This is a series about building and testing your messaging, positioning, and value proposition

#1 - Messaging & Positioning Template for Social Impact Leaders
#2 - Messaging & Positioning Template: Core Unmet Needs
#3 - Messaging & Positioning Template: Ideal Client Profile
#4 - Messaging & Positioning Template: Differentiated Solution
#5 - Messaging & Positioning Template: Marketplace Category
#6 - Messaging & Positioning Template: Overcoming Objections
#7 - Messaging & Positioning Template: Testing
#8 - Messaging & Positioning Template: Learning from Data

Core Unmet Need: The Foundation of Your Messaging and Positioning Statement

While the unique qualities of your offerings may seem obvious to you, customers often struggle to understand them or find them valuable.

The first step to solving this problem is to have a clear and compelling statement of the core unmet need you address.

Getting this right is the foundation of your messaging and positioning.

At Joyful Ventures, our innovation advisors specialize in helping social impact leaders like you create people-first innovation processes that maximize your and your organization’s impact.

What Are Core Unmet Needs for Messaging and Positioning?

Building on our previous exploration of niching down, we now turn to a critical concept that can enhance your positioning: core unmet needs. This is the gap between customer outcomes and existing solutions is where you want to explore.

Identifying true unmet needs is both an art and a science.

While customers often voice dissatisfaction, the challenge lies in distinguishing between action-driving issues and mere annoyances.

To master this crucial skill, focus on the key areas in the formulation below, which serves as a starting point for your iterations. I’ll describe what each bracketed item means in turn below.

Core unmet need

[“Solution Name is”] a [marketplace category] helping [ideal client / target market] like you get [dream outcome] [without top 1-2 biggest limitations of today’s solutions]

While “marketplace category” is sequenced in the beginning of the template above, I recommend tackling it at the end of your analysis, after going through “unique solutions.”

1) Ideal Client Market

Identifying your target market segment is the foundation of the entire value proposition pyramid.

Different markets have different unmet needs and constraints, requiring different messages. If you switch your market later, you’ll have to revise your entire value proposition.

⚠️ To use your time efficiently, clarify your target market first before continuing the exercises below (but feel free to skim/read the rest of this so you understand what’s upcoming).

This is the foundation of the entire pyramid, so again please do the target market exercises first if you’re struggling with connecting with your audience today. ⚠️

Here’s an example target market we’ll reference throughout the piece: fundraising and development teams at mid-sized community health nonprofits in Sunbelt states (where states are cutting back on Medicare spend).

Compared to the market of “US-based nonprofits,” you can likely guess the target identified above will have more specific needs.

2) Dream Outcome

At first glance, this might seem easy to answer. But this can be an incredibly tricky item to nail concisely if you lack deep insight into your market.

There are three common challenges I often see here that harm your ability articulate this:

• Not Unmet: You focus on outcomes your segment doesn’t perceive needing help with
• Not Core: You focus on needs that don’t ultimately matter
• Generic: You frame the outcome too generically, not using their language

As you try the exercises below, draw from real data about your target segment. For instance:

Dig up your sales and customer notes and look for patterns

Look discussions on online groups and forums where your target segment hangs out

Talk to your target segment directly (I have more guidance on that in the series)

1) Not sure if it's unmet?

Identify common intensely-desired improvement areas in your segment.

Pinpoint the one or two domains where customers actively seek better solutions. This laser focus will guide you to the most impactful opportunities for innovation. Remember, we're looking for areas where customers feel they need help or improvement, not just what they consider important.

This distinction is crucial in identifying truly unmet needs because it implies existing solutions or workarounds – i.e., your de facto competitors in the market – are not doing their job. That’s where you have an opportunity to help them.

Here’s an example Apple iTunes used to great advantage. Before its launch, the rampant piracy facilitated by platforms like Napster highlighted a significant gap in the music industry: consumers wanted easy access to music without the legal risks associated with illegal downloads.

iTunes, which was targeting a similar target segment, addressed this need by providing a legal platform for purchasing individual songs, allowing a subset of users who wanted to get music conveniently and legally without the obligation of buying entire albums.

