Why your marketing problem may really be a value proposition problem

Most founders think they have a marketing problem when people are not responding.

The website is not converting. The sales message is not landing. The deck feels too flat. The customer does not immediately understand the product. The route to market feels slow.

Sometimes the answer is more marketing activity.

But often, the real issue sits much deeper.

The value proposition is not yet clear enough.

During a recent workshop for Focused For Business’ community of startups Focused Founders, Carly Osman-Holme joined founders for a go-to-market clinic. Carly is a brand strategist, fractional CMO, advisor and founder whose work focuses on helping businesses get unstuck when growth has stalled, the proposition feels unclear, or the founder has too many possible ideas and not enough focus.

Carly described her own “superpower” as asking questions. Not just polite questions, but the kind that keep digging.

Why are you doing that?
Why does that matter?
Why should the customer care?
Why would they choose you over another option?

Her point was that what presents as a marketing challenge is often not just a marketing challenge. It may be a question of how the business is perceived, how clearly it stands out from competitors, whether the pricing strategy supports the offer, and whether the founder has got to the heart of why the customer should care.

That distinction matters.

Because more marketing will not fix a proposition that people do not understand.

Marketing is not just tactics

Founders often think of marketing as activity.

A LinkedIn post. A new ad campaign. A website refresh. A video. A flyer. A set of emails. A sharper sales deck.

All of those tactics can help.

But Carly encouraged founders to look beneath the activity and ask what is happening at the heart of the business.

What are you really selling?
Who is it for?
What problem does it solve?
Why does that problem matter now?
What emotional or commercial shift are you promising?
What language does the customer uses to describe the problem?

Without those answers, marketing can become noisy and unfocused.

You can create more content and still fail to land the point. You can spend more money and still attract the wrong people. You can explain more features and still miss the real reason someone might buy.

That is why value proposition matters.

It gives every marketing activity a clearer job.

A functional message is not always a compelling message

One founder brought a challenge around an innovative B2B retail concept.

The proposition was commercially interesting. It offered brands a way to access a high-quality physical retail environment without taking on all the usual risk, operational complexity and long-term commitment associated with running a store.

On paper, the business case had strong ingredients.

It addressed expensive retail space. It reduced operational burden. It created a more flexible route into physical retail. It also had a consumer experience sitting behind it, powered by data, technology and personal service.

But Carly noticed a gap.

The description was functional.

It explained what the model did.

But it did not yet fully sell the dream.

The founder described a concept that could change how people shop, creating a more personal, immersive experience where customers are helped to discover items that genuinely suit them.

That was far more compelling than a functional explanation of space, staffing, technology and profitability.

The lesson for founders is simple.

A customer needs to understand what you do.

But understanding alone does not always create desire.

Sell the outcome, not only the mechanism

In the retail example, the technology mattered.

It helped match customers with clothing that suited them. It enabled a different kind of in-store experience. It supported the commercial model.

But Carly pushed the founder to lead more strongly with the outcome.

The strongest commercial insight was not simply that the store was efficient. It was that many customers leave fashion stores empty-handed because they do not find the items that would actually look good on them.

They may not see the right dress. They may not walk into the right part of the store. They may dismiss something on a hanger that would work beautifully once tried on.

That was the stronger hook.

For retailers, the problem is not only store efficiency.

The real problem is that customers leave without buying, even when the right products may already be in the store.

That gives the proposition a sharper commercial and emotional edge:

Help more customers find clothes they love, before they leave empty-handed.

That kind of statement is more powerful because it connects the retailer’s commercial need with the customer’s emotional experience.

B2B still needs emotion

There is a common mistake in B2B marketing.

Because the buyer is a business, founders assume the message should be purely rational.

Cost savings matter. So do operational efficiency, risk reduction, margin improvement and return on investment.

But Carly reminded the group that people still buy with emotion, even inside companies.

A brand director, CFO, operations lead or CEO may be thinking about the business case, but they are also thinking about personal risk.

Will this make me look good?
Can I sell this internally?
Will my team support it?
Could this help me hit my targets?
Will it create unnecessary work?
What happens if I back this and it fails?

