up, it gives makes them feel more comfortable to open up and actually give you a lot more information in the survey itself, so even if you have a survey that takes just five minutes by email or type form, or what however you'd like to run it, they.... You can ask for.... But when I mean anonymous, it doesn't mean you can ask general you know, what's your position? Or what's your position at work, or what's your rough age group, things like that, but they will feel very comfortable to share their actual opinion or their actual experiences say so what was happening in your life when you discovered, when you decided that you need help? So ask me what were some of the same questions that I've asked in a one on one interview, but asking them at scale. So then you're able to toggle back and look at the two types of evidence that we have qualitative evidence, it's quantifiable given the number of responses that we get. At the same time, we have really, really rich qualitative evidence and the qualitative information and voice of customer research in the one on one interview and then when you bring those two together, you can clearly see which which elements, which phrases, which value propositions that people are talking about the most or what's concerning the most. And I really find that's a good way to balance between the two. And then you bring those two pieces of information together to have really, really strong hypotheses about these which value propositions we should move forward with?

 

Gavin Bryant

I'd read a piece of research a little while... I think it was by profit well, and they'd suggested that 70% of SaaS companies speaking to their customers regularly. I think this is a broader piece across marketing as well that how difficult is it to try and understand your customer and their needs if people are so unwilling to talk to them?

 

Eden Bidani

So I think there needs to be a big shift in mindset. I'm not sure that the marketers and the companies themselves aren't willing or not sure, if it's the customers aren't willing, I think there's... I guess, I'm unsure. There's some skepticism about the results that it can drive, I think, or just how deep the insights are. And I think there's some skepticism around the time investment as well, that it takes in order to do that, because it's not there, it does take time to schedule them, it does take time to sit and talk to him, it does take time to get a transcript, it does take time to go through the information that you collect in the call and then analyze it, that does take a lot of time, and other people working on on SaaS for that, actually right now to help consolidate voice of customer research, looking forward to those tools coming out as well. But at the same time, I think, there needs to be more discussion about just how significant the impact of customer that one-on-one customer research really is. And I'll just give you an example a while back, I was working with a company, they were at a content management system, and they were looking to scale up. But some of the problems that company was having is that they were aiming for enterprise size clients. But the client about the company had a small team. 

 

So for them to try and handle these enterprise clients with all their micro customizations and things that they need. And it was very, very difficult. They were struggling to strike the balance between price and service. And the enterprise companies just wanted more and more upgrades and customizations and things that the company was struggling to deliver to them. So when I spoke with the clients one on one, a lot of them were actually feeling really frustrated because they felt that they should be getting more for.... They felt that they should be getting more even though they weren't paying very much, they felt still that they should be getting more as an Enterprise Client, they felt they should be getting more. 

 

So what we were able to do is take that information away. And we were actually able to apply that to the business so this ended up applying not to the entire business structure, not just in terms of their marketing assets that they went on to create as a result of this, it actually caused a fundamental shift in the entire business. So what they do is with the open up the freemium tier, they had a free trial before but they opened up a freemium tier. And they opened up tiered plans for solo users and for small teams, so they could start building up a small base of customers using the product regularly weren't enterprise clients, but people still wanted to use the Content Management System themselves. And they're able to still get value out of it, they could build up a pool of regular users 100,000, 2000, etc, building on from that. They would have that constant money coming in, it was totally hands off for them, and their devs. So they didn't have to do go do micro customizations and things like that for every single lower tier user. But that also meant that they have funds coming in on a regular basis every single month from these monthly plans that they have. And they can still then invest more time and more energy in handling enterprise clients because they have new stream, they have other streams of income coming into they're not completely reliant on the Enterprise anymore. And that was just as a result of conducting about six customer interviews, and it really helped their business. I mean, within the first week of making that switch over, they brought someone on for a free trial, they loved it. So for the freemium plan, they loved it so much, they actually upgraded to full pay plan by the end of the week. So, it created a really quick and dramatic change. And it was something that was just fascinating to watch. I think they underestimate the true value of what it does, because it's not it ends up not just being for marketing, conversion optimization ends up being for the product for every purchase even the actual business itself, and being able to innovate and stay in front and be on top of what customers want but then also being smart in terms of the entire strategy of the business and how that works. So they were able to actually just take that information and get to a place where they're really comfortable from all perspectives.

