In today’s noisy, highly competitive marketplace, you only have seconds to capture site visitors’ attention and convince them to consider your brand’s offerings. A well-composed value proposition summarizes your organization’s competitive advantage and helps potential customers understand why they should do business with you—without taking up too much of their time.
However, writing a thorough, captivating and succinct value proposition is not always an easy task. After creating an entire website to showcase your offering, boiling down all the value your organization provides into just one or two sentences can seem nearly impossible.
To help you accomplish this task, we’ve compiled several tips on how to write a value proposition that attracts prospects and drives conversions.
A value proposition is a statement that explains why a potential customer will gain greater value from your product or service than from similar solutions in the marketplace.
Think of your value proposition like a shop window display. As you pass stores along the sidewalk, you use window displays to determine whether a store’s offerings are likely to meet your current wants and needs. If the display wins you over, you’ll likely step inside, look around and maybe even complete a purchase.
Just as a shop owner places best-selling and most sought-after items in the window as a way to lure prospects inside, your value proposition should provide a promise of what you will do for your customer—how you will solve their problems, meet their needs and deliver better results than your competitors.
Most customer value propositions include these elements:
While there is no steadfast rule for value proposition formatting, these elements can act as a helpful guide—especially if you’re creating a value proposition for the first time. But don’t feel obligated to include everything listed above. If you can communicate your organization’s full value in one sentence or phrase, there’s no need for additional elements.
If you don’t already have a value proposition, or if your organization has one but you feel it's not powerful enough, you may not know where to start.
Here are a few steps you can take to begin putting together your organization’s value proposition:
Then, compare their SWOTs to your own and look for the glaring gaps between the value you offer and the value your competitors offer. This will help you identify what makes your offering unique and why it’s superior to the product or service provided by others in your space.
If every brand has a value proposition to share, how can you make sure your message leaves an indelible impression and drives prospects to take further action?
Here are a few tips to make sure your message stands out above your competitors’:
Remember: once you’ve captivated your customer, you’ll have the opportunity to discuss specs, delve deeper into features and explain additional benefits in other areas of your website.
Don’t feel like you need to communicate everything about your offering in your value proposition. After all, the wordier and more complex it becomes, the less likely readers will be to understand the crux of your message and continue forward.
Here are a few examples of highly effective value proposition statements to help inspire your message.
Here, Trello sums up their key benefits in an ultra-simple headline. Below, the subheadline further clarifies what the app does, how it works and why it’s better than alternatives. (How many productivity apps can say they’re fun, flexible and rewarding?) Finally, the CTA shares another unique element of the offering: It’s free!
Even if you’ve never heard of or used iCONN Systems, this quick and straightforward headline sums up exactly what they do: They’re a design engineering firm that manufactures connectors. But not just any connectors. Their product line meets all your connector needs. This simple phrasing communicates a wealth of value and finishes up with a CTA to see their product catalog. To help drive the point home further, the hero background video shares imagery of their various products across multiple applications.
Gebauer’s value proposition evokes its lengthy history to convey how the company’s products have remained most trusted for more than a century, and also that they’re still considered the industry leading comfort solutions today. The subheadline finishes by sharing the company’s mission: improve the patient experience, and increase patient satisfaction—and uses imagery that illustrates this mission.
Another thing to note is Gebauer’s use of the word “your” at the beginning of the headline. Similar to starting a greeting by using someone’s name, second-person pronouns in a value proposition naturally capture readers’ attention.
Be sure to check out more value proposition examples here.
A powerful value proposition not only informs prospects about what you offer, it also makes potential customers feel like their search is over and your product or service is exactly what they need. A weak value proposition, on the other hand, confuses visitors and leaves them feeling disengaged with your offering. By using these tips and examples, you can craft a compelling statement that piques prospects’ interest, stimulates action and drives more conversions than ever before.