The Value Proposition Canvas is a tool designed to help companies create value for their customers.
Usually this is related to a product or service. But I've found this framework to be very helpful in thinking about content ideas with customer fit and value at the center of the process (as it should be).
To put this into practice, make a copy of this templated worksheet and use it every time you need to generate more ideas.
Clarify your SEO approach
This article is a continuation of our recent series on SEO strategy, SEO planning, using generative AI to aid SEO, and how to create useful, human-first content. It may be helpful to read these first (or later), but they are by no means required.
The point I'm making here is that most of the talk and content about SEO strategy isn't actually about strategy, but focuses on tactics and planning.
Strategy and planning are not the same thing.
- Strategies are long-term ideas and goals.
- Tactics are short-term moves you make to gain an advantage.
The overall purpose of these articles is to provide a clear path from strategy to tactics and allow you to document that path into a simple plan.
Why write content for Google in 2024?
Despite the popularity of social media, buzz around AI, and innovative algorithm updates, Google remains the main source of website traffic.
Google sends out up to 70% of all referral traffic, while others pick up (or hand out) the scraps.
For context, the biggest traffic source social network, Facebook, sends about 3% of traffic, so it's small beans compared to Google.
The long and short of it is that Google is still a big driver of website traffic.
Value Proposition Canvas (VPC) Overview
The Value Proposition Canvas (VPC) was developed by Dr. Alexander Osterwalder to help companies create a strong fit between product and market.
This framework is designed to help companies create successful products and services by focusing on customer needs. This is explained in detail in Strategyzer's book The Value Proposition Design.
The general idea is as follows.
- Companies design new products and services every day
- Most of these fail miserably
- Focusing on what matters to your customers will lead to success
The value proposition canvas helps solve this problem by ensuring that your products and services are created to address your customers' goals, pains, and jobs. Canvas helps you create a “fit” between your product or service and what your customers really need.
The canvas has two main areas, each divided into three sections.
- value proposition
- Products and services
- get creator
- painkillers
- customer segment
- profit
- customer work
- pain
This is a simple visual tool that helps you understand your customers by detailing their work, pain, and desired benefits on the right side (customer segments).
Next, complete your value map by mapping your products and services to your customers' jobs and detailing how they alleviate customer pain and generate profit.
Use the Value Proposition Canvas for content ideation and SEO
As SEOs and content marketers, we can leverage this approach in an era of informative, human-first content as we seek to map value-based solutions to prospect searches.
As with much marketing, the magic is a work in progress. There's probably little here that you don't already know on some level, but this process will help bring all the hidden knowledge to the surface and articulate it in a way that supports your content ideas.
Simply put, the Value Proposition Canvas approach requires you to imagine how your customer segments think and think about things rationally.
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Follow these steps to generate high-value content ideas that address your customers' needs and wants.
Step 1: Become a customer
Download the template and follow these steps:
customer segment
Identify the customer segment you want to profile. This can be anyone or everyone. Don't skip this, as you'll need to narrow it down to speak to a specific segment.
List customer jobs
A customer's job is the functional, social, or emotional task they are trying to perform, the problem they are trying to solve, or the need they want to meet.
example:
- functional work: Mow the lawn, eat healthy, and write reports.
- social work: Dress nicely, post on social media, publish blog posts.
- Personal work: Enjoyment of life, growth, security, safety.
List customer problems
Pain is an aspect of a customer's job that makes their life difficult. This may include time spent, technical issues, or failure to obtain suitable results.
example:
- undesirable result: Something annoying, slow, or doesn't work.
- Obstacle: Anything that gets in the way of success (time, money, etc.).
- risk: Anything that could get you into trouble, such as fines, violations, issues, etc.
Note: The template includes questions to help identify customer pain points.
List customer benefits
Benefits should explain the results and benefits you are looking for in your content.
You can focus your profits on what's most relevant to your customers: business, reputation, utility, and social.
example:
- required gain:Leads, sales, profits, customers, etc.
- expected profit: Traffic, exposure, Google rankings, customer attention.
- desired profit.
- unexpected profit:Possibility of virus.
