How to Express Your Value Proposition

Everyone wants to get the most sales from the visitors that frequent their websites. One of the most important things that you can do to potentially increase your conversion rate is to provide visitors with a clear, concise, intriguing and believable value proposition. If visitors can’t see the value of your product or service, they won’t buy from you – no matter how beautifully designed your website may be.

What exactly is a value proposition?

It’s the primary reason a prospect should buy from you. Customers not only want to know “What’s in it for me?” but also “Why buy from you?”

If you had just 10-12 words to explain why people should buy from you instead of the competition, what would you say? Trust Guard, the leader in website security and verification, for example, could say regarding their trust seals: “Multiple Tests Prove that Our Seals Convert Better than Our Competitors.” Or if promoting their security capabilities, Trust Guard could say: “No one scans for more data-breach vulnerabilities than Trust Guard!”

Many marketers try to improve results by changing page elements like font colors and sizes, button shapes, images, incentives, and so on, when the first step should really be focusing on strengthening their value propositions. If your home page or the product page says “Welcome!” or lists just the name of your company or the product, you’re missing out. Note that there is a difference between the value proposition for your company and your product. You must address both.

What makes a good value proposition?

• It must be differentiated from your competitors’ offers. But it can still be on topic. As an example, about a month after Wendy’s came out with their 4 for $4 promotion, Burger King came out with their 5 for $4 promotion. Both lunches were $4, but upon first glance, getting five items from Burger King instead of 4 from Wendy’s sounded like the better value proposition.
• You may match a competitor on every dimension of value except one. You need to excel in at least one element of value (key important factor for the buyer). In the case above. All of Wendy’s time and effort and money spent promoting their 4 for $4 special was worthless if someone also noticed the 5 for $4 special at Burger King – that liked both their products equally well.

Crafting a value proposition requires substantial reflection on what is unique about your company and your products and services. Having a powerful value proposition is not enough; it must be communicated effectively to achieve optimal results. You need to refine your value proposition until you can articulate it in a single, instantly credible sentence.

However hard you work on expressing your value proposition, to know its true effectiveness you must find out how it resonates with your ideal prospect. Optimizing value propositions is a continual process that involves identifying, expressing, and testing/measuring. But getting it right could mean the difference between making the sale or not.