Ever wondered what your business proposition really sounds like to the outside world? We did too. That’s why we decided to put our own proposition under the microscope – with a twist. We handed the job over to AI. Intrigued? Let’s dive in.
Understanding how your company’s value proposition is perceived externally is crucial. But let’s face it, we’re all a bit biased about our own messaging. Enter artificial intelligence (AI).
We had a hunch. By letting AI loose on our business materials, we could uncover insights that we might miss. An opportunity to uncover valuable insights that help us gain a fresh perspective on what we say to the market compared to what we think our proposition is. So, to explore this potential, we conducted an experiment and decided to put Stratinn’s proposition to the test. (Gulp!)
This article will guide you through the process we went through. It will share our unfiltered findings and provide actionable takeaways for your business. By the end, you’ll be able to use AI to quickly assess your own business proposition.
The Power of AI in Interpreting Business Propositions
AI brings some unique superpowers to the table when it comes to dissecting propositions:
- Unbiased perspective: AI doesn’t have preconceived notions or emotional attachments to your business. It interprets your messaging based solely on the information provided. It can offer an objective view of how your value proposition might be perceived by others.
- Rapid processing of large volumes of information: AI can quickly analyse multiple documents, websites, and other materials in seconds. It can identify patterns and insights that might take humans significantly longer to uncover.
- Identification of subtle patterns: AI excels at recognising subtle connections in messaging that humans might overlook. This can reveal inconsistencies or strengths in your proposition that you may not have been aware of.
- A view across different platforms: AI can simultaneously analyse how your proposition is presented across various channels, providing a comprehensive view of your messaging consistency.
Not a replacement for real feedback
Whilst the benefits of an AI’s interpretation differ from human perception, it’s important to note that it doesn’t replace real human insight and customer feedback. Instead, it complements it. Over the past 3 years, we have been consistently asking people in our network and customers (past, present and potential future) for their honest views. We recognise we (and most of our clients) need to get out of the building more often and gather more insight from buyers (and potential buyers).
However, AI’s interpretation can be a great starting point for discussion and analysis. Using its insights to spark conversations within your team and closest customers about how you can refine and clarify your value proposition.
How to Use AI to Assess Your Business Proposition
Ready to let AI loose on your proposition? Here’s how:
Step 1: Gather Relevant Business Materials
Collect a diverse range of content that represents how you communicate your value proposition:
- Website content
- Sales, introduction and pitch decks
- Marketing materials
- Product descriptions
- Case studies
- Social media profiles
For this experiment, we kept it pretty simple. We used our website content across key pages at stratinn.co.uk and our Introduction deck.
Step 2: Choose an AI Tool
Select an AI platform capable of natural language processing. For our experiment, we used Perplexity AI, but there are several other options available, such as GPT-3 or BERT.
Step 3: Input Data and Craft Prompts
Feed your collected materials into the AI tool. Craft clear, specific prompts that ask about your value proposition, target audience, and key offerings.
We used:
“I want you to take a look at www.stratinn.co.uk, online search results and the company website including other pages on the site and tell me what you think the company does and who for.
- Who are their target customers?
- What customers do you think would actually be interested in what’s written and is there a difference to the first question?
- What is the core value proposition they offer customers?
- What benefits do they provide?
- What are their services?”
For our experiment, we got the AI to do a separate assessment on the website and our offline introduction collateral because the content was created at slightly different times in our journey. The website copy was around early 2023 whereas the intro pack was more recent. Both were live and being used with potential clients to demonstrate who we are for, what we do and what makes us different. Therefore, we also repeated the same prompt above on our sales collateral and client introduction pack.
It is also important to note this was our initial prompt. We then used additional prompts, focused on the 3 key areas for developing a clear proposition (we call them the 3C’s – customer, capability, competitor), to better understand how well we articulate our proposition in our external collateral.
Here are some examples:
- Customer: If I told you that the company targets Senior Marketers and P&L owners of large complex B2B organisations, would that surprise you, given what you have read on the website?
- Capability: In your initial response you referenced ‘product and service development’, how strongly does this come through as a theme, vs strategy development or value proposition development? We don’t do as much product and service design as some other, pure ‘innovation’ consultancies.
- Competitor: Who would you see as a typical competitor of this organisation?
