Here we’ve provided a simple question set which will help guide your proposition development when creating campaigns for complex B2B offerings. This is the first in a three-part post.

What is a proposition? In basic terms, it’s how we communicate what benefits your customer gets for the money they pay you. It normally involves a USP (unique selling point) which is the strongest and most differentiating factor in your favour.  But in campaign design we need to take that one step further. i.e. You might be selling consulting services, but how do we package up and take to market exactly what your end purchaser gets? Not just benefits but what the realisation of those benefits means to the person you’re selling to?

The point about a campaign proposition is that, however great your product/service proposition is, it has no intrinsic right to be read. People are bombarded with promises of ROI – it’s not a simple question of beating every other percentage quoted that week.

The campaign proposition is what earns the right for the real proposition to get a hearing.

In attempting this, what’s important is how these resonate with the end purchaser. Finding the likely emotional resonance for the customer’s purchasing decisions is really important. Even when buying decisions are made for “practical” reasons, it will be the way that the buyer felt (or will feel) about that practicality that was important in the decision-making process. It’s about knowing what’s top of the target’s mind – both in terms of challenges and emotions (Challenge: I need a collections solution that costs less to maintain and has the functionality to help us collect more debts. Emotion: I’m worried about all the risk involved in replacing our legacy system).

And we use this to realise that however much more money we’re promising that our collections solution can help them collect (which will be the proposition they use to make the business case), what we need to get across first is that we can take away to risk of migration.

We use some of the following questions to get to the campaign proposition:
• What does the audience need to think about us before they will listen to our proposition?
• What’s the emotional connection between where they are now and the promise of where the proposition will take them? What persuades people to buy in the real world? (If it doesn’t ring true to you, or interest you, it probably won’t to anyone else either.)
• What’s the single part of what we have to offer that is most instantly relevant to them?
• Or is it about offering a safe pair of hands? Telling the sometimes uncomfortable truth? Delivering consistent innovation?
• The proposition should have defined their needs, but what emotion sits behind these? How are we going to get them emotionally bought into it?
• Are there any fundamental misconceptions about the company, product, service, industry or area that we need to address?
• What do we need them to think about the client before they will consider the proposition?
• Why is it that the client gets repeat business? What does the customer need to see above and beyond a physical solution?
• What do we offer above and beyond a specific solution and the associated benefits? Could be guidance, thought leadership, practicality, understanding of their business…
• What are competitors doing that gives them an edge in the relationship with prospects?
• What are the most challenging bottlenecks between awareness and sale?
• What are the most interesting anecdotes, “factoids” or war stories that have come out during the research and workshops?
• What’s the problem the target audience is grappling with on its way into work each day?

Remember, you are trying to build a position here for the company’s product or service around positive and engaging content. Simpler (although not necessarily shorter) is often better in this environment. Keep boiling down the proposition until you are left with something compelling, interesting and emotive.

Just because we’ve got their attention doesn’t mean they will rush to make contact and become a sales-ready lead. That’s where the next level of proposition comes in – the proposition that persuades them to take the next realistic action on the path to buying. Look out for the next post on ‘Selling the next step’.