MarketingSherpa Blog

At MarketingSherpa, we bring you the ideas and inspiration to help you come up with your next great marketing idea. We do that through our marketing case study articles, our data charts, and our How I Made It In Marketing podcast discussions.

The idea is – you are the hero of your own journey, sometimes you just need a little inspirational grit to build your next great pearl of wisdom around.

That’s usually great. Marketers are ideas people always looking for that next game-changing idea.

Of course, sometimes you just want something done for you. So today, we’re bringing you a bunch of tools built on MeclabsAI (MarketingSherpa’s parent company) leveraging not only MarketingSherpa’s 25 years of business journalism, but also Meclabs Institute’s patented marketing methodology.

No need to think. Just click and get something done for you. And MeclabsAI is free to try, you don’t even have to register to get started (although you will get additional free interactions if you do register).

Here’s a quick look at some of the 14 apps in MeclabsAI, along with a small piece of the outputs they gave me when I tried to get help on MarketingSherpa’s homepage.

Value Prop Analyzer

MeclabsAI CEO Flint McGlaughlin has taught extensively on value proposition, and he has built that methodology into this app.

Just give this app your homepage URL, paste in the contents of your homepage, or share the core of your value proposition and it will apply the Value Proposition Ranking Criterion, empowering you to identify and leverage your brand’s unique strengths while pinpointing areas ripe for optimization.

For example, when I paste in the MarketingSherpa homepage URL, it gives me…

Let’s delve into the Value Prop Ranking Criterion to assess your value proposition’s power across four dimensions: Appeal, Exclusivity, Clarity, and Credibility.

Your value proposition ranks as High on our scale, indicating a significant strength in attracting and retaining your target market’s interest. It suggests your offering is well-received yet harbors potential for enriched distinctiveness and trust-building efforts.

Try Value Prop Analyzer

Competitor Analyzer

“Know thy self, know they enemy,” Sun Tzu said. Competitor Analyzer can help outsmart the competition.

Just give it the URL for your website and a competitor and let the insights roll in.

First, I put in the URLs for MarketingSherpa and The Wall Street Journal, but the Competitor Analyzer called me out on that – “The websites you’ve provided are not typically direct competitors, as one specializes in marketing research and insights (MarketingSherpa), and the other is a comprehensive news outlet with a strong emphasis on financial and business news (The Wall Street Journal).”

So then I tried MarketingSherpa and MarketingProfs, and here is a part of the response…

Website Components Comparison

Try Competitor Analyzer

Chat Transcript Analyzer

Zoom sessions are harder to present on than in-person speaking, at least for me. I have a harder time connecting with the audience.

So I love the chat feature because I can get a little feedback, and tweak what I’m talking about to better serve the audience.

That’s a little easier to do when there is another speaker on the Zoom as well. Then I can read through the chat while that person is speaking.

If it’s only me, it’s hard to walk and chew gum, and often the best I can do is read the chat after. But it can be a lot of info to take in.

Chat Transcript Analyzer does a nice job summarizing it all for me. For example, I spoke on the AI Guild main session about process-level value prop and AI last week, pasted in the chat transcript, and here is part of the analysis I got…

Mathematical Analysis:

I’m glad to see that humor was used effectively. I love stand-up comedy. And I always love to infuse a bit of that ethos every time I speak.

Try Chat Transcript Analyzer

Webpages Analyzer

Just past in your URL. Here is part of the analysis I got for MarketingSherpa…

Try Webpages Analyzer

CTA (Call to Action) Builder

This app aligns with Micro Yes #7 (Yes, I will trade) and Micro Yes #8 (Yes, I will finish) in Meclabs Micro Yes Architecture approach to creating effective marketing.

When I pasted in MarketingSherpa’s homepage URL (and you can use landing pages as well), I like this point from MeclabsAI…

Value:

1. • Emphasizing immediate access to valuable resources, a CTA might read, “Gain Free Instant Access to Exclusive Marketing Insights,” showcasing the value exchange—action for knowledge.

Nowhere on the homepage do we say that MarketingSherpa’s case study articles, data charts, and interviews are free (they didn’t use to be).

Try CTA Builder

Headline Builder

This app aligns with Micro Yes #1 (Yes, I will pay attention) and Micro Yes #2 (Yes, I will engage deeper).

When I pasted in the homepage URL, part of what it gave me was a breakdown of the nouns, verbs, and adjectives I was using, which is a great start to playing with different headline options.

Nouns, Verbs, and Adjectives Analysis

Try Headline Builder

Appeal Builder

This app ties into Micro Yes #5 (Yes, I want this now).

If you want a new message crafted, provide it details about your product or service.

If you want an existing message analyzed, share the current message along with specific objectives or concerns.

Here’s a sentence I liked from what Appeal Builder gave me, “Unearth practical case studies, research, and training designed not just to inform but to transform.”

Try Appeal Builder

Conversion Index Analyzer

Just paste in a landing page or homepage URL, and this app will use Meclabs well-known Conversion Sequence Heuristic – C=4m+3v+2(i-f)-2a – to provide an analysis.

For example, when I pasted in the MarketingSherpa homepage URL, I like how it summed up what we’re trying to do to tap into the motivation of our visitors – “The homepage of MarketingSherpa offers a broad scope of resources, including articles, videos, podcasts, and free resources, that align well with the intrinsic motivations of marketers seeking research-based insights and actionable marketing strategies.”

Conversion Index Analyzer

Article Analyzer

When I posted in the URL for a recent MarketingSherpa article – Strategic Foundations of Niche Launch Success: B2C marketing examples with results – It has this nice summary in the FAQ…

1. What is the main advice for competing against big brands in a niche market?
   • The main advice is to focus on smaller, overlooked opportunities where larger brands might not be active, leveraging SEO, and using AI for content creation to establish a presence in niche markets.

Article Analyzer

Video Transcripts Analyzer

When I pasted in the transcript from the most recent episode of How I Made It In Marketing – an interview with Nicole Sumner, Brand Director, Ollie – it produced an FAQ that included this key hard-won lesson from Sumner’s career journey:

Q: What was a key takeaway from Nicole’s missed job opportunity?
A: The key takeaway is the importance of explicitly communicating your career ambitions and interests to be considered for opportunities.

So even though this app is called Video Transcripts Analyzer, it works with audio-only content like our podcast as well.

Video Transcripts Analyzer

Related resources

Customer-First Objectives: Discover a 3-part formula for focusing your webpage message

Website Wireframes: 8 psychological elements that impact marketing conversion rates

Website Wireframes: See real webpages optimized for marketing conversion

Every Wednesday, we hold a free Marketing LiveClass as part of ChatGPT, CRO and AI: 40 Days to build a MECLABS SuperFunnel. Everyone is welcome to join and learn, as we build marketing funnels with members of the MECLABS SuperFunnel Research Cohort.

In the LiveClass, marketers and entrepreneurs can ask questions in the webinar chat. And we answer them right here…

What does it mean that the control peaked early and did not recover?

This question is in regard to A/B test interpretation and validity. In other words, what do the results of our marketing tests mean? And can we trust them?

I’m going to get to the actual question in a bit, but first let me address the chart that was presented in the LiveClass that sparked this question.