This model catered to a growing public preference for single tracks over full albums, effectively tapping into a core unmet need for flexibility and accessibility in music consumption.

For instance, for mid-sized community health nonprofits, your target segment in our running example, might say they value having a strong programmatic impact; in fact it’s core to their mission. But they may feel that they have that handled, with an extremely internal capable team.

When you dig deeper, identifying other areas where they want more help or improvement, they bring up fundraising from donors. This is a signal this is a part of a capability they are less able to handle internally and would be open to external help, like your solution.

2) Not sure if it’s core?

Identify the stakes.

Understand the consequences of inaction – and the rewards of solving the problem. The more concrete and significant these outcomes, the more vital the need.

Look for potential losses (or opportunity costs) in wealth, relationships, or health as indicators of truly pressing issues (typically in the b2b context, the first two are most relevant).

For example, consider if they risk losing (or simply losing the opportunity to gain) millions in grant funding, revenue from major donors or client churn, or crucial accreditations to remain in (or start lucrative new) business.

Remember, the most critical problems typically have substantial financial or emotional implications that outweigh the costs to adopting new solutions.

In fact, 95% of complaints often don't represent true problems. They’re actually just annoyances people are okay living with.

3) Not sure if it’s generic?

Define targets and ideal end result

How would they specifically define what “good” looks like for the area of improvement they most need help with? This creates enough specificity to target a particular audience with a clear vision of their desired end result.

Example: Your target segment might say their top unmet need — where they seek more help and improvement — involves fundraising and donations.

There’s a major problem, what does that actually mean?

Define

By asking them how they are defining progress on this need, you might get the answer “increase donor engagement by 20% in the next year.” Now you understand they really mean “donor engagement” because they are suffering from high donor churn rates.

Dream

Furthermore, understand why that target matters to them: ask your target what achieving that target looks like to them in a perfect world. Why is that meaningful to them?

This is especially helpful for audiences where human emotions are critical, like in social impact or business-to-consumer contexts. (This sometimes matters a little less in financially-driven numbers-based business contexts.)

For example, asking the question above might elicit the response "In a perfect world, achieving this target means we’ve not only raised more money but also fostered a vibrant community of passionate supporters who feel deeply connected to our mission. This engagement would lead to increased attendance at our events, more volunteers stepping up to help, and donors actively sharing our mission with their networks.”

Clearly, the nonprofit emphasizes feelings of being valued, appreciated, and connected to a community united in purpose.

These can all be used in framing your dream outcome phase, like “stronger, engaged donor community” that taps into these values instead of just framing the outcome as “increasing donor engagement.”

4) Prioritize your top core unmet need to target

From the exercises above, you’ll have gathered a large list of needs.

To create focus — as you should really only focus on the top most compelling need in your statement, prioritize them systematically based on three criteria, scoring each from 1-5 (high).

How critical is it? Make sure there’s a clear link to concrete negative consequence or opportunity costs.

Are there active problem solving attempts & investment?

Tie breakers

How pervasive is the need among your target segment? The more widespread the unmet need is, the wider the larger the market you have.

You have direct experience and/or subject matter expertise that helps you understand the nuances of this need.

Evidence quality. Please refer back to my discussion of this in the ideal client piece.

3) Limitations of Current Solutions

This is another challenging item if you lack deep insight to your target market.

In my experience, I often see leaders starting with their solution set and thinking of what seems unique to them.

This is okay as a first step.

But what truly matters is what your segment actually believes their needs are unmet (rather than what you feel is unique).

As stated before, the unmet gap between their dream outcome and existing solutions is the foundation for your solution.

A) Identify the top existing solutions

Identify the top solutions your target uses to achieve its core unmet need, along with their costs (time and money).

Investigate both direct competitors, such as specific companies or tools, and workarounds like DIY solutions like Google Sheets workflows.

Needs that are not being actively addressed may indicate that they are not significant concerns.