 

Gavin Bryant

That's amazing. One of the things that you touched on there that conducting qualitative interview, it requires preparation, it requires planning, it requires time. And there's also skill involved. And one of the things that I've experienced through my work with product teams is that it requires practice, too. So as people become more proficient at it, they'll become more confident, then the capability and the output so they can drive through qualitative research increases exponentially. So I think initially taking those steps to start doing it, it can be quite challenging and confronting, but over time, it does yield, as you've just highlighted through that example; significant and amazing outcomes for the business holistically.

 

Eden Bidani

Yeah, absolutely. So again, yes, there is a time investment. Yes, there is juggling back and forth of organizing. Yes, there is learning how to ask the right questions, learning how to break the ice, learning how to actually get through. And not asking pointed questions. So what do you think of are amazing? [crosstalk] And it's like.... What was your impression of X, Y, Z....? So making sure that you're not asking loaded or pointed questions as well, making sure that you're actually giving them room and making them feel comfortable and free to express themselves? 

 

I think one of the other things is, as we mentioned, it's easy.... It can be difficult, because we assumed we all have very high opinions of the companies that we work for. So if you're working internally at a company, obviously, like your company, otherwise it wouldn't really be there. It's very hard to make sure that you keep that bias out of the questions that you're asking, so that you're really looking to get the customer's opinion, like I said, you're not looking for NPS results, you're not looking for you're not running an NPS survey here, you're actually looking to find out, learn more about the customer get as close to the customer as possible.

 

Gavin Bryant

Yeah, less about confirmation and more about learning and understanding. 

 

Eden Bidani

Absolutely. 

 

Gavin Bryant

Okay, let's fast forward then. So, we've done our qualitative research with our customers, we've done some survey, we've got an enormous amount of insight there. How do you help people escape that messiness, to be able to establish the key themes? And you touched on formulating those foundational hypotheses? Are there any tips or tactics that you find useful for escaping that messiness at the front end?

 

Eden Bidani

Yeah, absolutely. So I think the best thing is to really strongly document all their information as much as possible. So one of the things that I would recommend is trying to get all that information into a spreadsheet. So trying to log that information. So actually split things up by.... To split up the information by sentiment or by problem or by which element of the value proposition as well, that you're looking at. So if you have full sentences, of voice of customer data, we've had full responses where it was 100% relevant, and it was on target, because sometimes your customers will actually tell you to your face what your value propositions are, which is also a great example. But at the same time, it's usually that process of actually logging it in a spreadsheet, and then you're able to sit back and have a look at the data and look at the patterns and see how many times people express a specific sentiment or how many times people express they were looking for a result fix or how many times they were describing particular feature. So you can rank them as well then in terms of their order of importance. And so then you have a very strong hypothesis going forward. It says a majority of people have said this, let's focus on that. Second, highest number of people have said this, it's is going to be the second they will focus on third, and so on and so forth.

 

 Gavin Bryant

So establishing effectively, like a hierarchy and an order of those needs. And I guess initially working towards those highest order needs to begin with, and testing and learning going forward from there. 

 

Eden Bidani

Yeah, absolutely. 

 

Gavin Bryant

So thinking about competitor research, where does that piece of the puzzle fit into your equation?

 

Eden Bidani

So it fits in alongside the customer research. In terms of competitive research, it's not something that needs to be.... I think in most cases, what you really need to do is to be doing almost like a SWOT analysis, Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats rather than actually digging into how are they say their message and how we can make better because what they're saying you don't know they might be a very well-funded company, but you have no idea how well their messaging is actually working for them, you have no idea how strong their Value Propositions really are. You can't say, well, they just raise 300 million in their series C and we think it's based on the new strategic narrative that they have, and you have no idea what was actually going on in the company, you have no idea what is actually driving their success. 

 

So it's best to have a general understanding of what they are, how they're speaking to their customers, but to not rely on that not to say, so they're doing X and we need to do better than X, we need to say, "Well, that's what they're doing what are our customers saying to us", if they said what your customers are saying and what their customers are saying, or what messages they're putting out very similar. That's why they look to probe a bit deeper into the original customer research and say, "Okay, so they're saying similar things, let's find the points of differentiation, specifically between our company and the competitor. And that's something that can usually be picked up very quickly once you actually remove all the other variables." I think a lot of companies kind of fall into the trap, where they say, Oh, this company is saying.... as I mentioned, at the beginning, they're saying that we're 78% effective.... Let's say we're 100% effective, then it becomes a race about the product doesn't become anything necessarily. It doesn't take into the element of what consumers are actually looking for.