I think the question was in relation to this chart…

This chart does not show conversion rates over time. It doesn’t mean that the control got a lot of conversions, and then the treatment got some (and to be clear, it is actually the treatment – labeled Variation #1 – that is showing the peak on the left).

The chart shows the Bayesian probability density of the conversion rates. For this experiment, the treatment had a conversion rate of 0.24% and the control had a conversion rate of 1.01%. Without getting too deep, when you run an A/B test, you are getting a sample of the whole population.

Think of a drug trial as an example. You can’t give the drug to every possible person who would ever take it, that is the whole population. So you use a sample, and extrapolate the results. The same is true with a marketing experiment.

And as for that sample, you want a large enough sample size that you can confidently make decisions based on it (if getting a large enough sample size is a challenge for you, this might help – A/B Testing: Working with a very small sample size is difficult, but not impossible).

Looking at this chart, you could have a high degree of confidence that the control is better than the treatment because there is no overlap. And indeed, the tool gave the control a 100% probability of being a winner (probably rounding up). The treatment has a big peak around 0.24, and the true conversion rate is probably pretty close to that. The control’s true conversion rate is probably around 1, but the distribution is flatter so it may be between 0.8 to 1.2.

Those results are quite extreme though. Here is a more common distribution…

The probability of the treatment being a winner in this case is 90%. As you can see, most of the red indicates a likely higher true conversion rate than most of the blue, but there is some overlap (we’ll call that purple).

However, let’s get to the actual question at hand, because it is a good one – what does it mean if the control peaked earlier than the treatment and did not recover? That would probably look something like this…

As Egon Spengler said in “Ghostbusters,” “Don’t. Cross. The streams. It would be bad.”

When we see results cross like this, it should raise a red flag. Is there a validity threat?

Ideally, we would want our results to look like this…

This would give us more confidence that the Treatment is actually better than the results.

Which, again, brings us back to our question – but why did this happen? Here are a few validity threats you could check for:

• History Effects: Did anything happen due to the passage of time to influence results? Perhaps you launched on the weekend giving the control a huge boost, but the treatment performed better during the week.
• Instrumentation Effects: Did anything happen to the technical environment or the measurement tools that could significantly influence results? Perhaps that boost to the control was due to bot traffic.
• Selection Effects: Did anything happen to the testing environment that may have caused the nature of the incoming traffic to be different? For example, maybe someone else in the organization sent out an email promo on that day with an incentive that is only on the control landing page.

Now that we’ve discussed how to test, let’s get into a question that addresses what to test…

What does uncouple the value from the mechanism mean exactly? I’m not sure I understand.

Uncoupling the value from the mechanism means separating the value that a product or service provides from how it is delivered or produced. By focusing on the value that the product or service provides to the customer – and not on how it is delivered – we may discover new ways to deliver value to our ideal customer.

For example, let’s say you write a book filled with exercises that relieve knee pain. Is the value that is most compelling to potential customers the book itself, or the information in it? While some of your potential customers might enjoy a book, perhaps others would rather receive the information in a video. Or a podcast. Or through an AI tool or an app. You may have different groups of potential customers who would like to receive the value in different ways, so multiple formats might attract more business.

Now, sometimes the mechanism is in fact part of the value itself. For example, I love reading print newspapers and magazines. I’m on a digital device all… day… long. So reading a print newspaper with my morning coffee, or sitting out on a dock overlooking the river with a print magazine, these are customer experiences I crave. I could get the same information on a digital device, but that mechanism dilutes the value for me.

This topic is closely related to value decoupling. Is the way you have packaged and are selling the value your company delivers the most appealing way to do so?

An example I always liked was an insurance company that sells insurance for products only when you want it. The traditional option is – I buy a smartphone, and then I buy insurance for that smartphone with a monthly payment for as long as I own it. Instead, this insurance company decoupled that value into single days of insurance, and let you buy insurance just when you want it – just the two weeks you are going out of the country and worried about losing your phone. You can read more about that topic in – Mobile Marketing and Value Decoupling: Interview with Harvard professor about eight years of research into business disruption.

Uncoupling the value from the delivery mechanism, and scouring your company for value decoupling ideas, should produce some interesting marketing experiments. And I’ll end this question with a quote on this topic from a recent interview – “Be passionate about the challenge you are trying to solve and not stubborn about the product solution.”

That quote is from Andrew Beranbom. His episode of the How I Made It In Marketing podcast will be released Tuesday, May 16^th.

CFO?

CFO stands for customer-first objective. You will be far more effective at value decoupling if you start with a customer-first objective. Learn more in Customer-First Objectives: Discover a 3-part formula for focusing your webpage message.

So the CFO should be focused on a funnel and specific offer in the funnel, not the overall business, correct?

While you should have a customer-first objective for everything you do, for ChatGPT, CRO and AI: 40 Days to build a MECLABS SuperFunnel our focus is on creating CFOs for a funnel.

“That old conversion heuristic” There isn’t a new one, right?

When Flint said that in the LiveClass, he was referring to the patented MECLABS Conversion Sequence Heuristic. While there is not a new heuristic, there are many new thought tools as part of the MECLABS SuperFunnel Research Cohort.

How do we get feedback on our first assignment?

Members of the MECLABS SuperFunnel Research Cohort get feedback as they build their funnels in the Marketing LiveClasses. Cohort members can also get feedback in your small group meetings, in the LinkedIn Group, and in occasional one-on-one coaching. And of course, you can always email us.

You are welcome to join us on Wednesdays at 4 p.m. EDT to watch and learn from a Marketing LiveClass. You can RSVP now by clicking this link. Here are excerpts from recent LiveClasses to give you an idea of what you can experience…

We are trying way too hard to give away something for free

How do you think AI’s capability will change the thrust of our work as a marketer?

In this blog post, I answer questions cohort members put in the chat of recent MEC200 and MEC300 LiveClasses for ChatGPT, CRO and AI: 40 Days to build a MECLABS SuperFunnel (feel free to register at that link to join us for an upcoming MECLABS LiveClass).

Maybe this can be answered in an email later? I am curious—in an industry like insurance where the commission structures are regulated, all agents are essentially selling the same products so exclusivity is very low, I wonder if there are any insights in how to differentiate an agent and provide exceptional value to drive customers.

You have put your finger on the essential value proposition challenge. I know it feels like this is uniquely an insurance problem, but many industries face this same challenge.

Every car can get me from point A to point B, yet Tesla has a unique value proposition. I could create this blog post on any computer, yet Apple has a unique value proposition. Every health care provider has to comply with government regulations and mandates from third-party payers in the insurance industry, yet Mayo Clinic has a unique value proposition.

All that said, I do agree, the situation you explained is harder than most. So to get your creative juices flowing, here are a few ideas for differentiating an insurance agent:

• Knowledge of the local market, or a niche in the local market – For example, I live in Jacksonville. It is a significantly lower risk area of Florida (for hurricanes) than almost all of the rest of Florida. But national insurance companies don’t treat it that way. If an agent specialized in low-risk areas of Florida, that might draw my attention.
• Specific demographics – My daughter is a college student, and I pay her auto insurance. If an agent specialized in auto insurance for adult dependents, that might stick out to me.
• Concierge service – This has started to take off in medicine, where people are sick of waiting for primary care doctors. If an agent provided proactive review of my policy every year, and its office was available 24/7 to file a claim on my behalf, that my catch my attention.
• The fiduciary agent – This is taking off in the financial planning space, where customers are increasingly skeptical of financial advisors that make commissions. How can they ensure these planners are putting their own interests first, and not just going with the biggest commission? Enter fee-only financial planners who put the customer first.
• Quality play – What if the agent didn’t write insurance from every possible company, but only companies recommended by Consumer Reports?
• Additional services – What other insurance adjacent services could they provide? Manage home renovation projects? Manage auto maintenance? All-in-one funeral services including wills and making sure burial wishes are respected for life insurance clients?

