Define the Value Proposition: Examples of using SMS, SEO, and a landing page to enhance perceived value

This article was published in the MarketingSherpa email newsletter.

“Value that is not perceived will not be received,” Flint McGlaughlin taught in Value Proposition Power: 3 ways to intensify the force of your value proposition.

There is a lot involved with the doing of marketing – implementing programs, producing high-quality marketing materials, navigating the fast-changing landscape of our industries, and on and on.

But let’s never forget why we do all of those things – to help the ideal customer perceive our products’ and offers’ value.

To inspire your best thinking about informing the value perception of your products and services, in this article we bring you three specific examples with results.

First, a sports restaurant franchise that sought to create value in its texting campaigns by writing witty, conversational texts in real time about tent pole sports events.

Then, a financial services company that dramatically increased results by adding value messaging to its landing page.

And finally, a productivity tool company that boosted organic traffic with minor SEO changes that better communicated the relevance of the value in its blog posts.

Quick Case Study #1: Restaurant uses SMS to boost revenue 43% during March Madness

Sports restaurant franchise Wings & Rings wanted to leverage national sports events to boost revenue and build stronger relationships with local diners.

Wings & Rings always seeks to create a sports restaurant experience that goes way beyond just buffalo wings. With increased competition online, the brand explored ways to get in front of local customers – and decided to focus on texting.

Creative Sample #1: Text message opt-in on restaurant’s website

Creative Sample #2: Mobile version of text message opt-in on restaurant’s website

The chain’s strategy was to jump on sports moments. Wings & Rings tried a campaign that was timed with the Super Bowl and March Madness. The team sought to drive revenue by using witty, conversational texts that often pepper in sports commentary in real-time.

Creative Sample #3: March Madness-related text message from restaurant

“SMS messaging is the epitome of 1:1 marketing, so the content needs to reflect that. March Madness typically has lots of twists and turns, and SMS allowed us to capitalize on real-time events that were relevant to our guests. It was also important to deliver our messages in a tone that the recipients could embrace, like if a friend was texting you,” said Linsey Case, Marketing Director, Wings and Rings.

Since 90% of all incoming text messages are read within three minutes of their delivery (according to a June 2010 report from Mobilesquared and SinglePoint entitled “Conversational Advertising”), real-time communications were an important part of the team’s strategy. For example, the below text was sent minutes after Baylor lost, in a tone of a friend texting a customer about the game.

Creative Sample #4: March Madness-related text message from restaurant

“Keep it fun,” advised Amir Zamanian, GM of Food/Beverage & Restaurants, Attentive (Wings & Rings’ text message marketing solution). “Texts are meant to be short, sweet, and conversational. Leverage your fun brand voice, like Wings and Rings.”

Creative Sample #5: Super Bowl-related text message from restaurant

Texts sent the day before the Super Bowl had a 47% conversion rate, driving over $30,000 in revenue – the highest revenue associated with any of the team’s texts. SMS subscriber growth was up 86% the week leading up to the Super Bowl and loyalty app downloads nearly doubled.

With March Madness, the brand saw a revenue increase of 43% without pushing any promotions.

While the campaign was successful, even with successful campaigns we should always look back, see what can be learned, and find areas ripe for optimization next time. For example, Case sees an opportunity to make the process simpler for customers in the future.

“We learned that in order to be effective, you can’t ask your guest to jump through too many hoops. The intention of our text-to-join program was to drive trials of our new items and get the guest to come back for a second visit. We learned that the restrictions caused too much confusion which led to low redemptions of the offer. For future campaigns, we now know to have minimal actions as entry points, so that the customer can easily reach our call-to-action,” Case said.

If you would like to launch a similar campaign, keep in mind that texting can’t be launched as quickly as social media. Don’t wait for March Madness or the Super Bowl (or the Oscars, Earth Day, Thanksgiving, Fashion Week, World Cup, your industry’s big conference, or other tentpole events).

“Plan ahead,” Zamanian advised. “Setting up a best-in-class SMS program from scratch can take four to six weeks, so make sure to bake in some time.”

Quick Case Study #2: Financial services company gets 241% higher CTR by adding value prop to landing page

Nimble provides quick cash loans, and had a landing page for its small personal loans, which you can see below.

Creative Sample #6: Before – landing page for financial services company

The team attempted to add value messaging to the landing page to help customers better perceive the value of its offering.

“The video [of Session #19] was very informative. As Flint mentioned in the video, to have an effective webpage that has a call-to-action, one has to offer some value proposition and emphasize their exclusivity to the readers in order to get results. We used that same tactic in our webpage and gained 241% more CTA (call-to-action) clicks from the webpage,” said Grant Lukin, Marketing Manager, Nimble.

In the upper section of the landing page, the team attempted to communicate a value proposition so customers could perceive the value Nimble offered – a quick-and-easy, hassle-free small loan experience without extra paperwork. They found that lots of customers wanted to get cash. So, they mentioned that they provide cash loans for small amounts, too.

Underneath that section, they tried to emphasize exclusivity by highlighting the company’s ultrafast service speed of 60 minutes.

Creative Sample #7: After – value proposition added to financial services company landing page

“Before we had a page that didn’t have the value proposition section and was somewhat of a generic site like other competitors. After we made the changes to our webpage the results were very positive,” Lukin said.

Adding a value prop to the webpage helped them gain more customers. Clicks on the call-to-action went up by 241% compared to before when they didn’t have that section. The company received 93% more applications for short-term loans. Ultimately, the change increased revenue 32%.

Quick Case Study #3: Productivity extension company gets 1,000 more clicks from quick SEO changes

The team at Mailbutler wanted to increase traffic to its blog posts and was looking for quick SEO changes that could help.

They focused on updating the blog posts’ meta description and meta titles, adding schema, and making minor content updates with better internal links (adding internal links and deleting irrelevant external links).

Here is a closer look at some specific examples.

The team added specific product names to one blog post, changing the meta title from “The complete guide to cleaning up your email inbox” to “The complete guide to cleaning up your Outlook, Gmail, or Apple Mail inbox.”

They made a similar change in the body text. Before, the body text was general. For example, a subhead was changed from “How to clean up your inbox” to “What’s the best way to clean up your email in your Outlook, Gmail, or Apple Mail inbox?”

The team also added a table of contents to each post.

Creative Sample #8: Table of contents in blog post

After making these changes to five blog posts, they have gotten 57,000 more SERP (search engine results page) impressions – growing from 280,000 total impressions for the previous three months to 337,000 total impressions for the most recent three months for the five posts.

They also received almost 1,000 more clicks from the SERP – growing from 5,130 total clicks the previous three months to 6,120 total clicks for the most recent three months for the five posts.

“The result was incredible – 1,000 clicks and 57,000 impressions more. We are still doing that to all of our blog posts, and we can expect the same results soon,” said Ilija Sekulov, Digital Marketing & SEO, Mailbutler.

Going forward, the team also wants to add FAQ schema and custom-made illustrations to the posts as well.

Related Resources

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

Value Proposition: Marketing examples for each of the 4 essential levels of value prop

A framework to assess an existing or new value proposition

World-Class Consumer & Retail Brands: What right do we have as a brand to be in that business?