That matters because many B2B sales involve more than one decision maker.

The person in the first conversation may not be the only person who needs to say yes.

A strong B2B message should make the buyer feel:

This solves a problem we already have.
I can explain it clearly to my colleagues.
It makes commercial sense.
The risk feels manageable.
This could make us look smart, modern and commercially focused.

That is not just logic.

It is confidence.

Help your buyer sell the idea internally

In complex B2B sales, the founder may win the first conversation, but the person they speak to often has to sell the idea internally.

That is where many deals stall.

A founder may have a strong meeting with one person in the organisation, but that person then needs to take the idea to operations, finance, marketing, retail or the leadership team.

If the proposition is hard to explain, it weakens as it travels.

That means founders need to create tools that help the buyer carry the story onwards.

For the retail proposition discussed in the session, Carly suggested that a short, energetic video could help. Not a dull explainer, but something closer to a sizzle reel. Something that sells the dream, shows the experience and makes it easier for someone inside the brand to say:

“You know that problem we have? This could solve it.”

The broader lesson applies to many startups.

Your marketing should not only persuade the person in front of you.

It should help that person persuade the next person.

The best hook may already be in the conversation

One of the most useful parts of a clinic format is that the strongest message often appears naturally while the founder is talking.

In the retail discussion, the strongest hook was not the technology.

It was the commercial problem of people leaving a store without buying, despite there being products that could work for them.

That made the opportunity immediately easier to understand.

A retailer can see the problem. A commercial lead can care about it. A brand director can link it to customer experience. An investor can see the size of the opportunity.

Founders often overlook their best hooks because they are too close to the business.

They may think the technology is the story.

But the customer usually cares about the problem and the result.

The technology is the enabler.

If people are confused, go back to the value proposition

The second founder challenge came from a business built around community commerce.

The model allowed people in local areas to buy together and collect from a nearby collection point. The approach could reduce delivery costs, lower carbon emissions, limit waste and help people save money.

The business already had strong signs of demand. It had grown through word of mouth, built a local customer base and proved that people were willing to buy through the model.

The challenge was not whether people valued it.

They clearly did.

The challenge was how to explain it in one sentence as the company prepared to grow into new areas.

Was the message about saving money? Buying together? Community? Convenience? Lower waste? Sustainability? Local collection? Collective purchasing power? Product quality?

All of those things could be true.

But not all of them could be the lead message.

Carly’s response was clear: the business needed to define its value proposition.

Not by choosing a clever slogan first, but by understanding the deeper customer motivation.

Customers may value you for reasons you did not expect

The founder explained that different customers valued the service for different reasons.

Some cared about savings. Others cared about quality. Some liked the convenience. Others enjoyed the community feeling. Busy parents valued saving time. More price-sensitive households valued affordability. Other customers liked access to good quality products without overthinking the purchase.

That range can feel confusing.

But Carly pointed out that there may still be a “red thread” connecting these customers.

The job is to find it.

That requires deeper customer conversations.

Not only asking why people buy the product, but exploring their lives, routines, priorities, language and trade-offs.

What does “fresh” mean to them?
What does “saving” allow them to do?
What does convenience feel like in their week?
What do they dislike about current shopping options?
What do they mean when they say “community”?
Are they buying with friends, neighbours or people like them?

The nuance matters because the same word can mean different things to different people.

If founders do not understand the customer’s meaning, the marketing may use the right word in the wrong way.

Listen for the customer’s language

The discussion highlighted the importance of language.

Words such as friends, neighbours and community sound related, but they create different meanings.

Friends suggests personal relationships that may not be local.
Neighbours suggests proximity, convenience and local trust.
Community may suggest shared values, stage of life, location or behaviour.

Each word points the proposition in a different direction.

That is why founders need to pay attention not only to what customers say, but how they say it.

Carly gave a useful example from another brand she had worked with. Customers kept using the word “fresh”, but they did not mean fresh from the fridge or garden. They meant fresh in taste and texture. Once that nuance was understood, the proposition became clearer.

