Naturally, every business wants to showcase its worth to the best of its abilities. Writing engaging value propositions is the first piece of the marketing and sales puzzle, and it can prove to be rather a difficult one.
Your value proposition needs to clearly communicate all the functional and emotional benefits of your product or service. When you also consider it should be rather succinct and catchy, it’s clear where the difficulty comes in.
Here are eight tips on writing killer value propositions that will engage your visitors and help you share your message more clearly and effectively.
Promote the Benefits, Not the Features
While the features of your product or service may be quite impressive, the truth is, your customers don’t really care about them. What they want to know is how you can solve a pain point and provide a solution for an issue that’s been troubling them. How you do it will be less important than the mere fact that you can do it.
This is why your value proposition should focus more on the benefits than on the features of whatever it is you are selling. Instead of applauding the how, focus on the what and why it matters.
However, this doesn’t mean you should refrain from explaining how your solution works altogether. It just means that you shouldn’t make it the focus of your value proposition. There will be customers who want to know more, and their curiosity should be satisfied too.
Here’s an example from Aura. Their value proposition focuses on the result a customer will achieve: make more Amazon sales. Now, they could have gone into extensive detail about the way their solution works. But they’ve chosen the better, more customer-centric route, focusing on the outcome rather than the feature.
Make It Pop
There is more to engaging website visitors than writing a value proposition that works. You need to show it off a bit too.
Website design plays a crucial role in engagement and conversion. After all, we humans are highly visual creatures, and we can be put off easily if something doesn’t look “right.” This is why you should make sure that the first impression your main page offers is a pleasant one and that the value proposition is highlighted adequately.
This will mean employing some web design best practices:
- Ensuring that there is minimal clutter on the page and that there aren’t too many elements vying for the attention of a visitor
- Placing your most important elements (i.e., your value proposition) at the top of the page
- Ensuring smooth and intuitive navigation
- Choosing a color scheme that is in line with the message and values you are trying to communicate
The list goes on, but these are some of the more important things to keep in mind.
Check out how NordVPN has done it. They highlight security and speed and have plenty of negative space on their page that makes it feel lighter. The blue color scheme they’ve chosen communicates trustworthiness and professionalism. The pops of red draw the eye to the CTA, and the language used is jargon-free and easy to understand.
Differentiate Yourself from the Competition
If you hope to engage your customers, you will also need to stand out. We’re not saying you necessarily need to reinvent the wheel. The point is to do your best to offer something your competition does not.
Before writing your value proposition, take a look at what the major players in your industry have done, as well as what companies of approximately your size are offering to their customers. You will most likely share a lot of the same benefits, but simply by wording them differently, you can gain an added edge.
Don’t get too caught up in analyzing your competitors, though. The goal is to get a feel for their copywriting, not to lose sight of your own values.
Let’s take a look at an example to better illustrate this point. There are three major names in the SEO software industry: Ahrefs, Moz, and SEMRush. While all of them offer similar services, their value propositions differ greatly.
The one we are highlighting here as the best among the bunch is Ahrefs. They’ve chosen to emphasize the ease of use they offer: you don’t need to be a pro to reap all the benefits of their tool.
Moz, on the other hand, has a rather bland value prop. It does highlight the benefits (better traffic, rankings, and visibility), but in a rather half-hearted way. SEMRush is just as simple, highlighting the fact that they offer an all-in-one one solution.
When you take a look at all three solutions as a potential customer, you are most likely to select Ahrefs, unless you are very much into the world of SEO and understand the merits of each tool. The thing with Ahrefs is that it does promise results, even if you are a complete noob.
This is the kind of competitor analysis that can help you convert more visitors with a bit of clever copywriting.
Address Your Audience’s Primary Pain Point(s)
As we keep reiterating, your value proposition needs to address your customers’ pain points and clearly demonstrate how it can solve them. In other words, you need to be very clear about why your audience is in the market for your product or service in the first place.
Before you put any words to paper, put yourself in your audience’s shoes, and consider what they are looking for, what they are currently being offered as a solution, and what makes you stand out.
Ideally, you also want to conduct some targeted research as well. Run focus groups or send some questionnaires to your target audience in order to validate your assumptions about their needs.
Once you are clear about their needs, put extra emphasis on the main pain points. Somnifix is able to do this rather easily. They can speak to their mouth-breathing audience in their value proposition with ease, as they’ve identified this as the top-level issue of their target market.
Be careful not to attempt addressing too many issues in one value proposition, as you won’t be able to fit an endless amount of value in a cluttered message. Stick to one or two, making sure most of your audience feels the same pain. Create additional landing pages for additional issues.
Make the Visitor the Hero of the Story
Without meaning to sound too harsh, let us point out the fact that most of your customers and clients won’t care too much about you and your business. They are visiting your website because they want something done for them. They don’t care about your employees or your bottom line, nor are they invested in your company (at least not yet).
This is why placing them center stage – as opposed to talking about your solutions, and your values, and your genius, and your anything – is the better copywriting choice.
Customers like brands that make them feel valued and that seem to be speaking directly to them. This is why personalization is such a big thing in marketing. The more an individual feels they are being heard and taken care of, the more likely they are to do business with you.
While your value proposition can’t be all that individually-tailored, it can still make the visitor the hero of the story. Take a look at how marvelously Skillcrush has shone the spotlight on its customers.
The use of the word “you” and the emphasis on the benefits a career in IT can have for the person visiting their website makes just the right impact. It instantly aligns the brand with the visitor’s dreams and aspirations, but without sounding at all fake or corny.
Keep It Simple
Having read all of this different value proposition writing advice, you may begin to feel a bit lost. How are you supposed to apply all of these different tactics and consider all these aspects of creating what is, after all, a very short message?
Your focus should be clarity and simplicity. You want to deliver a message that is easy to understand, that speaks directly to your audience, and that tells them exactly what it is they can expect to get.
If you’re struggling to come up with a value proposition, stick to this one piece of advice.
Here’s an example from Preset Love, which couldn’t have done a better job at communicating its value clearly. The copywriting comes without bells and whistles, and it’s a simple statement: this is what you can get for free.
Sometimes these are the value propositions that work best. So, if you can distill your message to something as straightforward, don’t be afraid to do it. Remember: you aren’t trying to come up with the most eloquent message – you are trying to engage and convert visitors. The clearer they are about what they’re getting, the more likely they are to stick around.
Final Thoughts
Consider your value proposition carefully and always through the eyes of your target audience. Keep your message short and as clear as possible. Focus on the value and the benefits a visitor can expect, and not on your brand.
You may need to tweak your efforts several times before you come up with a killer word combination. Remember not to rest on your laurels even when you do write something that produces great results. Keep fine-tuning your value proposition over time, and the work will certainly pay off.
