Value Proposition Definition:
(in marketing) an innovation, service, or feature intended to make a company or product attractive to customers.
A great value proposition instantly shows your worth to potential leads and encourages them to buy from you.
In this article, I will teach you, using my years of experience, how to write a value proposition that will make you stand out from the competition and boost your conversion rates.
I’ll also share 9 of the best value proposition examples I’ve found to inspire you and templates to get you going.
Let’s get started!
What Is a Value Proposition?
A value proposition is a fancy way of describing a company’s unique benefit to its customers. It’s a concise statement that explains why someone should choose the company’s product or service over the competition.
Here’s what a good value proposition typically covers:
- The problem it solves: What pain point or need does the product or service address?
- The benefits it delivers: How does it make the customer’s life better or easier?
- What makes it different: Why should someone choose this company over others?
Think of it as an elevator pitch for a company’s value. It should be clear and compelling and convince customers that this business is the best solution for their needs.
How to Write a Value Proposition: A Step-by-Step Breakdown
Here’s a detailed breakdown of each step to help you write a value proposition that converts:
Step 1: Know Your Ideal Customer Like Your Best Friend
- Demographics: Age, gender, income, location, occupation, etc.
- Behaviors: How do they shop? What information do they consume? What are their online habits?
- Challenges: What are their biggest pain points? What keeps them up at night? Are they struggling with time management? Budget constraints? Lack of expertise?
Action Plan:
- Conduct market research: Surveys, polls, and focus groups can provide valuable insights into your target audience.
- Analyze customer data: Look at your existing customer base to understand their demographics and buying behavior.
- Talk to your sales team: They’re on the frontline, interacting with potential customers daily. They can provide invaluable insights into customer needs and challenges.
Step 2: Deep Dive into Their Problems
Think of your ideal customer’s life as a puzzle. Your value proposition should be the missing piece that completes the picture. Here’s what you need to uncover:
- Functional Needs: What tasks are they trying to accomplish? What are the specific functions they need your product or service to perform?
- Emotional Needs: How do they want to feel when using your product or service? Do they want to feel empowered? Secure? More productive?
Action Plan:
- Create customer personas: Develop detailed profiles that represent your ideal customer, including their goals, frustrations, and motivations.
- Conduct customer interviews: Talk to potential customers directly to understand their challenges in detail.
Step 3: Showcase Your Solution as the Hero
Now that you understand the villain (your customer’s problem), it’s time to introduce the hero (your product or service). Here’s how to position your offering as the ultimate solution:
- Focus on Benefits, Not Features: Don’t just list features; explain how those features translate into tangible benefits for the customer.
- Quantify the Impact (if possible): Can you put a number on the results you deliver? For example, “Increase sales by 20% in 3 months.”
- Address Emotional Needs: Show how your product or service helps them achieve their desired emotional state.
Action Plan:
- List all the features of your product or service.
- For each feature, brainstorm the benefits it delivers.
- Consider how you can quantify the benefits with data or testimonials.
Step 4: Become the Chosen One: Differentiation is Key
The market is crowded. What makes you stand out? Here’s how to differentiate your value proposition and convince customers you’re the one:
- Unique Selling Proposition (USP): What makes your product or service fundamentally different from the competition? Do you have a proprietary technology? Unmatched customer service? A focus on sustainability?
- Competitive Advantage: How does your USP translate into a clear advantage for the customer?
Action Plan:
- Research your competitors: Analyze their value propositions and identify any gaps you can fill.
- Highlight your USP: Clearly communicate what sets you apart.
Step 5: Craft Your Compelling Statement
By now, you’ve identified your ideal customer, understood their problems, and positioned your product or service as the solution. The final step is to craft a concise and compelling statement that captures your value proposition. Here are three popular templates to help you brainstorm:
Template 1: The Steve Blank Method
This method emphasizes benefits over features, focusing on a simple sentence that connects the target market’s pain points to your solution.
Formula: “We help (X – Target Customer) do (Y – Desired Outcome) by doing (Z – Your Unique Solution).”
Example: “We help (busy professionals) do (learn a new language in a fun and convenient way) by doing (providing bite-sized lessons and gamified learning through our mobile app)” (This could be a value proposition for Duolingo).
Template 2: The Geoff Moore Method
This template is more specific, identifying the industry category alongside the benefits customers value.
Formula: “For [Target Customer] who [Needs or Wants X], our [Product/Service] is a [Category of Industry] that [Benefits].”
Example: “For [small businesses] who [want to grow their email list and engage with customers], our [Mailchimp] is an [email marketing platform] that [offers easy-to-use tools and free plans].”
Template 3: The Harvard Business School Method
This method focuses on core questions to ensure your value proposition is clear and differentiated.
Questions to Consider:
- What is my brand offering?
- What job does the customer hire my brand to do?
