How Value Cases improve product messaging
Value Cases help marketers turn complex products into relatable messaging, align stakeholders across teams, and tell compelling stories. Learn how Value Cases can simplify technical jargon, unify internal messaging, and connect with your audience effectively.
Unlocking the power of Value Cases for strategic marketing
As marketers, especially in larger organizations, we face a constant challenge: translating the technical truth of a product or service into messaging that resonates with diverse audiences. We need a product positioning strategy to bridge the gap between technical teams, decision-makers, and customers. This is where Value Cases come in—a powerful tool we use at Open Strategy Partners (OSP) to help businesses align internal stakeholders, clarify product positioning, and ultimately connect more effectively with their target market.
At OSP, we have seen firsthand how Value Cases transform communication strategies and the way teams think about and approach their products. In this post, we’ll explore the value, power, and insight that Value Cases deliver—and how you can use them to take your marketing strategy to the next level.
What is a Value Case?
A Value Case is a structured approach to understanding and communicating the value of a product or service by breaking it down into three core elements: Benefits, Challenges, and Solutions.
- Benefit: What’s in it for the customer? This is all about painting a picture of how adopting your product will transform your customer’s business or daily operations. This is where you hook your audience by presenting a clear and compelling reason why they should care.
- Challenge: What’s stopping them from achieving that benefit today? This is where empathy comes into play. You identify the customer’s pain points, helping them recognize themselves in the scenario. By understanding their specific challenges, you validate their needs.
- Solution: How does your product solve the challenge and deliver the promised benefit? This is where you show the path to success, explaining how your product bridges the gap between where the customer is now and the transformation you promised.
By answering these three simple questions—What’s the benefit? What’s the challenge? What’s the solution?—you can distill complex ideas into focused, actionable messaging that speaks directly to your audience’s needs.
The power of Value Cases in action
At OSP, we’ve seen the power of Value Cases unfold across a variety of projects. Here’s how we’ve used this approach to help our clients clarify their messaging and drive success.
Aligning stakeholders across teams
One of the most common challenges large companies face is aligning different departments around a unified message. Take, for example, a project we worked on with a client in the B2B tech space. Their product was technically complex, but the challenge wasn’t just about communicating with their customers—it was also about getting their internal teams on the same page.
Working on the Value Map—OSP’s product positioning framework—of their offering, we helped them break down their product’s core value. We asked the Value Map questions above and linked every benefit the group came up with to a business need (a challenge) and how their product solved it. By answering these questions together, we created a Value Map that all teams—engineering, marketing, and sales—could rally behind.
The result? Instead of siloed departments creating disconnected messaging based on disconnected visions of their product, the entire company shared a vision of their product. This helped them speak the same language about it, and their external communication became more compelling and consistent. Internal alignment is often the first, critical step in transforming external communication.
Clarifying product market positioning
Value Cases aren’t just for aligning internal teams; they’re also incredibly effective when it comes to refining product positioning in the marketplace. Read more on Value Cases in the context of your brand positioning in our blog guide to value propositions.
For another client, a security-focused SaaS product, we used the Value Case framework to rethink how they communicated their offerings to potential customers. Their marketing had been focused on features, but what their customers really needed to understand was the value those features delivered.
By focusing on the benefit first—how their solution improved security outcomes for businesses—followed by the challenges customers faced in securing sensitive data, we were able to reposition their messaging. Instead of a dry list of features, we shifted to a narrative that showed their product as the key to solving critical pain points.
This reframing led to a much more resonant message, helping them better connect with decision-makers who were tasked with improving security for their companies.
How Value Cases improve product messaging
Value Cases offer more than just a better product messaging framework—they’re a strategic tool for marketers looking to drive business results. Here’s why:
- Simplify the Complex: As marketers, we are tasked with communicating about highly technical products or services. A Value Case simplifies the complex, turning technical jargon into relatable, benefit-driven messaging that resonates with your audience.
- Align Stakeholders: Marketing isn’t done in a vacuum. By using Value Cases, you can bring your entire organization together, ensuring that everyone—from engineers to executives—understands and communicates the same core value.
Tell a Better Story: Marketing is ultimately about storytelling. Value Cases provide the structure for a compelling narrative in which the customer is the hero, the challenge is the villain, and your product is the solution that saves the day.
Getting started with Value Cases
Creating effective Value Cases isn’t just about listing benefits, challenges, and solutions—it’s about understanding your customers deeply and using that understanding to craft product messaging that truly resonates. That’s where we come in.
At OSP, we specialize in helping companies like yours develop powerful Value Cases that not only align internal teams but also drive better communication with your target market. Whether you’re looking to clarify your product positioning, streamline your marketing messaging, or simply make complex technical products easier to understand, we’re here to help.
Let’s craft your next Value Case together!
Ready to unlock the power of Value Cases for your marketing strategy? Contact OSP today to learn how we can help you develop compelling messaging, align your teams, and connect with your audience.