- Taking action: Without giving you more information, how could this company improve their website to attract more customers?
- What makes us distinctive: How can I make our USP really standout, our USP is that we balance creative and commercial more than anyone else, we’re commercial like a consultancy strat house and were creative like an agency, one foot in both on every project we do… is it captured enough in the sizzle and sausage statement or should we go further?
In the results below, we don’t go into the detail of the AI interpretation based on these prompts. However, the results helped shape some of the improvements we will look to make.
Step 4: Analyse AI-Generated Results
Review the AI’s responses, looking for:
- Consistency in how your proposition is interpreted
- Any misalignments with your intended messaging and how it interprets how you externally position yourself
- Unexpected insights or interpretations
Best Practices for Accurate Results:
- Ensure a representative sample of materials across different platforms
- Use up-to-date content to reflect your current positioning
- Iterate the process with refined prompts if initial results are unclear
- Compare AI insights with your internal understanding and customer feedback
Case Study Part 1: Perplexity AI Analyses Stratinn
Drumroll, please! Enough talking about how we did it, time to get into examining the warts and all results of our experiment.
For context, our intended external proposition statement is:
“We help complex B2B businesses develop compelling, commercial propositions that resonate with customers today and drive growth in the future.”
Here’s what Perplexity AI made of us…
Website Assessment
“Stratinn Limited is a UK-based consultancy that focuses on helping businesses grow through strategic planning, product development, and marketing.
- Target customers: Stratinn appears to target businesses looking to grow, innovate, or improve their market position. This likely includes small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and possibly larger companies seeking external expertise for growth strategies.
- Potential interested customers:
- While Stratinn targets businesses seeking growth, the customers most likely to be interested in their services are:
- Companies struggling with sales or market positioning
- Businesses looking to expand their product or service offerings
- Organizations needing help with strategic planning and execution
- Companies seeking to improve their value proposition or marketing effectiveness
- Core value proposition: Stratinn’s core value proposition is to help businesses grow by aligning their strategy, products, and marketing efforts. They offer expertise in developing and testing new products and services, as well as repositioning existing offerings to increase sales.
- Benefits provided:
- Improved strategic direction for businesses
- Development and testing of new products and services
- Enhanced market positioning and sales growth
- Better alignment between business strategy and marketing execution
- Assistance in creating compelling value propositions and marketing stories
- Services:
- Strategic planning: Helping businesses decide “where to play” and “how to win”
- Product and service development: Assisting in the creation and testing of new offerings
- Marketing strategy: Repositioning businesses to grow immediate sales
- Value proposition development: Matching customer needs with business distinctiveness
- Marketing execution: Bridging the gap between business strategy and marketing implementation
- Overall, Stratinn emphasizes a blend of analytical and creative approaches, combining “marketing sizzle with the commercial sausage” to help businesses achieve growth and improve their market position.”
- While Stratinn targets businesses seeking growth, the customers most likely to be interested in their services are:
Our Intro Deck Assessment
“Their target customers seem to be businesses, particularly those in the B2B sector, who are looking to improve their market positioning, growth strategy, and customer engagement. This could include companies of various sizes and industries who are struggling with aligning their business strategy and marketing efforts.
- The customers who would likely be most interested in Stratinn’s services are:
- Companies experiencing stagnant growth or facing market challenges
- Businesses looking to reposition themselves or enter new markets
- Organizations struggling with internal alignment on strategy and messaging
- Companies seeking to improve their customer-centric approach
- There doesn’t appear to be a significant difference between their target customers and those who would be interested in their services based on the information provided.
- Core value proposition: Stratinn helps businesses develop compelling propositions that bridge the gap between business strategy and marketing, enabling growth and improved customer engagement.
- Benefits they provide:
- Clarity on growth strategy and direction
- Improved alignment between business goals and marketing efforts
- Enhanced customer understanding and engagement
- Differentiation from competitors
- Increased potential for business growth
- Better internal alignment and execution of strategy
- Services:
- Proposition development and refinement
- Market and customer insight gathering
- Creative strategy development
- Testing and iteration of ideas
- Employee engagement and buy-in facilitation
- Growth strategy consulting
Stratinn emphasises their unique approach, which combines robust insight, creative thought, real testing, and people engagement to develop effective propositions for their clients. They position themselves as a team of diverse experts who blend analytical and creative skills to deliver practical, growth-oriented solutions for B2B companies.”