 

Gavin Bryant

Quite often, what I can see as well is imitation, dressed up as innovation, and to your point that it's very easy to fall into that trap of effectively copying competitors to just put a stake in the marketplace. And then everyone ends up just a race to the bottom squabbling over market share. So I think that's something that can very easily happen.

 

Eden Bidani

Yeah, absolutely.

 

Gavin Bryant

So let's think about the things you mentioned about differentiation. What are the ways that you really tease and draw out those core elements of the product benefit that will serve that underlying customer need or those jobs?

 

Eden Bidani

Yeah, absolutely. So when we're looking at the unique points of differentiation, it's a matter of mapping out really what the company's strengths are compared to what other companies are claiming that their strengths. So it's really looking at well, and that's where we do come back and touch on that competitive research that we've done. So really looking at how are they targeting their audience? How are they speaking to their audience, and then...? Well, that's what they're saying, that doesn't mean that we should be copying that, we need to look deeply into what our customers say that they really like about us. So it's not just about the features, it's not just about that. So maybe it's the customer service. 

 

So there are lots of companies, for example, nowadays, it's almost a fight for customer service, because people are so sick of companies not have these amazing big companies that they know they have zero customer service. If you hear all the time people complaining.... I think a lot on LinkedIn about the service that they get from the Facebook reps or their Google reps. It's almost impossible to speak with. Sometimes a real person. Especially in Facebook, it's almost impossible to speak with a real person, if an account has been banned. It's just all automated. You can't put through appeals, there's no one there waiting to listen to all this, you can’t actually get to a real person. 

 

So a company that's going to be an app platform that emphasizes you that you have a specific account manager or you have a rep that you will actually be able to talk to them, it's not automated, it's not just going to be automated and then reviewed by a rep at some point that you actually do have someone one on one to talk with, that's going to be a very, very strong Value Proposition, that might even be the Unique Selling Proposition. It might be a platform that's essentially Facebook in every single way. But they have that element of customer service. That's a real pain point for other companies, but at the same time, it's a real bonus that people who are struggling with that element in other companies. 

 

So it's really a matter of looking deeper into what else... So it might not just be about the product and might be those other elements of the service or the offering or the messaging or the branding, anything that might be slightly different and even in cases where companies are slightly similar. Even something as much as having a very strong brand voice or a very hip will unique or cool brand voice that's directed towards a much more specific type of target audience in terms of how they connect with their brand voice, versus a more corporate or a more monotone or a more calmer brand voice, which is what some other people will gravitate to. 

 

So there's a lot of different points of differentiation, and they don't have to be huge, and they don't have to be bombastic. But as long as you can find those points of differentiation, that's going to help solidify the Value Proposition, especially the Unique Selling Proposition.

 

Gavin Bryant

So thinking about some of the challenges that companies have with Value Proposition, what are some of the common mistakes that they make in trying to form the Value Proposition.

 

Eden Bidani

So I think some of the common mistakes that these companies make is not doing enough of that customer research, I really think because they often say, Well, we want to say ABC, our product, or our service does a XYZ very, very, very well. And so we know those are our strong points, it's like it's great, but is that really what your customer is most impressed by? Is that really what makes a customer sit back and go, "Wow, I really want to learn more about this company." Because they do XYZ it. And we often find that when, especially if you've done jobs to be done interviews that it's not.... That's what I said in the beginning, when formulating a Value Prop, it's not always about the specific service or the product, that's how you're connecting, helping the specific audience and helping them achieve the result, the how, and the why, and sort of the what of that changes. And it can be fluid, again, depending on the offers and the features. But a lot of people get fixated on the 'what', 'when' or 'how' they deliver it. And that's not always, and that is not often the point.

 

So for example, a lot of companies say that.... For an eCommerce company, they'll say, Well, we ship in 24 hours, or we have the 30-day money back guarantee pretty much. Most companies these days, who offered 24-hour shipping, and most of them will offer a 30 day or 60 day or 90-day money back guarantee. So those are Value Propositions but I challenge them to see if they can find something that's even a bit stronger.

 

Gavin Bryant

I like the example you gave previously about the Insomniac, effectively, that they're Clark Kent, in their world right now. And that way insomnia is very challenging. And then as many knock-on effects in life, but then once they utilize the product, there's this Superman moment where they completely transform, and they have more energy, more vibrancy, their quality of life is far superior. So it's really thinking about their current state and future state and what's the bridge to be able to get them to cross effectively, to unlock all those benefits of that new reality of being Superman. 

