Why Value Propositions Matter (and How to Write One)

Shoppers are inundated with choice. Hop on any major ecommerce platform and thousands of results can return on a single search. 

Niche electronics like smart speakers? Five hundred and fifty nine. 

More common household items such as organisers? More than one hundred thousand listings on Amazon vying for your attention.

Of course, this competition is by no means exclusive to B2C brands. Managed service providers for IT services are a dime a dozen. The same goes for marketing platforms, data visualisation apps and customer relationship (CRM) platforms – very rarely does a business stand alone in its niche.

So what can a business do to stand out when amongst the scores of competitors offering the same thing? How can you convince consumers that your business offers the best service or product?

This is why value propositions are so important. 

A value proposition is a concise statement that summarises why a customer should choose a product or service, highlighting the unique value the offering delivers. It effectively communicates the specific benefits that make a company’s product or service attractive, differentiating it from competitors.

Let’s take a bit of a deep dive into what value propositions are and how they can help you stand out and differentiate yourself in a sea of noise.

The Building Blocks of A Value Proposition

Value propositions typically have the following elements: a header, a short paragraph, and a strong visual component.

Header

The header is your lead statement, summarising  the primary benefit of your product or service. 

New York-based prescription eyewear brand Warby Parker, places their commitment to affordability at the heart of their lead statement. It’s the first thing you see when you search for the brand: “Warby Parker offers high-quality eyeglasses, sunglasses, contacts, and eye exams at an affordable price.”

Sub-Header

The sub-header answers more questions for your consumers, and illustrates more problems it can solve. This section can be three to four sentences long.

Salesforce does this by communicating the real-world benefits of the software and clarifying the ease with which the service can be trialled in four short and sweet sentences: “Unite marketing, sales, and service in a single app. Try Salesforce Starter Suite today. There’s nothing to install. No credit card required.”

Visual Component

Finally, you have the visuals. The visual component can be a professional photo of the product or a graphic that represents your value proposition.

Canva, a platform whose main value proposition is allowing anyone to make professional looking designs, underpins their main benefit with bright product cards showing all the possible materials you can create.

What Makes A Strong Value Proposition?

Clear & Concise

The first characteristic of a good value proposition is clarity. Many marketers end up with bland statements that lack substance. For instance, fuzzy claims of “high quality” and “excellence” and “cutting-edge”. Aim to be clear and easy to understand; avoid jargon and industry-speak to avoid alienating customers.

Cutting out fluff is critical when attention is a premium. Businesses have less than a minute to grab users’ attention before visitors bounce off a landing page or scroll to the next interesting thing. So a good value proposition answers the “What” right off the gate.

Take for instance, HubSpot’s value proposition: “Grow better with HubSpot”. Prominent on it’s homepage it immediately lets you know what it does in a very succinct way. The next section clarifies further by telling the reader that with Hubspot you can “seamlessly connect your data, teams, and customers on one AI-powered customer platform that grows with your business”. You don’t need to wade through chunks of text to get to this point.

Specific & Quantifiable

Another way to be clear and to avoid murky claims is to use figures. Measure your value. Use numeric proof to back up your claims. Your software’s the best? Prove that is fact and not empty grandstanding by stating how many clients are using your software, or citing recent rankings from third-party sites.

One PPC ad saw a 20.9 percent increase in click-through rates just by listing the number of clients using their product. Car brand Subaru backs up its “Built to Last” with irrefutable data stating 97 percent of vehicles sold within the last decade are still rolling around today.

However, no value proposition is set in stone. When Casper was founded in 2014, it had one offer: order this mattress online, and get it shipped directly to your door. Today the brand has a whole slew of products and physical stores, where you can talk to sleep specialists and take mattresses out for test naps. As your business evolves around consumer needs, you’ll need to regularly revisit your unique value proposition to see if it still resonates.

Relevant & Benefit-Focused

For a value proposition to have value, it must be relevant to the right audience. It should explain how a product aligns with your customer’s needs and pain points, explaining why your offering is the perfect solution to their problems.

Drive home relevance with benefits, instead of features. A feature is an attribute–it means little unless contextualised by the problem or need it meets. RFID-blocking shields in a wallet is a feature, the benefit of which is keeping your personal details safe from card skimmers.

One more important thing to note is that what’s relevant can change based on where a customer is on the marketing funnel. On a website, placement and timing can change the impact of your messaging. For example, heat maps and bounce rates can tell you where your customers are hesitating or dropping. A timely offer such as a free trial or a risk-free sign up can be the push that closes a sale–or at the very least a second look at what you have on offer.

Uniqueness

Finding uniqueness amidst a sea of competitors requires a bit of research. Look around to see what your competitors are saying about their service or product. Compare their offerings to your own. Do you have add-ons that they don’t? Can you offer something for free that they charge for?

What makes your offer unique may not be immediately clear, especially for businesses in a competitive, crowded niche. One way to find it is to adopt a methodical approach. List down all the features and corresponding benefits of your product. Compare your list with your closest competitors, and strike out similarities. Eventually, you’ll find one that only you can offer, whether that’s unlimited revisions or a free template.

Evaluating Value Propositions: How Good Is Yours?

Good value propositions are powerful tools that keep your message clear, strong, and consistent across social media, your website, and all your marketing and advertising campaigns. 

But before that happens, you’ll need to test to validate if your messaging actually resonates and connects. There are a couple of ways to do that.

A/B Testing

If you’ve done the hard work of brainstorming a value proposition, chances are you’ll have more than one contender that seems right. Running A/B testing for a few weeks will give you the performance data you need to determine which one works better.

A/B testing can be done in a number of ways. You can test value propositions by posting them on social media and seeing which one receives more engagement in the way of likes or comments. Segment your subscribers and launch separate email campaigns and see what’s getting opened versus or receiving more replies.

Pay-Per-Click Advertising 

PPC advertising can be an effective way to quickly test and refine your value propositions, albeit costlier than A/B testing. It also requires that you know which keywords to use and what language your audience speaks so you don’t waste money on ads that never reach them.

Done correctly, click-through-rates will be a reliable indicator of how good your value proposition is. And unlike methods that rely on organic traffic, can get a large volume of data within a short period of time by running ads on popular social media platforms or Google.

Conclusion

When you’re competing with hundreds, value propositions are integral. You have to be clear, direct, and compelling about your main benefit, or customers will quickly lose interest and move onto the next thing.

Here at Superb Digital, our content team is well versed in the creation and implementation of value proposition statements, ensuring that our clients shine bright amongst the sea of competition. If you’re looking to finetune your digital presence and boost conversions, book a discovery call today.