Now, you understand your industry better than I do. Some of these ideas might not be practical, or even feasible at all. But using lateral thinking, maybe they’ll spark a new idea in you. If you’re not familiar with the practice, Edward de Bono explains it as, “Lateral thinking…is the process of using information to bring about creativity and insight restructuring.”

And if you really want to get your creative juices flowing, read about Trōv’s disruptive idea to use micro-duration policies in this article – Mobile Marketing and Value Decoupling: Interview with Harvard professor about eight years of research into business disruption.

The company ultimately pivoted from B2C to B2B, so the model described in this article didn’t work out, but that is often the case for early adopters. And the company’s creativity may give you an idea for creating differentiated that you ultimately perfect with your insurance clients.

Also, may the marketing professional become a business consultant in helping an agent to create new value for their business offerings in order to create more value for their customers? Thank you!

Exactly. You’re hitting the nail on the head for why mastering a value proposition methodology can be so crucial.

I’ve had the opportunity to interview many marketing leaders for the How I Made It In Marketing podcast. And these successful leaders do not stay siloed in the marketing department, they don’t only focus on media buys and SEO tactics and automation settings.

Time and time again I’ve heard them tell me how they use the understanding of the customer, along with their marketing acumen, to help the business better serve the customer.

For example…

“…and your business will go out of business, or your client’s business in the case where we were, if you don’t really understand – what does a customer need, why will they choose you, and what can you do to be different from the competition…” This quote is from Radhika Duggal, Chief Marketing Officer, Super, is was a lesson she shared from a mentor in Consumer Financial Services Marketing: Your customer is your most important stakeholder (podcast episode #39).

While consumer financial services isn’t exactly insurance, it has a lot of similarities, and that episode might give you some ideas as well.

What is margin ratio?

It compares the margin of a company to its revenue. A 10% ratio means that 10 cents of every dollar of revenue is over and above the costs of producing the product. There are different ways to calculate this metric – for example, you could calculate gross profit margin, operating profit margin, or net profit margin. But I’ll leave that to an accounting publication to explain.

The reason that I included this question from the chat in here, is because margin ratio is a golden metric to tell you how effective your value proposition is.

Anyone can sell a bunch of products. Just throw enough media buys at it, enough incentives, enough discounting. In fact, the margin ratio can even be negative. You’ll still be selling products, you’ll just be losing money doing it.

A sustainably successful business with a forceful value proposition has a high margin ratio.

Let’s take Apple again, as an example. An Apple device isn’t simply priced a little more than its component parts. It is priced way higher. Because it has a strong value proposition, and therefore pricing power in the marketplace.

On the flip side, a commodity computing device can only eke out a small margin over and above the price of its parts, because there are many similar offerings in the marketplace with no clear differentiation.

Incidentally enough, this is another important reason for marketers to get involved in business and product decisions. A short-sighted business leader could choose to keep making the product just a little worse to save money – thus helping short-term margins but ultimately hurting the company’s value proposition. I discuss that challenge in How Companies Fail, and Why the Customer Always Wins in the End.

Is it fair to say that you only want to test one hypothesis at a time, whether it has one or 1,000 elements doesn’t matter, provided they all contribute to the same hypothesis?

With this question, let’s move on to how to discover the most effective value proposition – marketing experimentation.

First, some quick background. You would start with a framework to assess an existing or new value proposition. From going through this exercise, your team may have multiple questions. For example, which feature is most appealing? Which expression of that feature is most effective? For each of these, you would create a hypothesis.

Now to answer the question – each test should have a single hypothesis. You can change multiple elements on the landing page or ad IF (and only if) they all help you test the same hypothesis.

So if you were testing whether Feature A or Feature B was most appealing on a landing page, you could have a headline and CTA focused on Feature A, and a headline and CTA focused on Feature B. However, you could not have a headline focused on Feature A and a blue CTA button, and then a headline focused on Feature B and an orange button. This is introducing an extraneous variable that would make it harder to interpret the test. Did Treatment #1 win because of the headline about Feature A, or because of the button color?

Incidentally enough, you could have multiple treatments you are testing in the same experiment under the same hypothesis. So you could have four landing pages you test at the same time – one focused on Feature A, and others focused on Feature B, Feature C, and Feature D. However, you must make sure you have a large enough sample size that your results reach statistical validity.

I like this hypothesis but not sure if you should test both an offer and an audience in the same test?

A good hypothesis will help you home in on a key question you are trying to answer about your customer. This is important because you want to be able to clearly understand the results. If the control wins, it means X. If the treatment wins, it means Y.

So putting multiple unrelated variables into a single hypothesis is not a good idea because it will make it harder for you to interpret your test results.

That said, remember, no hypothesis exists in a vacuum. You should run a series of experiments powered by hypotheses that inform each other. So you’re on to something here.

For example, if you discover that, let’s say, Offer A gets a higher conversion rate than Offer B, it may be because Offer A is more powerful for all of your customers.

Or it may mean that you have more than one type of customer set, and there are more that would act on Offer A in that customer set, but Offer B still has large enough group of customer that find it more appealing to represent a profitable segment.

Looking at secondary KPIs can help you discover these groupings. Maybe a certain age group or geographic grouping or device type was more likely to go with Offer B…even though Offer A clearly got more conversions overall.

Again, this is an opportunity to do follow-up testing – focused follow-up testing – to help you answer the new questions that the previous experiment brought up.

I discuss learning the motivations of different customer segments, along with other marketing experimentation topics, in Marketing Experiment: Learn from our split testing mistakes.

Wow! My son is a computer science major. Waste of time?

This question was in response to some artificial intelligence capabilities we previewed in the LiveClass.

I included this question because I’m sure many marketers have the same question.

I don’t have any better crystal ball than you do, of course, but I’m happy to share my hunch – the tools always change, but the task remains the same.

Our task as marketers has always been to help a customer perceive the value of the products and services a company offers. If that is your focus, I believe you will always have a career. The tools will always need that human intervention, that human guidance, that human collaboration. The tools will always need the human to set the direction, even if the tool is actually sailing the ship.

Now, if your role as a marketer has simply been to try to fool algorithms or batch and blast emails to purchased lists…well, the AI may be able to replace you.

I’ll give you an example. I interviewed Melissa-Ann Chan, Head of Marketing, Arta Finance, in Fintech Marketing: Creativity and technology is a killer combo (podcast episode #50). Artificial intelligence and machine learning are key to Arta Finance’s offering focused on the future of personal finance.

