How to give your agency’s value proposition some fizz

Recently, I’ve been sharing how I help agencies make the move from generalist (‘we do everything for anyone’) to specialist (‘we do this thing, for this type of client’).

We’ve looked at defining a narrower audience for your offering and how to create a more relevant proposition as a result. Now it’s time to bring that proposition to life; to make it sing and entice your target audience to act.

The template I shared last time is useful in bringing together the component parts of your proposition. However, it’s formulaic. And, if you’re like most agencies, you’ll probably fall into the trap of using familiar and tired language.

Now, before I go on, a caveat. I am NOT a qualified copywriter. I write. I have a certain style. I read books and articles on how to get better. Every so often, I’ll come up with a great turn of phrase or sentence (or so I’m told). But copywriting doesn’t always come naturally or easily.

However, if you’ve read anything I’ve written on agency positioning, you’ll know I have a strong point of view on language. Agency land is plagued with jargon; words and phrases that are overused, obvious or irrelevant. Full-service, award-winning, data-driven, honest, innovative, integrated, results-focused and passionate, to name but a few.

Fortunately, people way more qualified than me agree:

“Jargon is the hallmark of a pretentious ass”

…said a certain Mr. David Ogilvy way back in 1982. Almost 40 years later, the amount of waffle and guff is worse than ever.

It’s not easy to cut out the jargon completely. But if you don’t give it a go, you might spend a load of time on your value proposition only to end up where you started; sounding like everyone else.

That’s why your choice of language is key. So, here are a few things to consider when trying to inject your value proposition with a bit of fizz:

Write in the way you speak

I guess we lean on jargon because of its familiarity. It’s easy (and therefore comforting) to use the same language as everyone else on our websites and in our proposals. There are also certain technical terms that are unavoidable.

But listen (I mean really listen) to the conversations amongst your team and especially with your clients. Is jargon that prevalent in everyday conversation? I’m guessing not.

So why not write in the same way as you speak. Use colloquial, conversational language.

Find a non-obvious way of saying the obvious

It isn’t just the language of agencies that is overused and tired. In my opinion, it’s also the language of business: sales, revenue, growth, market share. Yawn. Maybe I just spend too much time looking at agency websites, but those words just don’t compute with me anymore.

Can they be avoided? In certain instances, I think so. For example, when working with a performance agency on their positioning, we realised that the majority of their clients are second or third in their markets. They are challengers to the main player.

It would have been easy to go with the obvious and stick ‘sales’ and ‘market share’ in their proposition. But then I remembered something one of their clients said to me; “we’re looking to close the gap on Brand X. We know we will never overtake them, but we want to make their life difficult”.

‘Close the gap’…what a wonderful way of succinctly expressing what any challenger brand is trying to do. So, their one-liner ended up as…

‘We help challenger brands close the gap on the leading players in their markets’.

It’s much more emotive than sales, revenue and market share, wouldn’t you agree?

This shows how important it is to speak to your clients during the process of repositioning. They are the ones (hopefully) experiencing the benefits and impact of your work. Take note of the language they use and reflect it back in your proposition where it makes sense.

Inject some personality

When you read aloud the copy on an agency’s website, it creates an immediate impression. An agency might come across as formal, light-hearted, upbeat, confident, sincere, adventurous, easy-going, positive, humble, principled or cheerful.

Consider how you want your agency to be perceived by the outside world and especially by your target audience. For example, I tend to be quite self-deprecating. I can also be a touch sarcastic. These elements of my personality come out in my proposition and writing. It makes it authentic.

Spend some time coming up with four or five adjectives to describe the personality of your agency and reflect these in your language and tone.

Go all George Orwell on your copy

In his essay, Politics and the English Language (1946), George Orwell criticised the ‘ugly and inaccurate’ written English of his time. He went on to outline six rules to remedy the situation:

1) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

2) Never use a long word where a short one will do.

3) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

4) Never use the passive where you can use the active.

5) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

6) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Besides our shared distaste for jargon, I particularly like points 2) and 3). They encourage you to create a succinct value proposition that gets to the point and is easily understood.

What next?

In its purest form, your value proposition is an internal statement. It provides clarity on why you exist and what you intend to make happen for your target audience.

Externally, it forms the basis for your website copy, presentations, social media profiles, directory listings, press releases, email footers and so on. Therefore, I find the most useful next step is to use the value proposition statement to create a messaging template containing an elevator pitch, one-liner and (possibly) a tag line.

Let’s take a quick look at each of these:

The elevator pitch

If you had 30 seconds in a lift (sorry, I’m English) with your dream client, what would you say about your agency to pique their interest? That’s the principle of an elevator pitch.

I prefer the idea that you have just 10 seconds because it forces you to cut out the waffle. Anyone listening to a 30-second elevator pitch would die of boredom before they reached the top floor.

If we go back to our value proposition template, trim it down to include just the following:

We work with…(markets / audiences)

…helping them to…(problems / opportunities)

…that…(benefits / outcomes)

Deliberately avoid talking about your services. Why? Firstly, because a good elevator pitch should create a sense of intrigue. It doesn’t give everything away. It should lead to a question; “that sounds interesting, how do you do that then?”

Secondly, if you mention your services too soon, you’ll be too quickly pigeon-holed (“oh god, not another bloody SEO agency”).

And thirdly, because your services matter much less than you might think.

One-liner

Your one-liner is a slimmed-down version of the elevator pitch, the sort of thing that might be used as the headline copy on your website or in your email footer. For example, mine is:

Helping go-getting agencies craft a winning approach to business development.

…or it will be if I ever get my bloody website live. Watch this space.

Tag line or slogan

Shorter again, this is a few words to express your agency’s philosophy; the sort of thing that would sit underneath your logo. Perhaps one of the most famous examples is McCann’s ‘Truth well told’.

Be really careful with this. The world is littered with crappy tag lines. I came across this useful article that that lists the tagline of 700 global agencies. You can make your own mind up as to which are good, bad or indifferent.

Lastly, play a game of buzzword bingo

Before you sign it all off, have another look over your statements. How many times do any of the words and phrases in this article pop up? Down a drink for every one you find.

In all seriousness, it’s hard to avoid the language of agencies and business entirely. But, if you follow the advice above, you’ll get pretty close. And come the end, your agency will stand out simply by avoiding the same industry lingo that thousands of others have fallen prey to.

You’ll also find language that is authentic to your agency’s culture. And by listening to your clients, more relevant to their aspirations.

And if you still can’t get rid of the jargon and want someone to cast a (very) critical eye over it all, give me a shout.

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