So, what did we learn?
Overall, the analysis of the Intro deck matched almost perfectly with what we thought we wanted to say and portray. However, the website assessment surfaced some perspectives of odd and conflicting things that we didn’t intend or realise we were saying. This immediately flagged an inconsistency across our brand in the market we didn’t know we had. As a small business, we have very few sources of information to inform potential clients about what we do and not all of it was pulling in the same direction or reinforcing our proposition. Just imagine what this might be like for larger businesses where the level of collateral and touchpoints is far greater. That insight alone was worth the experiment.
Digging a little deeper and focusing on the specifics, the AI’s interpretation of Stratinn’s proposition also highlighted:
The ‘Good’ – Alignment with the intended proposition
- Our core focus on helping businesses grow was front and centre of our messaging.
- The blend of analytical and creative approaches was clearly communicated across our content. It was viewed as a USP.
- We are effectively emphasising how our work to develop compelling yet commercial proposition can align strategy, products, and marketing efforts within organisations. This a crucial perspective we want to communicate to our customers.
The ‘Gaps’ – Where what we say misaligns to our intended proposition
- Target Customer Confusion: While we focus on complex B2B businesses, often larger corporations, the AI perceived a focus on SMEs. This suggests a need for clearer communication about their target market.
- Service Focus Discrepancy: The AI highlighted ‘product and service development’ as a key offering on our website compared to ‘proposition development’ in our intro deck. This highlighted an inconsistency we weren’t aware of, with the sales collateral being closer to our intended focus.
- Service line confusion: The AI picked up on a large range of services in both assessments, highlighting a potentially confusing service offer.
What now?
Based on this rapid AI evaluation, we’re going to take some tactical actions:
- Refine Website Copy: Clarify the focus on complex B2B businesses and large corporations as the primary target market.
- Enhance Service Articulation: Clearly define and consistently communicate core services across all collateral, emphasising proposition development over product development.
- Align Online and Offline Messaging: Ensure consistency between website positioning and other sales materials.
- Emphasise Unique Approach: Further highlight the distinctive blend of commercial and creative to make the USP stand out more.
Reflections on the experiment
This experiment has demonstrated the power of using AI to gain a different, unbiased and rapid perspective on our proposition. It’s revealed blind spots in our communication and highlighted areas of our messaging may be misaligned with our intentions (in seconds). It exceeded expectations and provided clear tactical improvements.
For you, we believe it offers a great starting point and foundation to work from. A simple, quick experiment you can run which supports:
- Regular Proposition Checks: Conduct periodic AI-driven assessments to ensure your external articulation of the proposition aligns with your intention.
- Consistency is Key: Ensure messaging is consistent across all platforms, touchpoints and materials.
- Clarity is King: highlight and remove confusion, jargon and stuff that simply doesn’t resonate with your target customers
- Balance Features and Benefits: Ensure your messaging clearly articulates not just what you do, but the value it brings to clients.
However, there are a few of health warnings (sorry!).
Firstly, to truly understand what your target audience(s) think and feel about your proposition, you need to ask them. AI shouldn’t replace this insight and feedback, no matter how tempting it is.
Secondly, AI isn’t a proposition silver bullet. It requires you to have an idea and articulation of your proposition to work from. A strong proposition should be built on robust insights into your customers, competitors, and capabilities. AI can be used effectively to support you to develop options, assess, refine and make tactical improvements. However, it shouldn’t be relied on to create your proposition from scratch without these inputs. And unfortunately, that’s where the hard work is.
Thirdly, the power of a proposition extends beyond the external articulation. A proposition should guide what you do as a business as well as what you say. Using AI to refine the proposition and your external message should only be the starting point in your journey. The next step is to make sure have a plan of action to fully deliver on the proposition promises you have. Using your proposition to guide how your business is set up, what activity you prioritise and the experiences you want to deliver to customers.
However, whether you are a small consultancy like us or a large corporate, understanding how your value proposition is perceived and evolving it with the aid of AI, can be the difference between stagnation and growth. So, are you ready to see what AI has to say about your proposition? The insights might just surprise you.