But even listening to Chan talk about it, that is only part of the company’s go-to-market strategy. She described how collaboration was key. The ex-Googlers built the company with three core groups of people with different expertise:

• consumer product and growth expertise
• experience running quant hedge funds deep, private equity, and options trading
• AI and ML researchers

Yes AI plays an important role, but without the people who know how to build products and grow brands (marketers), and the people who know how to make the things you’re selling (subject matter experts), my experience tells me that AI on its own will just be creating another commodity. A bunch of AIs spinning out undifferentiated marketing and products, competing on speed to market, losing market share quickly, trying to find ephemeral advantages in markets for traffic arbitrage, and ultimately, burning through capital.

I’m sure there are companies that will survive on those technical abilities, just like there are marketers today who can find momentary advantages in ad buying and algorithm changes and combine that with drop shipping or affiliate networks to turn a profit in an ever-changing world.

But that is an impossible way to build a sustainable competitive advantage. And a roller coaster of a career.

So the marketer’s role comes right back around to the topic we discussed in the beginning of this article – building powerful, unique value propositions to win high-margin business by serving a customer with differentiated value.

How does this not become plagiarism?

This is the dirty little secret of artificial intelligence – it’s not too different from humans in that it is only as smart as its training.

For example, a few years ago, AI would flag up any picture with a ruler in it as skin cancer. “We noted that the algorithm appeared more likely to interpret images with rulers as malignant. Why? In our dataset, images with rulers were more likely to be malignant; thus the algorithm inadvertently ‘learned’ that rulers are malignant. These biases in AI models are inherent unless specific attention is paid to address inputs with variability,” Akhila Narla, Brett Kuprel, Kavita Sarin, Roberto Novoa, and Justin Ko explained in Automated Classification of Skin Lesions: From Pixels to Practice from the Journal of Investigative Dermatology.

And to the questioner’s point, the current crop of generative AI tools that is getting so much press lately doesn’t inherently have knowledge. It is getting trained on the content others have created.

“We have valuable content that’s being used constantly to generate revenue for others off the backs of investments that we make, that requires real human work, and that has to be compensated,” Danielle Coffey, executive vice president and general counsel, News Media Alliance, said in The Wall Street Journal article Publishers Seek Pay For Help With AI by Keach Hagey, Alexandra Bruell, Tom Dotan, and Miles Kruppa.

Which brings us back to the need for marketers in an AI-driven world, and what we can learn from them. Artificial intelligence can copy better than you. So to truly succeed in your marketing career, don’t copy. Use your unique experience, honed skillsets, and a repeatable methodology to create truly original ideas.

Not an easy task I know, but to help you create those original ideas that you can use AI to help you execute, we meet every Wednesday for the ChatGPT, CRO and AI: 40 Days to build a MECLABS SuperFunnel LiveClass, as part of the MECLABS SuperFunnel Research Cohort (and you are welcome to join us, just RSVP at that link).

Here’s how Toby Wilson described the Cohort –”All of that cross-pollination of skill sets and ideas and everything like that creates a synergy that ends up being more than what any individual could bring…” (hear Toby for yourself in this 59-second video).

And here is a quick 56-second excerpt from a recent LiveClass to give you an idea of what you can learn by attending.

In the MEC200 LiveClass and MEC300 LiveClass for ChatGPT, CRO and AI: 40 Days to build a MECLABS SuperFunnel, we got a few questions in the chat. I’ll use this blog post to provide some resources to help you with those questions as you prepare for our next LiveClass on Wednesday

What is Customer Theory?

Is there an example of a fairly advanced custom theory profile? E.g., what’s the document or artifact and format, after multiple tests. Is Customer Theory an actual doc?

The Customer Theory is an understanding of the customer that enables us to more accurately predict the total response to a given offer. It is your organization’s collected wisdom about the customer. Hopefully this comes from a cycle of experiments. But at first, it may come from data analysis. Or even gut wisdom.

Here’s a document you can use to begin building your Customer Theory, adding to it over time as you test – Introductory Guide to Developing Your Customer Theory [an interactive worksheet].

This article provides an example – Customer Theory: How to leverage empathy in your marketing (with free tool).

And this document can help you organize all the discoveries from your marketing experiments to discover patterns that will inform your customer theory – Get Your Free Test Discovery Tool to Help Log all the Results and Discoveries from Your Company’s Marketing Tests

The Four Levels of Value Propositions for Landing Pages

Do all landing pages have all four value propositions?

The four levels of value proposition are:

• Primary value proposition (overall company)
• Prospect-level value proposition
• Product-level value proposition
• Process-level value proposition

A successful landing page will tend to focus on one of these levels of value proposition, but have other elements as well. It’s like the 80/20 rule – 80% of your landing page will focus on one level, and the other 20% will support it with the other three levels.

For example, if you created a landing page for the Tesla Model S, the main thrust of your landing page would be a product-level value proposition. But you would also work in Tesla’s primary value proposition (perhaps showing Tesla’s charging network), prospect-level value propositions (perhaps showing why it is a good fit for a prospect focused on being environmentally conscious as well as a prospect interested in a sports car), and a process-level value proposition (perhaps there would be CTAs to sign up for a test drive, explaining the value of that process).

Keep in mind, that the landing page is also a great place to test your value proposition and further inform your Customer Theory (although not the only place, as we discuss in Value Proposition Testing: 64% of marketers say landing pages are most effective.

Customer-First Objectives (CFO) Framework

I missed the first 30 minutes, what are CFO again?

The CFO is your Customer-First Objective, a three-part framework for focusing your webpage and marketing messaging developed by Flint McGlaughlin, the founder of MECLABS Institute. This framework is an attempt to bring discipline to marketer’s approaches to their landing pages and messaging BEFORE they start to create their funnels, to make sure their funnels put the customer first.

Many marketing leaders intuitively understand the importance of putting the customer first. It is a common topic on the How I Made It In Marketing podcast. For example, when I interviewed Michelle Huff, CMO, UserTesting, she had discussed many stories with lessons that focused on understanding other people – like “Utilize customer empathy when trying to involve the customer in marketing efforts” and “Marketers should get involved with the sales team to learn from them” (you can hear our discussion in Product Management & Marketing: Surround yourself with the right people (podcast episode #38).

The MECLABS CFO framework helps discipline and codify that focus on understanding our customers, and uses it to inform all funnel creation activities.

Do you have any examples of a CFO that I can reference or do you recommend going back and reviewing the FastClasses?

You can check out FastClass #5 – Customer-First Objectives: Discover a 3-part formula for focusing your webpage message – and FastClass #6 – Customer-First Objectives Application Session: See real webpages optimized for marketing conversion.

Also, if you download the PDF copy (no form fill required) of The Way of the Marketer (in Chaos): A Path through the complexities of the AI Revolution, the cover has a CFO created by Flint.

Join Us for the Next LiveClass

You can RSVP here to join us for a Wednesday LiveClass. Here’s some feedback from current attendees to give you an idea what you can experience in these LiveClasses…

“…being able to come here and learn the ‘why’s’ behind things and getting the understanding has just been, like, life changing…and that was not a paid testimonial…” – Kristi Linebaugh, Sales and Marketing Specialist, Vigoa Cuisine. Hear directly from Kristi in this 51-second video.