- What companies and products compete with my brand to do this job for the customer?
- What sets my brand apart from competitors?
By answering these questions, you can craft a value proposition that highlights your unique strengths and the value you deliver to customers.
Remember: Regardless of the template you choose, keep your value proposition concise, clear, and benefit-oriented. It should resonate with your target audience and make them say, “Yes, that’s exactly what I need!”
By following these steps and putting your customer at the center, you can craft a value proposition that cuts through the noise and positions your product or service for success.
9+ Value Proposition Examples (Drive Conversions On Your Website!)
For our list of value proposition examples, we’re going to look at the homepages of a few popular websites. Not every website features its value proposition on its front page. However, it’s an excellent way to showcase your value for every new website visitor, as these examples show.
We’ll look at the heading, text, and visual element of each example and discuss why they work. Since these propositions are all on website homepages, we’ll also look at each example’s call to action (CTA). After all, once you’ve convinced a website visitor of your value, you want them to be able to easily take the next step.
Let’s dive in!
1. Uber: “Go Anywhere With Uber”
About Uber:
- Product: Well-known ride-share service.
- Target market: People who need low-cost, on-demand transportation.
- Primary benefit: Eliminates the frustrations of travel.
About the Value Proposition:
- Heading: “Go anywhere with Uber.”
- Description Text: “Request a ride, hop in, and go.”
- Visual Element: A colorful illustration of a professional woman getting out of a car in a city.
- CTA: Text fields to enter your pick-up and destination locations and a button that says “See prices.”
What makes this value proposition work? Uber emphasizes the ubiquity of their service by saying they can take you anywhere. They also focus on the ease of using Uber with their “Request a ride, hop in, and go” text. They double-down on that ease by letting you start your ride request right there on the homepage.
Because Uber is such a well-known company, they don’t need to explain who they are. Therefore, they can keep their text extremely short.
2. Skillshare: “Explore Your Creativity With Thousands of Hands-on Classes”
About Skillshare:
- Product: Online classes and lessons.
- Target market: Artists, entrepreneurs, and creative minds.
- Primary benefit: The ability to learn via bite-sized lessons.
About the Value Proposition:
- Heading: “Explore your creativity with thousands of hands‑on classes.”
- Description Text: A subheading that says “Get 7 free days of Skillshare.”
- Visual Element: A collage of colorful photos showing people cooking, drawing, knitting, taking photos, and more.
- CTA: Skillshare offers multiple ways to create an account and begin a free trial. There are buttons for logging in through Facebook, Google, and Apple accounts. There’s also an option to sign up with an email address.
What makes this value proposition work? This homepage focuses completely on highlighting their free trial. If you are extremely confident in the quality of your product, this strategy is very smart! Skillshare obviously believes that once a visitor tries their classes, they’ll want to subscribe.
Skillshare also shows value through their visual element. Look how much fun those folks are having! And look how great their projects look. Skillshare is showing visitors that they can have the same experience by taking their classes.
NoteWant to make your own online course? Check out this article on the best learning management system (LMS) plugins to build a virtual class. Then follow that up with our 12 ways to promote your online course.
3. LegalShield: “Affordable Legal Help Does Exist”
About LegalShield:
- Product: Affordable, prepaid monthly plans for legal services such as estate planning, family law, and small business plans.
- Target market: Individuals, small businesses, and entrepreneurs.
- Primary benefit: Prepaid legal protection you can trust to be there whenever you need it.
About the Value Proposition:
- Heading: “Affordable Legal Help Does Exist.”
- Description Text: “Hire a lawyer the smart way, not the hard way.”
- Visual Element: A photo of a smiling woman with a cell phone at her ear.
- CTA: A bold button that says “Get started”.
What makes this value proposition work? Every part of this proposition is designed to give visitors a feeling of relief. LegalShield emphasizes that their services are affordable and easy to use. The photo of the woman on the phone implies that legal help will always be just a call away with one of their plans.
4. Tortuga Backpacks: “Pack Everything You Need Without Checking a Bag”
About Tortuga:
- Product: Travel backpacks and accessories
- Target market: Young travelers and weekend road trippers.
- Primary benefit: The ability to travel light.
About the Value Proposition:
- Heading: “Pack everything you need without checking a bag.”
- Description Text: The preheader text says, “Over 3,000 5-star reviews.”
- Visual Element: A photo of a man wearing a backpack while exploring a city.
- CTA: A bright green button that says “Take the Bag Quiz.”
What makes this value proposition work? In that one-sentence heading, Tortuga communicates that their backpacks will save you money and hassle on every trip. They also leverage the power of social proof by pointing out that they have 3,000 5-star reviews.
5. Dollar Shave Club: “If Santa Shaved He’d Probably Use One of These”
About Dollar Shave Club:
- Product: Subscription-based razors and shaving products. They also offer one-time bundle purchases.
