Why is Value Proposition important and how can it be effective?
A striking and straightforward value proposition is one of the excellent tools for your company to illustrate and present the main values that you can provide to your future customers. A good value proposition highlights the main selling points in a few sentences and grabs the visitor’s attention. You need to show customers as simply as possible what they can expect when they do business with you. The first impression the visitor gets on our website is therefore important.
What is Value Proposition?
With the help of the Value Proposition, you can showy our future customers what value you can provide for them.
“Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.”
Warren Buffet’s timeless saying highlights the importance the quality of your product or service is and its usefulness for your customers. You can show this to your future partner with a well-prepared value proposition.
In your value proposition, you can express what makes your business special and what sets it apart from your competitors. Taking a popular example, Facebook articulates its value proposition simply and to the point: “Connect with your friends and the world around you.”
Therefore your future customer’s attention must be captured with a short, well-directed summary, and you need to keep this in mind while starting the development of the value proposition.
Customer Pains and Gains
In order to offer the best possible value proposition to your visitors, you need to assess their “pain and gain” points, based on which you can deliver your message to them in the most efficient way.
Forrás: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/write-value-proposition
Customer gain
The goal of your customers is to save effort, time or money. With these components, they generate profit and can continue to grow in the market. Their attention must be captured from this point of view with appeals such as: “save time!”, “keep processes under control!”, save up to 20%!”, “increase your efficiency!”. Regarding the B2B sector, you can observe similar needs (mainly profit making), but here your offer should be targeted at the organizational level: “generate more income!”, “achieve your company goals!”, “increase your company’s profit easily!”, “ensure better working conditions simply!”.
Customer gain has different priority levels:
- Necessary profits – These are the profits that are vital to the operation of the business.
- Expected gain – This is what is expected from a solution defined in your value proposition. Without it, your client’s business can still function, but it is not profitable.
- Desired profit – These are the desired benefits that your partners would like to achieve, but do not necessarily expect.
- Unexpected benefits – These are the results that provide more benefits than expected.
Customer pain
Customer pain is the set of negative factors that prevent our future customers from implementing processes that are useful to them. These can be unwanted costs, situations, negative emotions or risks. Avoiding pain drives customers to purchase a wide range of products or services, from a simple pain reliever to complex business management software.
Customer pain is the opposite of customer gain. It is important to be aware of these factors by thoroughly getting to know your future partners and to develop your value proposition based on them. In your value proposition, you should also offer solutions to the customers’ pain points, rather than just “frighten” your future customers. In such cases, useful slogans can be: “reduce your costs!”, “avoid unnecessary expenses!”, “produce less waste!” or “achieve fewer cancellations/refusals!”
It can also be established that both customer pain and gain can be divided into three large categories:
- Functional
- Social
- Emotional
How to respond to customer pains and gains?
By taking this system of criteria into account, you can adjust the description and characterization of your products or services to the needs of your customers, which will also greatly determine your value proposition.
It is important to regularly ask yourselves questions about how you can create value for your customers:
- What advantages can you provide for your customers?
- How can you meet their expectations and get them to interact?
- How can you exceed their expectations?
- What risks should you eliminate?
Getting to know your customers based on the “customer pain and gain” aspects is therefore one of the most valuable things you can do for your business. By trying to understand their needs, you can also reduce risk. It is also very important to constantly test the experience gained in this way and to use the greatest possible immersion as a basis.
The 3 main components
Your value proposition must meet three main criteria: be relevant, demonstrate the value of your business and be unique. Taking these three aspects into account, you must answer the following questions when developing your value proposition.
- Relevance: Why do your prospective customers need your product or service? What customer needs can you satisfy?
- Value: What can your customers gain by using your product or service? How can you help them achieve their goals?
- Uniqueness: What can you offer your customers that your competitors can’t? Tell the potential customer why they should choose you and not your competitors.
The value proposition is the first message a visitor of our website or landing page encounters, so it should appear at most entry points. Here, not only the visual appearance is important, but also the real and relevant content.
Creating the right Value Proposition
Since value propositions can be considered one of the most important conversion factors, it is particularly important to be thorough when preparing them and to take into account the “pain and gain” points explained above to prepare your short, but still informative message. Consider that your value proposition will be mostly read by average users, so it really needs to be easy to understand. You should avoid technical jargon and lengthy, official wording.
Your value proposition must be written for the number of your potential customers. To achieve this, you need to get to know their language, level of information, and way of thinking, which is not an easy task and requires background work. You have to map your future customers in a similar way as defining a buyer persona, for example.
Value propositions are beneficial for attracting customers, but they can also help define business strategy. You can also use the Value Proposition to provide guidance for your own business on issues such as:
- Updating products or services
- Defining your company culture
- Selection of visual assets used for the value proposition and on our website
- SEO aspects and the placement of CTA (Call-to-Action) buttons
According to a recent study, 69% of B2Bs have a value proposition. However, the study also highlights that only 2.2% of companies have a value proposition that users find useful.
On the other hand, a well done offer can do wonders, based on research, brands with a strong value proposition achieved 76% growth in a decade.
Aim for simplicity, but don’t forget the important details
Keep in mind that the Value Proposition is not a slogan or a catchphrase. It is not even a statement that positions us in the market.
The appropriate Value Proposition is characterized by the following:
Clear
Potential customers should be able to quickly read the Value Proposition. According to surveys, a good value proposition can be read and interpreted in a maximum of 5 seconds. So make sure it’s concise and written with as few words as possible.
Unique
Briefly point out what is special about your company and what are the unique things that only your company can offer, which makes you stand out from your competitors.
According to the study mentioned above, 52% of companies have different Value Propositions for their different products and services.
Attractive
Show that what you can provide is what people want and few people can offer. For example, Tesla offers environmentally friendly and fast electric cars. This is an attractive offer for everyone.
Special
Finally, focus on a single message that is clearly communicated. This message should include what makes you more special than other companies.
Coherence with your website
As mentioned earlier, the value proposition should be included at most points of the website and you should incorporate it into all aspects with the help of text and visual content.From headlines and body text to images, your Value Proposition should appear prominently on your website and be consistent with the relevant sections of your website.
Examples of the right Value Proposition
Uber
Forrás: https://www.wordstream.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/value-proposition-examples-uber.png.webp
Uber’s value proposition is convenience.
Apple iPhone
Forrás: https://www.wordstream.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/value-proposition-examples-iphone.png.webp
iPhone Value Proposition for a unique experience.
Slack
Forrás: https://www.wordstream.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/value-proposition-examples-slack.png
Authenticity and productivity in Slack’s value proposition.
Summary
Above, we established that the value proposition is a short and purposeful “promise” in which you tell our future customers and clients why it is worth choosing the products or services of your company. A Value Proposition is more than a description of a product or a service – it is a concrete solution that you offer and a kind of “promise” you make to your customer regarding how you can help them achieve their goals. A good value proposition should include the most important benefits offered by the product or service and highlight the unique features that show why they should choose you over your competitors. In addition to these, it is important to know your target audience, for whom you intend the Value Proposition.
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Források:
https://neilpatel.com/blog/dominate-your-market/
https://www.310creative.com/blog/value-proposition
https://digitalleadership.com/unite-articles/value-proposition-canvas/
https://www.b2binternational.com/research/methods/faq/what-is-the-value-proposition-canvas/
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/write-value-proposition
https://www.steveforbes.com.au/blog/2019/8/19/customer-gains-vs-pains
https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2016/04/27/value-proposition-examples