“…My stress level has gone down because this is tough stuff…And Flint you’ve mastered all of this and it’s so nice to have access to this and you’ve been so gracious with your time and, well, what a generous soul…” – David B. Justiss, Agency Owner, Social Ink Works LLC. Hear directly from David in this 52-second video.

“…you said something very profound, and I’ve never heard this in the entire time of the Cohort yet. And it’s spot on to why we have the Cohort, why we need the Cohort, why the Cohort’s been so valuable as a community to us and I’m going to presume for so many, but it was something to the effect – be aware of incremental improvements to the wrong offer…” – Paul Good, Chief Executive Officer, PhotoPros, in this 58-second video

Here is a summary of the February 15^th LiveClass with the MECLABS SuperFunnel Research Cohort. I have the byline, but in truth I didn’t really write this like the articles I normally write. I was just the content generator (or AI writer or automated content writer if you prefer) and used artificial intelligence to create these key takeaways.

At the end of this blog post I share the process I used to create it. This goes along with a key aspect of these cohorts – to experiment with AI tools and see how they can help optimize a marketing funnel.

Hopefully these AI-derived summaries give you an idea or two for improving your own marketing.

Lessons from a Marketing Class: Zoom chat highlights, Part 1

In this marketing class conducted on Zoom, the participants discussed various topics, ranging from ChatGPT’s behavior to the weather in different parts of the world. In addition to marketing-related topics, they discussed the power of community building, and the use of search engines like Bing and Google.

The participants concluded that search engines were increasingly influenced by artificial intelligence, which in turn could be used to further their marketing goals.

One participant noted that “Ads will be much more targeted with this type of information,” suggesting that marketing campaigns are becoming increasingly personalized and data-driven thanks to AI. Another participant shared an infographic of Google Trends showing the popularity of searches related to “Microsoft Bing,” underlining the impact artificial intelligence is already having on the competition between search engines.

The participants discussed the potential implications of artificial intelligence on marketing, noting that AI-driven insights can help brands better understand customer behavior and preferences and create more targeted and effective campaigns.

The participants also discussed the importance of gathering feedback and comments from their audience and then ranking them to determine which ones are most valuable. When asked for feedback on what the cost of the MECLABS SuperFunnel Research Cohort should be, they even joked about splitting a hypothetical $100M equally among themselves.

Overall, the class served as a reminder that marketing is about understanding your audience and building a strong community around your brand. Businesses can create more effective and personalized marketing campaigns by gathering feedback, keeping up with the latest trends, and using tools such as AI.

For example, by using customer feedback to understand their needs and wants, businesses can tailor their marketing campaigns to appeal to their target audience, such as offering discounts or special promotions.

Lessons from a Marketing Class: Zoom chat highlights, Part 2

This is a summary of a MECLABS SuperFunnel Research Cohort LiveClass that was conducted on Zoom. The chat took place at a frantic pace and covered a wide range of topics, which are summarized below:

• BG suggested skipping ChatGPT and heading straight to openai.com.
• DF suggested using Flint’s account.
• The group shared laughter, with JF, TW, and IS using emojis.
• MP noted his preference for OpenAI’s sandbox, despite it not being as conversational in historical referencing.
• BH shared a link to the page [LINK]
• DC made a joke about having tripled his dose of phenobarbital and now being unfazed by K’s page.
• DJ shared his experience of helping a client increase their project rates from $4,000 to $10,973. He credited the increase to helping the client see the value of their work and finding the right clientele. He wondered if the same principles could be applied to the SuperFunnel course and its clients.
• KB expressed her dislike of images with text that are unreadable, noting that they are a bad experience for accessibility and a risk in the USA.
• CG praised B’s work and suggested that the testimonials on his page should include the name of the client’s company.
• DF suggested breaking the instant access form into steps to make it less intimidating.
• HI shared links to three pages: [LINK], [LINK], and [LINK]

The chat was lively and covered a wide range of topics, from humor to serious business advice. It is a testament to the value of the SuperFunnel course that so many people from different backgrounds and locations came together to share their experiences and insights.

This kind of interaction is key to fostering a community of entrepreneurs who are willing to share their experiences with others and help each other succeed. The SuperFunnel course provides a platform for this kind of engagement and encourages its students to build a network of like-minded individuals.

The Process – Can you use artificial intelligence to create written content from your webinars, meetings, classes, etc?

Every content marketer tries to squeeze the most juice from her content, taking information from one medium and bringing it into another. For example, repurposing content from a live event and then sharing videos, transcripts, blog posts, articles, audio podcasts, social media posts, slides, reports, etc., etc.

I like to think of this as secondary content. Primary content is original and requires a subject matter expert of some sorts. But for secondary content, you don’t need a creator with subject matter expertise – just the ability to communicate. I’ve used a more junior writer for this in the past, an intern could do it as well, and we’ve even had this in writer tests before we make a hire.

But to borrow from the GEICO ad, is this so simple even an AI could do it?

Judge for yourself. You can see the AI-written summary blog post above. And you can compare it to previous blog posts I’ve written after LiveClasses of the SuperFunnel Research Cohort – Marketing Funnel Strategy: 3 principles to help you make a high-converting landing page and Lead Generation: Generating business from an ebook, infographic, etc.

I’d like to think mine are better than what the AI wrote, but maybe they’re not? Or how much better do they really need to be? When creating content, I’m often weighted down by the need to deliver enough value to the reader or listener. That is difficult and time consuming. But have I overdone it? And is what the AI created enough?

Of course, the artificial intelligence didn’t create this on its own. It took work from me to engineer. And you may use the same (or different) AI tools to get a better result. AI is still just a tool, and you are the craftsman. A paintbrush, and you are the painter.

So here’s how I wielded the paintbrush in case you would like to do it as well, or let me know a better process.

STEP #1: Determine the source material

I could have used a transcript of the audio from the LiveClass. And I may in the future.

But I decided to use the chat log instead. So the wisdom of the community served as the basis of content before AI was even involved. There is a very active, experienced community on these LiveClasses and they bring up a lot of good and helpful information. If you don’t have an active community in your chat for webinars or other meetings, this may not work as well for you.

STEP #2: Determine the artificial intelligence technology you are going to use

I started with ChatGPT, because, well, the hype is to the moon for it right now.

But I’m a writer at heart, and while ChatGPT can provide good information, I’m not always sure it has the best wording. So, I used Wordtune as well to copy edit and suggest better wording.

Wordtune, with its Spices feature, can also help add content that punches up the copy, and I figure two AI (brains? neural networks?) are better than one.

STEP #3: Craft prompts to get a rough draft

The chat transcript was too long to paste into ChatGPT. And when I asked ChatGPT how long of a discussion I could use, I got the evasive type of answer you would expect from a politician who’s hand was just caught in the cookie jar, not the crisp analytical answer I was expecting of a specific character count.

As an AI language model, I can process queries of various lengths, and there is no hard limit on the length of a query. However, it’s important to keep in mind that longer queries may take longer to process, and may also be more difficult for me to understand and provide a relevant response. So, it’s generally best to keep your queries concise and focused on the information you’re looking for.

When I cut the chat in half, that did the trick. So I did it twice (hence the two parts above). The first prompt I gave was:

Here is the first half of a chat from a marketing class conducted on Zoom. Please write a blog post summarizing this class so other marketers and entrepreneurs can learn from it

I then asked it for a title, and got “Zoom Chat Highlights: Lessons from a Marketing Class.”