- Target market: Cost-conscious millennial males who want to look great with less hassle. And in this instance, anyone who’s doing holiday shopping for that target market.
- Primary benefit: A high-quality shave that’s convenient and low-priced.
About the Value Proposition:
- Heading: “If Santa Shaved He’d Probably Use One of These”
- Description Text: “Shop our holiday gifts, including new handles and new additions to our electric line!” At the bottom, they give more important information:
- “Free shipping for orders $18+”
- “30-day money back guarantee”
- “Order for 12/15 for holiday delivery”
- Visual Element: A slideshow of illustrations depicting their products in the North Pole.
- CTA: A “Get Gifting” button, which leads to a list of their top gift recommendations.
What makes this value proposition work? This proposition has 2 huge things going for it: its humor and its focus on holiday shopping. Dollar Shave Club also immediately answers the most important questions for holiday shoppers: shipping cost, return policy, and shipping time.
Behind the silly joke about Santa shaving, they present real value here: When you shop with us, you can quickly order high-quality gifts, without hassle or worry.
6. Constant Contact: “Take Your Marketing From Meh to Marvelous”
About Constant Contact:
About the Value Proposition:
- Heading: “Take your marketing from meh to marvelous.”
- Description Text: “Give your email and digital marketing a glow up with our easy-to-use tools.”
- Visual Element: A photo of a woman using a laptop. Colorful graphics are added to indicate that she is sending marketing emails and monitoring their success.
- CTA: An email optin field with a button that says “Sign up free.”
What makes this value proposition work? This proposition promises to transform your marketing, and it does so in casual, approachable language. Constant Contact makes success feel even more attainable by mentioning that their tools are easy to use. They also offer a no-risk free trial that doesn’t require entering a credit card.
Every aspect of their value proposition and CTA is designed to remove any barrier to giving Constant Contact a try.
7. WPForms: “Smarter Forms and Surveys”
About WPForms:
- Product: A WordPress plugin for building forms on your website.
- Target market: Owners of WordPress websites.
- Primary benefit: Builds online forms to capture leads, take orders, receive payments, get feedback, and much more.
About the Value Proposition:
- Heading: “Drag & Drop WordPress Form Builder”
- Description Text: “Join 6,000,000+ Professionals Who Build Smarter Forms and Surveys with WPForms”
- Visual Element: The visual element here is a row of labeled icons listing WPForms’ top uses and features:
- Contact Forms
- Payment Forms
- Survey Forms
- Newsletter Forms
- Registration Forms
- Over 1,200 Templates
- CTA: A large button that says “Get WPForms Now.”
What makes this value proposition work? Every aspect of this proposition showcases the versatility and ease of use of WPForms. Website owners know that “drag & drop” and “over 1200 templates” mean they can create forms without any coding or advanced design skills. The text uses social proof by stating that over 6 million professionals already use the plugin. And the labeled icons give a quick preview of the many uses of the software. Icons like these are common in SaaS value propositions.
8. Ooma: “Sophisticated Communication Solutions Made Simple”
About Ooma:
- Product: VoIP phone service.
- Target market: Business owners and residential users.
- Primary benefit: Provides internet-based phone service for businesses of all sizes. They also offer home phone and security systems.
About the Value Proposition:
- Heading: “Sophisticated Communication Solutions Made Simple”
- Description Text: The text under “Business” reads “Phone, video, and messaging solutions customizable for any size business.” The text under “Residential” reads “Home phone service and smart security solutions that keep you connected from anywhere.”
- Visual Element: Side-by-side photographs. The 1st is a person using Ooma phone services at a work desk. The 2nd is a couple lounging on a couch, with an Ooma phone system near them
- CTA: Visitors can click to get more information about Ooma’s products for Business or Residential. There is also a footer floating bar with links and phone numbers for customer support, for sales reps, and to request a quote. There’s even a chat box to get quick answers.
What makes this value proposition work? Ooma’s proposition offers high-tech communications products that are easy to use. They also make it very clear that they have products for both businesses and individuals. That’s a lot of information in just a few words! Plus, they offer multiple easy ways for interested users to contact them.
9. Shopify: “Making Commerce Better for Everyone”
About Shopify:
- Product: An eCommerce website builder.
- Target market: Business owners and entrepreneurs.
- Primary benefit: Allows people to build eCommerce websites to sell their products online.
About the Value Proposition:
- Heading: “Making Commerce Better for Everyone”
- Description Text: “Shopify is supporting the next generation of entrepreneurs, the world’s biggest brands, and everyone in between.”
- Visual Element: A people-heavy background video, which is a preview for a longer video.
- CTA: This proposition offers 2 CTAS. The “Start Free Trial” button is perfect for visitors who are ready to get started. The “Watch the Shopify story” button helps move new visitors further along the sales funnel.
