The 21 Marketing and Sales Challenges of ICT Businesses

Challenge #4 – Being Consistent with your Value Proposition Message

Welcome to the fourth video in our series of 21 Marketing and Sales Challenges of ICT Service Providers and what to do about them.

Firstly you define what you do and what separates their business from your competitors (also known as your Unique Selling Proposition).

Secondly, you need to make sure you clearly communicate this USP everywhere consistently – on your website, resources, social media, sales presentations and even invoices!

However many ICT business owners don’t take this second step, they just define their USP and ignore it when they are communicating to Prospects and Clients.

If you haven’t created a Unique Selling/Value proposition for your business or don’t know where to start check out our guide to creating your own unique value proposition here.

Watch the video and read below to help you overcome this challenge of how to check if you are consistent in your USP message and you can download a free template to help you here.

Creating a Value Proposition, then leaving it in the dust

Most ICT businesses will create a USP (Unique Selling Proposition) early on in their business to help them define what prospects they should be pursuing and what separates them from similar competitors but then sadly, will completely forget that they wrote the proposition and never use it again.

This can lead to mixed messages across all of your channels, which then causes confusion and hesitation amongst your potential prospects and customers which in turn makes them not want to purchase your product or service.

The major problem with this approach is that it means people searching for your business won’t have a clear understanding of what it is that you do and what it is that you are offering and will then not want to purchase from you as a result of this (because people buy from people they trust) and if a prospect doesn’t know what you stand for how can they know to trust you?

Avoiding sending a mixed message

The easiest way to prevent your business from sending out a variety of different messages is to use your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) as a comparison and look at it side by side in relation to:

• Your Website and Digital Content – Check all of your website pages as well as all of the digital content on your website (this includes any PDF’s, guides and any other resources that you have online). Make sure what you say is uniform and closely relates to your USP
• Your Social Media Profiles – Audit your social media profiles, have a look at your Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn profiles, does what you are saying on each platform match? Do they reflect the values of your Unique Selling Proposition? Are your social posts for Facebook and LinkedIn conveying the same message?
• Your Sales Material –  Think of things like your credentials brochures and any recent proposals –  are these matching your message? Very often businesses will go to all the effort of making sure their message is uniform across their social media and website but neglect to consider any old documents that may carry an old USP
• Your Offline Marketing Material – Things like any signage, print ads or business cards – do each of these accurately reflect the values outlined in your Unique Selling Proposition? Are they matching the marketing message?
• Your Administration Material – This is one of the most overlooked areas but in reality it is one of the most important as this is the material that gets communicated regularly to clients and even prospects. These are things like reports, invoices, on-hold phone messages and even contracts. Do these all solidify the values illustrated in your USP.

Need some guidance?

If you need more help with this challenge, you can also download the Marketing Consistency Audit Template mentioned above.

That’s the fourth of the marketing and sales challenges that ICT businesses face. If you would like to discuss any specific marketing needs feel free to contact us