After getting that summary, I realized I missed a huge opportunity for specificity (and, frankly, branding) by mentioning the name of the Zoom meeting. So here is the prompt I gave with the second half of the chat transcript:

Here is the second half of a chat from a MECLABS SuperFunnel Research Cohort LiveClass conducted on Zoom. Please write a blog post summarizing this class so other marketers and entrepreneurs can learn from it

I then asked it for a title as well for that version. I ultimately went with this title for this blog post because I liked it better. I passed the title through Wordtune before using it (see next step).

The upside of using artificial intelligence – it provided a different perspective than I would have. For example, the AI discussed some of the humanity of the chat – “the group shared laughter” or “discussed the weather around the world” – while I would have left that out and focused more on helpful information to marketers.

It’s kind of ironic, too, because Flint McGlaughlin and I have discussed at length the importance of making a community about more than just information, and that if we shared video of the LiveClasses we should include some of the camaraderie and fun that has been built up. Even knowing that though, I would have totally missed adding it in.

It’s also interesting that the two parts ChatGPT crafted are so radically different. My prompts were slightly different, as you can see above. And the LiveClass did have two parts – the first half was more informational, and the second half was more interactive as Flint and I provided live conversion optimization suggestions to the community’s landing pages.

But I also question if this is just part of the randomness of AI. If I did this 10 times, would I just get 10 totally different styles. Is this an infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of typewriters? Is there consistency or just randomness and luck? Something to watch as use of AI progresses.

And really, ChatGPT is called “conversational AI,” but it’s a pretty bad conversation. I give a command and it outputs a response. It would work much better if (like a real human would in a conversation) it asked clarifying questions to hone in on what you really want and how it can help. In this (in fairness, very early) version of conversational AI, too much rests on how well or how clearly you state your prompt, so you need to try multiple prompts and prompt stacking, which lessens the time savings from using AI.

It reminds me of a question I asked Siri recently, “Can you eat the rind of brie cheese?” to which it responded, “I cannot.” When I worded the question better, I discovered the real answer to my question – yes, the rind is edible.

STEP #4: Edit the rough draft

To edit the rough draft, I used Wordtune, an AI writing tool that offers AI-powered writing suggestions.

The tool did some copy editing, although ChatGPT was pretty good there. I’ve heard this function of Wordtune derided because Microsoft Word has similar features. But as I’m sitting here typing, Word is suggesting to me that I change ChatGPT to Catgut…even though Microsoft has invested $1 billion in OpenAI, the parent company of ChatGPT. So my hope is that Wordtune – an online, AI-driven service – has more updated copy editing than Word.

Wordtune offered rewrite suggestions. ChatGPT often wrote in passive voice, and Wordtune changed it to active voice.

It also offered some good wording suggestions. Although sometimes, in fairness, ChatGPT had a little more personality, which surprised me. For example, when writing about the conversation in part 2, ChatGPT described the chat as having a “frantic” pace while Wordtune suggest “fast-paced.” Fast-paced is more professional and business like, so would probably have been the better word to use. And it was probably a more accurate word. But I enjoyed the humanity (can I say that about AI writing?) of “frantic,” so I kept that in.

The thing I really liked about Wordtune, though, was the Spices feature. It’s meant to “spice up your writing” based on some input you give it. It can explain, add emphasis, give a counterexample, and on and on.

This is where the two AI brains came in. There was ChatGPT’s description, and then Wordtune adding to it. Kind of like sports announcers – play-by-play and color commentary.

Incidentally, since the second half was just a bulleted run down of what individual participants did, it would not have made sense to use the Spices feature in that area.

STEP #5: Fact check and use discretion

My intention was not to put my fingers to keyboard and write anything at all in these summaries. Just orchestrate the two AIs off of each other and choose what worked best.

However, there were a few fact errors. So I manually corrected those. In fairness, any writer who had not attended the LiveClass could have made similar errors if they were not given the video recording and only had the chat log to work with.

I also anonymized the participants’ names (since I didn’t have their permission to use them in this experiment) and the links to their landing pages (since they were all rough drafts that attendees were getting conversion optimization ideas for during the LiveClass).

STEP #6: Determine the byline

As you can see, my byline is on this blog post. I felt comfortable doing that because I transparently told you about the process of using AI. Had I not, and just tried to pass this off as any other blog post I had written, I would not have felt comfortable putting my name on this as the writer.

Content marketing is so effective because it builds trust. So in my opinion, if artificial intelligence creates your content, you should tell your audience.

So was it worth using artificial intelligence to write a blog post? Or should I have just written it myself?

I’m not sure I saved much, if any time, using AI to write the summary in this blog post, and I’m not even counting this lengthy process description I wrote.

First, I’m probably faster than the average writer because of my lengthy experience in this industry. So if you are a slower writer, you might save more time than I did.

Frankly, it took some time playing with the two AI tools and getting it just right.

Of course, this was my first time doing it. If I did this regularly, I would probably get much quicker and more efficient with the process, or even find a better process. And in fairness, I could have used a simpler process, and just taken what ChatGPT gave me directly, not using Wordtune at all.

I also want to point out – artificial intelligence takes some time because it requires human oversight. I worry we can be lulled into a false sense of confidence in what may be an advanced parlor trick. Yes, isn’t it amazing what these machines can do with their intelligence? But I fear they are a bit like Toonces the Driving Cat.

If you’re unfamiliar with the old Saturday Night Live sketch, the people are so impressed the cat is driving them in a car. Isn’t it amazing what the cat can do? Until…

…the cat drives them off a cliff. At which point you get the punch line “Toonces can drive a car, just not very well.”

For marketing leaders, the other question is – would using AI in this situation hurt your ability to grow your team? As I mentioned, this kind of assignment can be great for a junior writer, to build their writing chops and domain acumen in your industry. So will this steal from your bench strength?

No easy answers, at least to me. But when I asked ChatGPT, it had the answer. It told me…

Incorporating AI technology into certain marketing tasks can actually enhance the growth of your team, rather than hurt it. By automating some of the more repetitive and time-consuming tasks, your team can focus on higher-level work that requires a more strategic and creative approach. This means that your team can be more productive, efficient, and effective in their work.

Additionally, AI can serve as a valuable tool for learning and skill-building. For example, an AI-powered writing assistant can provide real-time feedback on grammar, tone, and style, allowing junior writers to learn and improve their writing skills more quickly. This can accelerate their development and help them become more effective writers in a shorter period of time.

Finally, it’s important to note that while AI can automate some tasks, it can never replace the creativity, strategic thinking, and human touch that marketing professionals bring to the table. Therefore, rather than taking away from your bench strength, AI can actually enhance it by freeing up your team’s time and resources to focus on more impactful work.

Related Resources

Sales Funnel and ChatGPT: 6 ways to leverage AI now to develop a powerful value proposition

Artificial Intelligence Case Studies: Two companies that boosted brand awareness with AI and another marketer that used humans instead

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in Marketing: What marketers (even those who don’t care about tech) should know about AI and ML

AI Marketing Tools: How marketers are using artificial intelligence to help their campaigns right now

Flint McGlaughlin and I conducted live optimization of landing pages in a recent LiveClass with the MECLABS SuperFunnel Research Cohort (MECLABS is parent organization of MarketingSherpa). We offered specific conversion optimization suggestions for landing pages in this Zoom meeting, while every member of the cohort offered even more ideas for improving those landing pages in the Zoom chat.