 

Eden Bidani

Yeah, absolutely. And then, as we've discussed, we can see there's lots of different layers to it as well. So there's a layer of how you deliver it. It's a layer of the branding voice and internal branding or the entire kind of marketing approach. There's multiple different layers; customers’ fears, customers’ expectations, all these things like that. And so there's lots of different layers that going into designing that. But as you mentioned, it is... It's about aligning with what they're looking.... What that transformation they're looking to achieve and making sure that's communicated in some way. 

 

So, it doesn't necessarily mean that on a website for drills, you're going to say, you know, we're ready to renovate your kitchen or make your kitchen feel warm and loving and friendly. Because that's not necessarily what people are going to be thinking about. But you can communicate that through the images or through other things that you do as well. 

 

I think I'm just relating that back to the original story. It's just to be done. It's like people don't buy it.... People don't buy a drill; they buy a quarter inch hole but they don't buy a quarter inch hole in the wall they actually buy. They're buying the approval for family friends that come home and come and see the new painting that you've hung up on the wall and admire. So that's really what the drill that you're looking to buy is actually doing for you. So it's not a thing. It's not the painting, it's is not the wall, it's actually getting that approval and that having those warm and fuzzy moments with your family or with friends. 

 

So that's not something necessarily that you're going to call on a website if you're selling drills. But that is something that you can reference in imagery that you use the brand voice as well, that you use to describe it, you will be talking, obviously, about drills, but you'll be talking about what you can do with the drills, and to give them ideas about how you're able to align with what their expectations or what they're looking to achieve. So sometimes you can't always connect it to the end transformation, especially if it's come in a product, that's it's a high commodity. So like a drill, like a plant, or anything else or a set of glasses from IKEA. But at the same time, there are ways that you can continue to communicate, there's other elements of the Value Proposition, to help bring it all together and to make sure that you are communicating that end result of the transformation.

 

Gavin Bryant

Yeah, with jobs to be done to those three core elements; there's the functional, the drill, then there's the social and the emotional. So to your point that you can use other references and elements to really tap into the social and emotional elements of the jobs to be done to help customers cross that bridge. 

 

Okay, so just recapping then.... So number one piece of advice to people, if they're formulating the Value Proposition is do not neglect talking to your customers at the front of the process, or else it's going to leave a lot of quality insight on the table. And in many respects, we can be flying blind in prepping that value proposition.

 

Eden Bidani

Yeah, absolutely. I think that's because not...... And then it helps get you clarity and helps the company as well align more with what customers want from them and what their customers are looking for, as it really helps them as well. Just getting in the right mindset and helps them rally around what they really should be focusing on. I think having that talking to customers up front and as often as possible, even every quarter should be ideally during a set of customer, have some time set aside to do a couple of customer interviews so that data is kept fresh as the company grows and as things change in the world. But having that information had being able to speak with customers is really, it's very powerful. And helping them make sure that the value propositions that you're communicating are what's attractive to customers, and what's going to actually help them come through the door. And it's not at that top down approach. Well, we do ABC...... So that's what we'll tell our customers.

 

Gavin Bryant

That's a good way of thinking about building customer discovery, customer interviewing as a weekly habit, rather than something that's done ad hoc. It's just a continuous learning process to something that's part of our core job and our role that we're performing regularly to be able to stay on top of those trends, those themes and those insights and needs all the time. 

 

Gavin Bryant

One of the things that I've done a lot of through my work is Value Proposition testing, and a couple of ways that I've found really effective for that are using email campaigns to small subsets and cohorts of customers, and also using Google Adwords campaigns, testing multiple different value drivers to be able to, again, work towards understanding what those more favorable hierarchy of needs are. Do you have any other strategies or approaches that you've seen that might be helpful to listeners?

 

Eden Bidani

Yeah, absolutely. So even doing user testing.... So very quick, user test, 5 second tests, even things like that, where we have just a hero section mocked up with the headline and the sub heading, or the core Value Props. That's really good to have a gauge on how well or how clear the Value Proposition is. And not just what Value Proposition you're speaking to them, but how clearly it is communicated. So how easily are people able to understand what you're communicating or what actually sticks most in their mind. So as you mentioned, it's not just what inspires people to take action, but it's also what people remember the most or what people take away are able to recall after seeing a hero section for a few seconds and something like that.

