A Crucial Improvement for Project or Brand Positioning: Apparent vs. Discovered Value

The value people who are just scanning your work see, which causes them to give your work a chance, is very different than the value which people who spend time with your work understand is really on offer.

Most of us message the DISCOVERED value. How is your APPARENT value, really? And if you can’t tell, go talk to a few members of your audience to understand what, exactly, they’re seeking.

This is exactly what I did before launching the Kitchen.

I talked to a handful of folks on a test-run of the Creator Roundtables, and then I asked them two questions:

1) If you become a subscriber to the Creator Kitchen, what do you hope will be different as a result?

2) What is preventing you from creating that type of work right now? In other words, why do you need/want something like the Creator Kitchen anyway?

Some things I was not prepared to message as valuable inside the Kitchen, but wound up part of the APPARENT value in how I positioned it eventually, included: betting more on really powerful, Big Ideas to drive their projects to new heights (because people know them when they encounter them, but don’t really have an approach for developing their own) and the desire to ship great work consistently (because people have experienced a past success and aren’t sure where to go or how to keep building).

Of course I knew at the time that potential members would want to develop more powerful big ideas, and of course I knew they’d want to ship great work consistently. But in the positioning, I was not emphasizing “ideas” or “consistency” enough. I needed to capture the apparent value of the membership better, and talking to potential members did that.

Build on my ideas, ask questions, or offer quick feedback in the comments below.