A few transferable principles arose from this session that you can use to improve your own landing pages, and we’ll share those today on the MarketingSherpa blog. They form a sensible process you can use for your conversion optimization and marketing strategy.

PRINCIPLE #1: Don’t lay on claims; foster conclusions.

The job of the marketer is helping people come to their own conclusions rather than telling them what to think.

Why? When we tell them what to think, they will naturally resist. When they come to their own conclusions, they will sell themselves.

So how can you tell if you are making claims of value or fostering conclusions of value? I like this simple test from Flint – “Print your webpage and take a red pen through every declarative statement. See what you have left,” he said in The Prospect’s Perception Gap: How to bridge the gap between the results we want and the results we have.

If you landing pages and other marketing don’t do too well on that test, here are some great examples from your peers to spur some ideas for improving – Show, Don’t Tell: 3 quick case studies where companies help customers reach their own conclusions.

PRINCIPLE #2: Spend 5-10X more on your offer than on your landing page.

As a writer my whole career, there are many times a marketing or business leader would come to me with a writing challenge that wasn’t really a writing challenge.

The real challenge was – they didn’t have a value proposition. The most well-crafted headlines and body copy won’t move the needle much when you don’t have a value proposition. I always say writing is 80% having something worth saying, and 20% saying it well.

And it really resonated with me when Flint taught the above transferrable principle – spend the bulk of your time, resources, energy, etc. on creating an offer that serves a customer, not on trying to sell the offer with your landing page.

As Flint mentioned on the call, that offer doesn’t have to be an ebook. He mentioned surveys we have run here at MarketingSherpa as an example.

There are probably key questions your audience needs answered – either to shape their own strategy, as a proof point when they sell an idea to a leader or client, or simply out of curiosity. If you are able to answer those questions, you are able to win a key “yes” in their customer journey – the ability to begin a relationship with them and continue to build trust.

One way to do that is with survey research. Here are a few ways we have fielded these surveys before, to give you some ideas:

• With Nielsen, to their panel (a panel is a group of potential survey respondents, you may want to represent all American consumers or you may want insights from a specific role in a specific industry)
• With SurveyGizmo, to their panel (and I believe SurveyMonkey offers similar options)
• To our own audience, or with partners/sponsors to both of our audiences

Note for the first option, Nielsen provided data science expertise, and for the second and third option, we used our own data scientists. Data science is important to make sure the results are representative of the population you are talking about (again, could be all American consumers, or could be a specific group of people in your industry).

For all three options, and every piece of survey research we conducted, we came up with our own questions.

Two quick tips on coming up with questions. First, don’t prime your audience – this means, don’t drive them to a specific conclusion with the way you word your questions. Truly seek to discover.

Also, have a plan for how you will message the survey no matter what the results are. For example, we asked 1,200 American consumers “In general, which type of advertising channels do you trust more when you want to make a purchase decision?” And then we asked them about a series of traditional and digital channels.

I realized if digital channels won, this would help our audience make the case for increasing digital budgets and the digital industry would pick up on this and promote it. And if traditional channels won, it would help marketers make the case for traditional budgets and the industry behind traditional marketing channels would want to share it. You can see how we messaged the results in Marketing Chart: Which advertising channels consumers trust most and least when making purchases.

We worked with a public relations agency to share the results. And as Flint mentioned it was covered by publications like The Wall Street Journal (The Marketing Virtues of Good Ol’ Snail Mail) and Harvard Business Review (Why Marketers Are Returning to Traditional Advertising).

As the above example shows, there are usually two potential outcomes of a survey question – the results will either reaffirm what your audience believes (in which case they can use it to win over others) or provide an “aha” moment by having them question if what they believe is true (and win more attention for your results – like the classic journalistic aphorism “man bites dog.”)

Keep in mind, this only works if you have questions your audience cares about.

Here is the landing page we created for the report of the survey’s results, in case it gives you ideas for your own landing pages. Looking back at it now I see many ways it can be improved (no subhead?!), but hopefully it gives you some ideas for your own landing pages – MarketingSherpa Customer Satisfaction Research Study.

PRINCIPLE #3: Audit the landing page. Where would a potential customer be concerned? (Anxiety) Where is there resistance? (Friction)

Once you’ve created value and communicated it on your landing page, ask what might hold a customer back from saying “yes” to your offer? What is the non-monetary cost to them?

Anxiety and Friction are part of the MECLABS Conversion Sequence Heuristic, and explained here – Improve your Marketing Collateral with a Proven Methodology.

Marketing has a language all its own. This is our latest in a series of posts aimed at helping new marketers learn that language. What term do you find yourself explaining most often to new hires during onboarding? Let us know.

This article was originally published in the MarketingSherpa email newsletter.

An elevator pitch is a quick explanation of a value proposition for something you are trying to influence another person’s opinion on.

An elevator pitch (also called an elevator speech) can be for a company (to persuade investors), a product (to influence a purchase), a project (to get budget) or even a person (to get a job).

A key component of an elevator pitch is the quick, succinct summation of much more information – enough to change an opinion or elicit an action but not so much that you lose someone’s attention. An elevator pitch can be particularly important when you know you will only have a short amount of time with the person (say, at a networking event or running into the CEO in the hallway or in a literal elevator).

The term likely originates from the idea that one could run into a key decision maker in an elevator. If that happened, you need a prepared statement you can use during the few seconds you have with this decision maker during that elevator ride.

A forceful value proposition is key to an effective elevator pitch. According to MECLABS Institute’s methodology, there are four elements to a forceful value proposition – clarity, credibility, exclusivity, and appeal (MECLABS is the parent organization of MarketingSherpa).

“I must understand (clarity) so I can believe (credibility) that only you (exclusivity) have what I want (appeal),” said Flint McGlaughlin, CEO and Managing Director, MECLABS Institute.

Word usage examples

To put the term ‘elevator pitch’ in context, here are some examples of how we have used the term in our content.

• “In other words, what’s the elevator pitch for what you offer in the marketplace?” from 3 Factors that Connect Value Prop to Prospects
• “After all, unlike established companies with divisions and brands and patents and factories and distribution networks, the main asset many startups have is their value proposition (often communicated as an ‘elevator pitch’).” from Appeal: Does your value proposition actually make customers say, “I want this product or offer”?
• “Essentially, what’s the elevator pitch for your job?” from Marketing Career: Can you explain your job to a six-year-old?

Elevator pitch example

Steve Jobs delivered a famous elevator pitch to John Sculley in 1983 – “Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water, or do you want a chance to change the world?”

Sculley was the president of Pepsi at the time. Jobs was starting to make something special happen with Apple. However, Jobs needed a CEO to run Apple so that he could focus on developing new products for the growing company. Sculley wasn’t convinced by Apple’s laid-back culture and politely rejected Jobs’ original offer until Jobs presented his famous elevator pitch.

“That abrupt but direct question says everything about how Apple tackles innovation and its products—and it led to Scully joining Apple,” said James Edge, Founder, Crush the USMLE.