What makes this value proposition work? The emphasis here is that anyone can create a website to start selling online.
This is very appealing to non-technical business owners who want a simple solution for selling online FAST.
BONUS – OptinMonster: “Convert and Monetize Your Website Traffic”
Of course, we have to share our own homepage’s value proposition! At OptinMonster, we’re experts at lead generation, A/B testing, and revenue building. So you know that every aspect of our proposition has been thoroughly analyzed and optimized.
About OptinMonster:
- Product: The world’s #1 lead generation software. We help you easily create website popups to grow your email list and improve conversion rates.
- Target market: Business owners, digital marketers, bloggers, entrepreneurs, and startups.
- Primary benefit: Helps people grow their email list, boost conversions, and drive direct sales.
About the Value Proposition:
- Heading: “Convert and Monetize Your Website Traffic.”
- Description Text: “Instantly grow your email list, get more leads, and increase sales with the #1 most powerful conversion optimization toolkit in the world.”
- Visual Element: A row of labeled icons highlighting various features:
- Lightbox Popups
- Floating Bars
- Scroll Boxes
- Gamified Wheels
- Page Level Targeting
- Exit Intent Detection
- Geolocation Targeting
- 100+ Templates
- CTA: A green button that says “Get OptinMonster Now“
What makes this value proposition unique? We pack a lot of information in our heading and description text. We focus on what our product can help you achieve: more conversions, more sales, and a bigger email list.
Whereas many lead generation tools focus on growing your list, OptinMonster’s strong value proposition goes one step further: converting and monetizing your site’s traffic.
This CAN be done through growing your list, but our tools can also be used to:
- Reduce cart abandonment
- Upsell/cross-sell products
- Distribute coupon codes for more sales
- Redirect users to popular posts (to boost SEO)
- Increase webinar registrations
- And so much more…
We also use power words such as “instantly” and “powerful.” These words are evocative, but they’re also accurate. Our software is easy and quick to set up, gets results quickly, and has more powerful features than our competitors.
Learn more about OptinMonster’s extensive features.
Now that we’ve seen some compelling value proposition examples, let’s take a look at some templates to help you entice potential customers with your company’s products.
4 Effective Value Proposition Templates
What if you get stuck trying to write the copy for your value proposition? Don’t worry! Here are a few templates to help. You don’t have to use these templates word-for-word, but they are great starting points. Many of these have been around for a few years, but their lessons haven’t aged.
1. Geoffrey Moore’s Value Positioning Statement
In Geoffrey Moore‘s seminal book, Crossing the Chasm, he suggests the following template for writing your value proposition.
For [target customer] who [statement of the need or opportunity], our [product/service name] is [product category] that [statement of benefit].
Example: “For busy parents who don’t have time for meal planning, [name of meal box company] is a meal delivery service that’s easy, affordable, and picky-eater-friendly.”
You would most likely use this template for your description text.
2. Steve Blank’s XYZ
Here is perhaps the most straightforward value proposition template from Steve Blank.
We help [X] to [Y] by [Z].
Example: “We help small businesses succeed by saving them time and money.”
Depending on the length of your sentence, this template can help with your headline or description text.
3. Venture Hacks’ High-Concept Pitch
Our next value proposition template is from Venture Hacks. It helps you leverage businesses that already exist in your industry to craft your unique value proposition.
[Proven industry example] for/of [new domain].
Examples:
- “Netflix for video games.”
- “The Amazon of Pet Supplies.”
- “eBay for Glass Collectors”
This template can help you craft a short, simple, and effective headline for your value proposition.
4. Dave McClure’s Elevator Ride
Dave McClure’s has a frequently cited value proposition template that suggests a 3-step checklist for writing your unique value proposition.
- Short, simple, memorable; what, how, why.
- 3 keywords or phrases
- KISS. That means “keep it simple, stupid.” In other words, don’t use specialized jargon.
Example: “OptinMonster is the easy, effective way to get more subscribers and sales.”
Since the Elevator Ride is more of a checklist than a specific template, it can help you with all aspects of your value proposition.
Transform Your Business With a Killer Value Proposition
That’s it! Now you can use these steps, examples, and templates to craft the perfect value proposition for your company.
Want to learn more ways to increase conversions and sales? Check out these articles:
Once you have a value proposition that stands out from the competition, you need to optimize more of your website. As visitors browse your pages, show them your most enticing offers at just the right time.
OptinMonster is the perfect tool to build on your great value proposition. With our software, you can create beautiful and compelling popups in minutes. Our extensive targeting and triggering tools give you full control over who sees your offers and when.
Disclosure: Our content is reader-supported. This means if you click on some of our links, then we may earn a commission. We only recommend products that we believe will add value to our readers.