Note: The template includes questions to help identify customer pain points.
Example: New customer in the kitchen
In this example, I filled in the customer's work (yellow), pain (red), and profit (green).
- customer segment: Homeowners considering renovating their kitchen. They are on a tight budget and don't know how to make this happen without spending a fortune.
Step 2: Rank your work, struggles, and gains.
Once you've made a list of your tasks, struggles, and gains, another important step is to organize things based on priorities and opportunities.
- importance of work: Rank jobs in order of most importance to the customer.
- degree of pain: Ranks pain by how extreme and problematic it is.
- get relevant: Rank increases depending on how important it is in the eyes of the customer.
This allows you to prioritize your content development efforts and ensure that the content you create speaks your customers' language.
Step 3: Value-driven content planning
By following this process, you will understand how your customers think and have a clear understanding of your target customers' objectives, problems, and desired outcomes (benefits, pain, jobs).
Now you can start entering your content ideas into the value side of the template.
content ideas
Here, we'll replace the products and services in the standard value proposition canvas with content ideas.
Content ideas are mapped to work, pain, and gain.
- Content useful for your business
- Create tutorials, step-by-step guides, or comprehensive reviews. These help viewers check jobs off their list.
- For example, “How to replace kitchen cupboard doors” may be useful for customers who want to refresh their kitchen but do not have a large budget.
- Generally, this is product and service oriented and will be the content closest to the purchase.
- Content that relieves pain
- Your content should address the challenges your audience faces.
- For example, if your viewers want to replace their kitchen doors but don't know how to install them, create a guide that shows them how to measure, remove, and install a new door.
- Content that amplifies profits
- We aim to create content ideas tailored to our customers' goals.
- This could be case studies of previous kitchen renovations, style guides, or the latest appliances.
Enter your ideas into the SEO content value proposition template.
format
When thinking about content, remember that modern SERPs are diverse and often feature articles, videos, page features, and more.
Relevance of content and conversions
Our goal here is to create value for our customers with content.
We do that by understanding our customers and creating content that helps them achieve their goals.
simple example
It's helpful to simplify this as much as possible so you can clearly understand and explain it to your team members.
For companies selling kitchens to budget-conscious customers:
- Customer job: Install a functional kitchen within a limited budget.
- pain: The cost of kitchen units is high, the installation is complex, and the energy consumption is high.
- Profit: Affordable price, easy installation and long-term cost savings.
Then map your content ideas to improved customer understanding.
Some ideas for values-based content include:
- Product/service details:
- Advantages of modular kitchen units.
- Save money with DIY kitchen installation kits.
- The best energy efficient home appliances.
- Painkillers:
- What is the best way to finance your kitchen?
- Learn from the pros with a free kitchen consultation.
- Get the creator:
- Understand your kitchen warranty.
- The most popular layout in modern kitchens.
- A space-saving solution for small kitchens.
There's nothing complicated here. Rather, it's just a framework for thinking about your content ideas in terms of your ideal customer segments, allowing you to focus on their needs and provide the most value.
Common mistakes and problems
Remember, this is an ideation process. At its core, this is a creative endeavor, so it works best in a team environment. That said, if you are lonely, you can easily integrate AI tools into your SEO content to act as your assistant.
Common issues we see include:
- Customer profile is too broad. Let's get specific!
- Don't forget to include social and emotional tasks. We buy based on emotion, not logic.
- Not being detailed enough about your work, struggles, and gains.
- The dots between work, pain and gain are not connected.
- Specify content ideas as the opposite of vague work, pain, and gain.
Generate SEO content ideas that resonate with your audience
As SEO becomes more difficult and expensive, it's important to focus on customer value and maximize returns from your content marketing efforts.
To get SEO results in 2024, all the planets need to align. His SEO for the website must be perfect, the content must be aimed squarely at the needs of the customers, and the results of the SEO must be carefully measured.
The value proposition canvas brings structure to the chaotic and unpredictable task of generating content ideas. If you do this well, you'll be in front of potential customers when they investigate their problem.
We hope this process helps you start with a solid foundation of content ideas that truly help, support, and resonate with your target audience.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily those of Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.