A value proposition tells your customers why they should do business with you rather than your competitors, and makes the benefits of your products or services crystal clear from the outset. It is the intermediary between your customer and your product and is a way of explaining why your customers should care for the product that you’re building and what makes this product relevant to them today. So, value proposition doesn’t exist without understanding your customer segment. It is fundamentally a statement about satisfying a customer need - and not just about a “good” product idea.
For ____________ (target customer)
who ____________ (statement of the need or opportunity)
our (product/service name) is ____________ (product category)
that (statement of benefit) ____________ .
(Sometimes followed by).. as opposed to________, who do this_______ .
For non-technical marketers
who struggle to find return on investment in social media
our product is a web-based analytics software that translates engagement metrics into actionable revenue metrics.
[Proven industry example] for/of [new domain].
Flickr for video.
Friendster for dogs.
The Firefox of media players.
“We help X do Y doing Z”.
We help non-technical marketers discover return on investment in social media by turning engagement metrics into revenue metrics.
Short, simple, memorable; what, how, why.
3 keywords or phrases
KISS (no expert jargon)
"Mint.com is the free, easy way to manage your money online."
1. Highlight the enormity of the problem you are tackling.
2. Tell the audience up front what your company sells.
3. Distill the differentiation down to one, easy-to-comprehend sentence.
4. Establish credibility by sharing the pedigree of the entrepreneurs, customers, or the investors.
One person dies of melanoma every 62 minutes. We offer a dermatoscope app for iPhone that enables people to easily diagnose their skin, leveraging patented pattern recognition technology trusted by the World Health Organization.
Superlative ("why choose this product").
Label ("what is this product").
Qualifiers ("who should choose this product").
The easiest operating system for netbook PC's.
The most secure payment gateway for mobile e-commerce.