Your Value Proposition Stinks! This is Why…

‘Unique value proposition’ (UVP) is a term most online marketers have heard and many of us use. But what exactly does it mean? Why is it important? And how can we use landing pages to communicate it? Looking for value propositions examples we find out that many of them stink really bad! Marketers need to improve that! How can we do it? Perhaps a good place to start is to explain what a UVP isn’t. It’s not a catchy tagline, slogan, motto or mission statement – although all of these may help customers, prospects, employees and investors to understand what your UVP is. Instead, and to put it simply, a UVP is the unique collection of reasons why a person or organization benefits from doing business with you.

There’s Only One You

Your UVP could be the particular way you help people to save or make money. Or that special product you sell that’s available nowhere else. Maybe it’s the irreplaceable service you provide, or the great experience of trading with you. Or – and in a crowded market, this is most likely – perhaps your UVP is a unique combination of some or all of these factors. In short, a UVP is what your company does better than any other. It’s your competitive edge, and communicated effectively will make you stand out from the crowd and drive your success.

Work To Do

However, research shows that many marketers have neglected to develop their UVP, let alone tell the world about it. A survey of 275 businesses finds that only 2% can succinctly describe a strong UVP for themselves. On a scale of one to five, 86% score a two or lower for their propositions. Perhaps the prime reason for these poor scores is a lack of understanding as to how to a winning proposition is constructed. So when developing your USP, make sure you have in place these three supporting ‘pillars’:

• Resonance – potential customers or clients have to need, or believe they need, what you’re offering. Your product or service must resonate with people.
• Difference – it must be possible to distinguish your commercial offer from the thousands of others in the market.
• Substance – it’s crucial your business delivers on its promises and proves it does.

Only when a business resonates with customers, is perceived as different and shown to be of substance does it have a true USP you can leverage to your advantage.

Landing Pages: Value Propositions are a must.

Moving things forward, we begin to see how your UVP can be communicated and supported using your most powerful online asset, landing pages. To resonate, your landing pages require content that grabs your audience’s attention and directly addresses its needs. So make sure you know who you’re targeting, what they want, and how to connect with them emotionally. Benefit-led headlines and body copy, relevant images and dynamic calls to action are all crucial here. To stand apart, detail exactly what you provide that no competitor does. Even if you’re selling a highly generic product or service, emphasize the details that make it different. Here you can also use online apps, and the visual and tone-of-voice elements of your brand, to create a unique user experience that boosts both conversion and your UVP. To substantiate your UVP, landing pages are ideal. Not only can you run stats on matters like customer satisfaction. You can also include user reviews, quotes from the media, Facebook ‘like’ buttons and links to Twitter feeds. So people can see for themselves the popularity of what you do, and what others are saying about you.

Good Value Proposition Examples

Get inspired by these value proposition examples. Learn from the UVP that are already working. Above every picture we've added a tip or trick to help you get the most out of your value propositions.

• The guys from Mailchimp know how to keep it simple:

• This value proposal is clearly visible. You can't ignore it even if you want to! (kissmetrics.com):

• Keeping the value proposition next to the call to action will help you improve your conversions! (getsatisfaction.com):

• The folks from Evernote decided to go their own way and divided the value proposition into 4 small phrases:

• Here we have an example of combined factors on a value proposition (crazyegg.com):

• This value proposition explains all the benefits that Basecamp gives to their customers in a very catchy way:

Platform For Success

No landing page has yet been invented that will develop your UVP for you. But once you’ve settled on yours, landing pages are a great way to get it across. Intelligent, easy-to-use landing-page platforms like Lander even anticipate how you’ll want to communicate your UVP. Helping you do so in double quick time.