One of the most important and highly effective communication strategies available to modern businesses is the value proposition. Just like an attractive business logo, it allows you to spark the interest of your audience and lets them give you the time of day to explain your brand.
But to write an effective value proposition, you must first understand what it is.
What Is A Value Proposition?
It’s a promise of what your customer can expect when using your products or services. In other words, it’s a promise of value. Its purpose it to help your customer understand exactly which problem your products or services solve for them, and why you are a better choice than your competitor.
Suffice to say, the value proposition is what sets your business apart from the competition. It should explain to the customer exactly what you offer. But it’s not just about helping your customer understand what your products or services do, it’s (more importantly) about telling them what they can gain from supporting your brand.
Your value proposition should, therefore, be the center of your marketing team’s efforts and should also be the highlight in all your marketing campaigns.
What Makes The Value Proposition Effective?
The first thing your value proposition should do is grab the attention of your target audience. Having hooked them, it should then proceed to explain in few words the ‘what’ (the product or service) as well as the ‘how’ (how the product or service solves their needs).
Factors to consider for writing a value proposition include:
- It must be clear and easy to understand.
- It must communicate what customers can gain from your products or services.
- It must communicate why your business is the better choice.
Steps To Create The Best Value Proposition For Your Business
-
Define Your Purpose
One of the main killers of an effective value proposition is not understanding your own business’s purpose. You can tell a lot about a business when reading its mission and vision, like why it exists and whether it supports charitable initiatives.
Your vision is a long-term goal and defines what you want to achieve with your business. Keep in mind that the vision is dynamic and must be adapted as your business grows and reaches its goals. You can take the expert advice from Diggity Marketing with your dilemmas. Your mission comprises smaller, short- to medium-term goals aimed at helping you achieve your vision. Once you know what your vision is, ask yourself how you will achieve that goal. The answers will form the basis of your mission statement.
-
Understand Your Target Audience Personas
One thing about weak and ineffective value propositions is that they are created without the target audience in mind. Instead of helping the target audience understand how a business can meet their needs, such value propositions focus on the business itself. Remember, your business exists to serve its customers, not itself.
For you to create a value proposition that communicates the intended message effectively, you will need to research and define your audience personas. This means understanding aspects like demographics, behaviors, and interests.
-
Do A Competitive Analysis
Remember that the first goal of an effective value proposition is to grab the attention of your target audience. Only after having done this can it proceed to provide valuable information.
However, in order to do this, it is important that you stand out from the competition. To stand out, you must study them to find out why they are successful and why they have a large market share.
Having done this, you will be able to develop winning marketing strategies that will put you ahead of your competitors. From this, you’ll be able to create a value proposition that appeals to your target market much more effectively.
-
Create A List Of Benefits
Sit down with your business partners and marketing team, and brainstorm on the various benefits that clients can receive from using your products or services.
Try to come up with as many of these as possible and divide them into both functional and emotional benefits.
Functional benefits have to do with the actual physical benefits while emotional benefits have to do with intangible results such as getting rid of confusion, boosting self-esteem, and greater confidence.
Once you have come up with a list, you will use these when writing the proposition.
-
Create A Rough Value Proposition
Now it’s time to formulate your value proposition. Note that it’s only a rough draft that you will edit and refine to come up with the final version.
When writing, focus on the factors that sets your business apart from the competition and on the benefits of using your products and services.
Remember that you need to write it in a way that appeals to your target audience persona, which you defined in step two above. Write the proposition as if you’re writing it for just one person—your perfect customer.
Keep the language simple, succinct, and impactful.
-
Perfect The Value Proposition
Now that you have a rough value proposition, it’s time to edit it and perfect it.
The key steps that you will need to follow are:
- In the headline, state the main benefit to the customer.
- Under a subheading, go into detail on what your business offers, and why.
- Consider adding a visual element such as a video or image.
Keep in mind that once complete, your value proposition will be on your website and most of your marketing materials. Therefore, it must instantly grab attention and directly address how your business can solve your customers’ problems.
Final Word
With the above steps, you can craft a unique and highly engaging value proposition to communicate your business’s value to customers. Remember to keep your target audience in mind when formulating your value proposition.
Also, it means little to have a good value proposition if you don’t use it effectively. It should be one of the first things people see whenever they interact with your brand, so make sure it stands out on your website and in your marketing campaigns.