This is the kind of work that sharpens marketing.

Not guessing.

Listening.

Then turning customer language into a proposition that feels instantly recognisable.

A strong proposition helps you choose where to grow

The second challenge was also about growth.

The business had grown locally through word of mouth, but now needed to expand into new areas.

Carly’s advice was not to jump straight to mass awareness.

Instead, she suggested using the value proposition to identify where the model would work best next.

If the red thread is community, convenience and a particular attitude to shopping, then the next locations should be chosen because they contain more people with that same mindset.

That might mean looking for areas where people already show strong community behaviours, local sharing habits or interest in more sustainable ways of buying. It might also mean looking at where similar community-led platforms already have traction.

Carly also picked up on something that had already worked for the founder: trusted local connectors.

In one area, a respected local person had introduced the business and helped create rapid interest.

That is important.

For a community-led model, growth may not come from broad advertising first.

It may come from finding the right local connectors, in the right kinds of communities, with the right proposition.

Growth can be grassroots and still be strategic

Grassroots growth can sound informal.

But it does not have to be random.

For a community-led business, a strategic grassroots model might include identifying areas with the right behaviours, finding trusted local connectors, testing the proposition in a small area before expanding, using early members to invite others, collecting customer language quickly and adapting the message based on what people respond to.

That is still a go-to-market strategy.

It is just not a mass-market one.

For founders, this is an important distinction.

Not every growth engine starts with ads, PR or big campaigns.

Some start with trust.

The proposition comes before the campaign

Both founder challenges came back to the same core issue.

Before deciding on the website, video, campaign, sales deck or growth plan, the business needs to be clear on the value proposition.

For the B2B retail proposition, that meant moving beyond a functional explanation and leading with the commercial and emotional problem for retailers.

For the community commerce proposition, it meant identifying the red thread across different customer motivations and finding the language that makes the proposition easy to understand in a new area.

The work is different for each business, but the principle is the same.

If the proposition is unclear, the marketing will work too hard.

If the proposition is sharp, every tactic becomes easier.

A simple test for founders

Carly’s approach gives founders a useful test.

Before creating another campaign, ask:

Can a customer explain what we do after reading one sentence?
Can they see why it matters to them?
Does the message lead with the outcome, not just the mechanism?
Are we using the customer’s language, or our own internal language?
Have we spoken to customers deeply enough to understand their real motivation?
Could our buyer explain this to someone else inside their organisation?
Are we selling the dream as well as the function?

If the answer is no, the issue may not be marketing activity.

It may be the proposition.

Getting underneath the problem

Towards the end of the session, Carly brought the conversation back to something that sits at the heart of her work at Sprowt: what looks like the problem is not always the actual problem.

A business might think it needs a new marketing strategy, a better website, a sharper campaign or a new route to market. Often, though, those are symptoms of something sitting further underneath.

Perhaps the proposition has become blurred. The customer has changed. The category has moved. The business has grown but the story has not grown with it. Or there are simply too many possible directions and no clear sense of which one matters most.

Sprowt works with businesses at exactly those moments.

The starting point is not another tactic. It is stepping outside the business and looking back in: understanding what has changed, what is still true, what customers actually care about and where the real opportunity now sits.

That might lead to a sharper value proposition, a different audience, a new positioning, a clearer growth opportunity or, sometimes, the realisation that the problem everyone has been trying to solve was never the problem in the first place.

As Carly explained throughout the session, the answer usually comes from asking better questions and being prepared to keep digging until you get underneath the obvious answer.

Because if a business is not clear on what it is really selling, why it matters and who should care most, more marketing will only amplify the confusion. 

Want to sharpen your value proposition before you raise?

If you are building your business prior to attracting funding and want to strengthen the way you communicate your proposition, traction and commercial opportunity, Focused For Business’ Focused Founders programme helps founders get clarity on the things that matter, make progress and build the traction that’s required before approaching investors.

 Find out more about Focused Founders here:  https://focusedforbusiness.com/focused-founders/

FAQs – Value proposition