“The pitch is brilliant because of its simplicity and unorthodox nature. Instead of following the traditional elevator pitch model, this one went straight to Sculley’s heart. The question hit him so hard that he eventually changed his mind and joined what would become one of the most impactful and profitable companies in the history of the world,” said Marc Lewis, General Manager and Executive Editor, Ecowatch.

You can follow Daniel Burstein, Senior Director, Content & Marketing, MarketingSherpa and MECLABS Institute, on Twitter @DanielBurstein.

If you are interested in elevator pitches, you might also like…

An Effective Value Proposition: What it is, why it is so important to business and marketing success, and how to use it

7 Steps to Discovering Your Essential Value Proposition with Simple A/B Tests

Pivot Your Value Proposition: 6 ways brands, entrepreneurs and marketers are responding to COVID-19’s economic fallout

Free Template to Help You Win Approval for Proposed Projects, Campaigns and Ideas

If you are interested in entry-level marketing content, you might also like…

Marketing 101: What is PPC in marketing?

The Beginner’s Guide to Digital Marketing: 53 articles (and 1 video) to help with onboarding

Marketing 101: What are beneficial buttons?

We frequently receive questions from our email newsletter subscribers asking marketing advice. Instead of hiding those answers in a one-to-one communication, we occasionally publish edited excerpts of some of these conversations here on the MarketingSherpa blog so they can help other readers as well. If you have any questions, let us know.

Dear MarketingSherpa: Hi Daniel. Hope you’re having a good week.

About 10 days ago I commented about a three-part study you posted on homepage redesigns on your Linkedin post.

I asked you for some extra resources, and you sent a few links that I reviewed.

If you don’t mind me asking a direct question, could you offer your two cents of feedback on this please?

Here’s the thing. My client is a SaaS Case Management platform, that wants a redesigned website. So we’ve started working, and at the outset, the deal is to make the homepage less techy and more business-oriented.

I’m working on the homepage value prop, and we discussed two options, both suggested by me:

Option 1: Manage Cases With Ease

Option 2: Manage More Cases With Less Stress.

The internal team is heavily leaning to Option 1 because it looks cleaner, and I’m pulling the other way because Option 2 identifies the wants and pains of the target audience better, and with more emotional impact.

I’d love to hear your two cents on the matter. When the homepage is competing with $50 million per year businesses, and the audience is the public sector and companies serving the public sector, how smart is the idea to use these more “emotions-oriented” taglines?

Igor Mateski
Founder/CEO
WebMaxFormance

Dear Reader: Hey Igor,

I can’t say which is the best value prop for the company. That takes a lot of work. If you haven’t already, I suggest conducting a value prop workshop with them. Here’s an example – B2B Value Proposition: How a tech startup used a value prop workshop to help prepare for a public offering (4 takeaways for your brand)

As to your question between the two options, your best bet is to test.

Personally, my off-the-cuff response (hope it doesn’t sound too harsh), they will both underperform because they have no credibility. I know you wouldn’t tell me “Manage Less Cases with More Stress” so why should I believe you if you told me “Manage More Cases with Less Stress?”

As for “emotions-oriented” – it can work. Remember, you’re not selling to companies or government agencies, you’re selling to people. If you’ve hit on the right emotion from them (and I don’t know them and can’t say if you have) it can be very effective, but again, it needs to be credible.

Hope that helps.

Dear MarketingSherpa: Hmm…interesting point, about credibility. I didn’t turn over that rock. Obviously.

We haven’t had any interviews/planning with the client. They just asked that we redesign the site, and the deadline is New Year’s. So we’re cutting corners in plenty of places in order to make the deadline.

That being said, what do you suggest as a quick and easy way to add credibility to the value prop?

By the way, thank you for your comment. It’s quite helpful!

Dear Reader: Glad I could help, Igor. Quick and easy? That’s tough. I’d suggest get them on the phone, discuss the claim they like, and then you really have to challenge them. “OK, I believe you. But why should anyone else believe this? They’ll have three other tabs open with websites for your competitors. Why would they believe this line?”

Here are some specific elements that can help build credibility on the page – Credibility: 9 elements that help make your marketing claims more believable.

Dear MarketingSherpa: Thank you for the resources. I really appreciate this.

If there’s anything I can do for you, let me know.

You can follow Daniel Burstein, Senior Director, Content & Marketing, MarketingSherpa and MECLABS Institute, on Twitter @DanielBurstein.

You might also like…

MECLABS Institute Value Proposition Development on-demand certification course – Learn how to clearly communicate an effective value proposition based on a review of 1,100 academic articles and more than two decades of real-world experimentation

MarketingSherpa Quick Guide to Website Optimization PDF

Powerful Value Propositions: How to Optimize this Critical Marketing Element – and Lift Your Results (Value Proposition Archives)

We frequently receive questions from our email subscribers asking marketing advice. Instead of hiding those answers in a one-to-one email communication, we occasionally publish edited excerpts of some of them here on the MarketingSherpa blog so they can help other readers as well. If you have any questions, let us know.

Dear MarketingSherpa: Thanks for the great resources. I have been in touch in the hopes of getting some direct support around our value proposition.

We’ve taken insights from the Value Proposition course (and Flint’s new book) and redesigned our site (note, we haven’t yet implemented these new designs).

Is it common to present the value proposition in layers or should it be communicated more concisely? How early in the user journey should the value proposition be presented? Is it typically done on the homepage? Do you have examples of companies successfully implementing the value proposition in this way? How did they guide users through the value prop from the homepage?

Thanks so much for your insights!

Dear Reader: Thanks for your email, and glad to hear you’re working on getting some direct support.

I’m also glad to hear you’ve taken some insights from the value prop course and Marketer as Philosopher book for your site redesign. If you’d ever like to share some of that work publicly to help other marketers and product managers and get some recognition for you and your team, please let me know. Happy to consider it for a MarketingSherpa article. Here are some examples:

Read more…

Marketers say they have money problems.

According to research from Conductor, lack of budget is the biggest internal challenge that could negatively impact online performance. Securing budget/investment is the most extreme challenge for marketing teams, according to KoMarketing research. And here at MarketingSherpa, you’ve told us the size of your marketing budget is a barrier to growth time, after time, after time.

Hey, I hear you, marketers. I want a bigger budget as well.

But if you can’t simply throw more money at the problem or outspend the competition, you can still beat them — with a better approach. In other words, a more effective value proposition.

I recently came across the perfect example when I talked to a marketer who likely has far fewer resources than you do.

This article was originally published in the MarketingSherpa email newsletter.

A value proposition based on customer-first marketing

Dean Porter is the development director at Hunger Fight, a small local nonprofit organization here in Jacksonville that helps feed Title 1 elementary school students as well as seniors.

Dean and his wife founded their charity in the teeth of the Great Recession. And they quickly learned that organizations were not so keen on simply stroking a check to a charity, even when it was doing noble work like feeding the hungry.

They didn’t have a big marketing budget they could fall back on. They couldn’t just spend their way into more leads.

So they had to come up with a better idea – a value proposition aimed at giving to their ideal customers, not just taking from them.

They created a model with a value proposition that coupled corporate employee engagement with community involvement by holding meal packing events, which they describe as “two ½ hours of organized chaos to feed children and families.”

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