It is important to recognize that one major indirect competitor is inaction, given the time and financial costs associated with adopting new solutions.

B) Dig into their limitations

Why are the top most commonly used solutions or marketplace categories not working — and why do those gaps matter to them?

The intensity of these pain points often directly correlates with the potential impact of your solution on customer satisfaction and loyalty.

If customers express significant frustrations, there's a strong opportunity for you to be helpful. If not, you may need to proactively explore the weaknesses of their current approach or reconsider the need you’re solving — perhaps it’s not very critical or “unmet” after all.

Additionally, substantial resource allocation signals that you have identified a genuine problem rather than a minor irritation. If customers are not currently spending money or time on resolving the issue, it may not be a real concern.

The added benefit is that this analysis, along with quantifying the stakes, helps you price your solution by providing comparison points. You can show how you avoid specific financial consequences and generate a stronger ROI than current solution costs given the benefits you generate.

Create a table

If you’re finding there’s a wide variety of options to choose from, start by creating a table and scoring each item on a scale from 1-5.

• How core it is: linked to concrete negative consequence
• Active problem solving attempts & investment
• How common it is among your target

Visualize

Optionally, consider visualizing this data in a 2x2 chart to clearly illustrate your unique value proposition. Your two axes can describe the top limitations your segment is missing and how those existing solutions and workarounds map onto those.

This helps you also identify the marketplace categories that you may have the best chance of winning given your competitors relative strengths and weaknesses versus yours.

Example

Let’s go back to the example of donor retention and engagement. Existing marketplace categories might include customer relationship management (CRM) systems, donor management systems, and fundraising platforms.

Hypothetically, let’s say your target market of community health nonprofits consistently find two limitations consistently leave them dissatisfied and searching for new solutions.

You uncovered this because you saw these were linked to a critical negative consequence — drastically reduced revenue linked to potential staff layoffs as well as 10+ hours of weekly staff time worth thousands a month — and they were actively trying to solve the below with ineffective workarounds.

The first limitation is that it is hard to manually track donor progress on their donor journey on the ground, with staff members finding it hard to use google forms or spreadsheets to track progress and qualitative information.

The second is that their CRM or DMS systems also lacked sufficient integrations between event management tools, resulting in lots of manual data entry or siloed data preventing a single view of their donor across their journey.

Bringing it all together

So here’s the core unmet need formula again.

Core unmet need

[“Solution Name is”] a [marketplace category] helping [ideal client / target market] like you get [dream outcome] [without top 1-2 biggest limitations of today’s solutions]

Applying this to the running community health example, you might brainstorm:

Core Unmet Need

DonorFamily is a donor engagement platform helping fundraising teams at community health nonprofits reduce donor churn by building healthy, engaged donor communities without manual data tracking and segmentation.

Key Item	Example
Dream Outcome	lifelong, engaged donor communities
Ideal client / target market	evidence-based development teams at public health nonprofits
Top limitation	without frustrating and manual donor data tracking
Marketplace Category	Donor engagement platform

As discussed above, ignore “marketplace category” for now. It will be discussed after we clarify your top differentiator, which will aid you in selecting a thoughtful marketplace category.

Next: Differentiated Solution

Now that we’ve established their dream outcome and why it’s unmet, let’s now dive deeply into how you will bridge that gap.

See the next article in the series below

This is a series about building and testing your messaging, positioning, and value proposition

#1 - Messaging & Positioning Template for Social Impact Leaders
#2 - Messaging & Positioning Template: Core Unmet Needs
#3 - Messaging & Positioning Template: Ideal Client Profile
#4 - Messaging & Positioning Template: Differentiated Solution
#5 - Messaging & Positioning Template: Marketplace Category
#6 - Messaging & Positioning Template: Overcoming Objections
#7 - Messaging & Positioning Template: Testing
#8 - Messaging & Positioning Template: Learning from Data

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Messaging and Positioning Template: Overcoming Objections Messaging and Positioning Template: Differentiated Solution

Dan Wu, JD/PhD

Messaging and Positioning Template: Core Unmet Needs