 

Gavin Bryant

Good point. Okay, just closing up with three quick questions now. So a signature question, an experiment that you have seen or performed, that completely reframed your perspective on a challenge or a problem you're trying to solve?

 

Eden Bidani

That's an interesting one. I think there was one done not too long ago.... Yeah done about a year ago with a mentee that I was working with and he.... They were testing.... This is not specifically related to Value Proposition, but they were testing a paywall or sign-up wall, they had an app that functioned a little bit like core that so they had a website that functioned a bit like Quora but then wanted to drive people to to open an account and actually download the app as well. By doing so if they would download the app, and they would still keep using it would still be free. But it would let give them access to more questions and answers in sort of like the core format. But what they were doing so the paywall that they had, so it's like when you when you go to a new site, and there's a paywall, that comes up, and you can't scroll down below a certain amount of the page. So you had that come up, and they had the copy that was pushing them to open an account and download the app so they could actually get keep moving forward. But the copy that they were testing was really talking about all the benefits of why they should do it. So it was actually really calling out the value... Actually it is a value prop test, because they're actually talking about the value props they were talking about. It's great. It's easy that we're seeing hundreds and 1000s of people use this. And people are seeing results every day. So things like that. So an invitation to sign up now. So they were doing what I would say, "Best practices and try to actually follow by highlighting what the value propositions are, what the benefits were of signing up." But we realized that said, Paywall is actually really interrupting them with what they want to do. If you think when the user comes to say they want to read a news article, there's a paywall there, it's one of the most frustrating things, for people to get around. At some point, they either get super frustrated and never come back to the site again, or they actually end up paying, or they end up signing up and opening an account they just because they actually really want to keep doing what they wanted to do. 

 

So the paywall that sort of the sign up war that they had, it was generating a lot of negative user feedback, unfortunately, because people were very frustrated by the fact that this wall and they couldn't get past it. So what we found was we said, well, because it's something that's an experience that's extremely frustrating for people, how about we frame it in a slightly different way out, but we frame it as something that, well, this is the next step that you need to do. So you can actually just unlock more answers. 

 

So you can stick this is these are results, you've got these results, you've got these answers to questions and answers. If you actually sign up an open account, you're going to unlock more, it's free, it takes less than a minute to do it. But you can basically get back to doing what you were already doing. It just takes a minute. We saw then they have a quite a significant amount of traffic. So they got statistical significance very quickly. And where they basically doubled the number of signups with zero negative user feedback. So we actually saw that instead of talking about the Value Propositions and the Y, because this was happening at a high touch moment where they were actually in the middle of doing something that paywall was disrupting their activity, no one cared about the value props. 

 

Now, I really wanted to know why they should sign up. They wanted to know how quick and easy it was to get through the paywall, or what they had to do to get through the payroll or how.... What the risk was of opening an account. They really wanted to just know, can I get through this and get back to what I was doing as soon as possible. And so that was something that really opened our eyes. And so we understand that people were just not interested in learning about the benefits. That was something that we could send them an email later, they were just really interested in getting back to doing what they were doing.

 

Gavin Bryant

Yeah, that's a pattern that I've also read about previously that.... Yeah, if you want to get back to accessing utilizing the value that you were before we interrupted you then just do this thing. Right example. 

 

Any resources that you'd like to recommend to listeners that you've found really helpful and beneficial?

 

Eden Bidani

Absolutely. So if anyone is looking particularly to brush up on their copywriting skills with regards to especially conversion rate optimisation and experimentation that definitely Copy Hackers is probably the place that I would recommend that they go they have a wonderful free resources. The paid resources are of course, are also very, very good and definitely worth the investment. And I don't get anything for saying, by the way, I just think that they're fantastic. But they have a strong focus on a be testing and experimentation. So that's built into the copywriting process. So it gives so for people who are in conversion rate observation and experimentation or looking to strengthen their skills in that area. That's where I'd recommend they go to.

 

Gavin Bryant

Excellent. Good suggestion. And final one, if people want to get touch, where can they reach you?

 

Eden Bidani

Yeah, LinkedIn is the best place.

 

Gavin Bryant

Okay, fantastic. So thank you so much for chatting with us today, Eden. I really appreciate your time. 

 

Eden Bidani

Thanks for having me. It was great speaking with you, too.