One of the most important – perhaps the single most important – thing you must have clarity on in your business is your value proposition, also known as “positioning statement“.
A quick note on terminology: for most people, these terms are completely interchangeable, and you’ll notice me switching back and forth between them all the time. You’ll also see it referred to as “Unique Value Proposition”, “UVP” and the older “USP” or Unique Selling Proposition in some articles.
Here’s a short video where I go over the basics and how you can use it on your website and to test your marketing campaigns to ensure they’re on point:
This is the format I prefer to use:
We help THESE PEOPLE…
Solve THIS PROBLEM… (or Get THIS RESULT… )By doing THIS…
So that THEY CAN…
This format of value proposition I use here is strongly influenced by Chapter 4 “How to Talk About What You Do” of Michael Port’s “Book Yourself Solid” (I highly recommend reading that if you’re in any kind of service industry).
Note that the original source may be far older than Michael Port’s book. Michael Skok of mjskok.com writes “It is intentionally typical of positioning statements to be consistent and reusable as such”.
Skok has written a number of articles on Value Proposition for Forbes and other top level publications. His version – which is more product oriented – looks like this:
For (target customers)
Who are dissatisfied with (the current alternative)
Our product is a (new product)
That provides (key problem-solving capability)
Unlike (the product alternative)
Philip Morgan of Philip Morgan Consulting introduced me to another variation which is a combination of the above and works well for service businesses:
We help THESE PEOPLE… solve THIS PROBLEM…
Unlike OTHER (describe people in your industry), we do UNIQUE THING …
So for me, that now reads like this:
I help consultants, speakers and published authors to increase their sales.
Unlike other marketers, I focus on customer lifetime value optimization before focusing on conversion optimization.
Let me know what your value proposition is in the comments, or on social media.