Your company’s competitive advantage lives or dies by its value proposition. If you can’t clearly distinguish your product or service from your competitors — and then deliver on your brand promise — why should customers choose you?
The stakes are high, but writing a great value proposition shouldn’t strike fear into your heart. (And if it does — deep breath. We’ll get through this together.)
In this article, we’ll define what a value proposition is, and just as importantly, what it isn’t. We’ll also break down examples from seven well-known brands.
I’ve also talked to a handful of marketing experts to bring you tactics and tips for creating value props that will help you lift sales, boost conversion rates, connect and engage with customers, and solve world peace. (Just kidding on that last one. But a good value proposition does address a lot of marketing problems.)
We’ll cover:
What is a value proposition?
A value proposition is a short statement that communicates why buyers should choose your products or services. It’s more than just a product or service description — it’s the specific solution that your business provides and the promise of value that a customer can expect you to deliver.
A value proposition, sometimes called a brand proposition or core proposition, might be the difference between losing a sale and closing it. In other words: A great value prop is an essential conversion factor.
For that reason, it‘s important to create one that accurately represents your products and services, distinguishes you from competitors, and makes it clear why you’re the best choice.
Let us help you make this process easier: Download our templates below and follow along with the rest of the post.
Your value proposition is yours — it distinguishes your business from your competitors, and it clearly communicates that to customers.
Without it, buyers won’t have a reason to purchase what you sell. They may even choose a competitor simply because its marketing campaigns and sales processes have a clearer value proposition.
You might think: Isn’t my value prop interchangeable with, say, my slogan?
Nope. It’s easy to confuse your value proposition with other similar brand assets, such as your mission statement, slogan, or tagline. We break down the differences below.
Value Proposition vs. Mission Statement
Your value proposition details what you offer customers and why they should choose you, while a mission statement details your objective as an organization. Although the two may share elements, a value prop is more product- and service-oriented, and a mission statement is more goal-oriented.
Here’s an example for HubSpot’s Smart CRM, the AI-powered system that connects all of HubSpot’s products within the customer platform:
Value Proposition: “Free CRM Software That Grows With Your Business.”
Mission Statement: “Helping millions of organizations grow better.”
Value Proposition vs. Slogan
A slogan is a short, catchy statement that brands use in marketing campaigns to sell a specific product. While your value proposition wouldn’t necessarily go in an ad (at least, not usually), a slogan would. The most important thing to note is that a company can have different slogans for different campaigns or products.
Here are two examples from De Beers Group:
Value Proposition: “Exquisite diamonds, world-class designs, breathtaking jewelry.”
Slogan: “A diamond is forever.”
Value Proposition vs. Tagline
A tagline is a short statement that embodies a certain aspect of your brand or business. While a value proposition is more concrete, a tagline can represent a concept or idea that your business stands for. Most businesses have only one tagline that is instantly recognizable and connected to their brand.
Target’s value proposition centers its commitment to creating “an unparalleled product assortment that goes beyond the basics. That means providing guests with high-quality designs they’re proud to buy, at affordable prices they love.”
Tagline: “Expect more. Pay less.”
Value Proposition vs. Mission Statement vs. Slogan vs. Tagline
Your value prop should differentiate you from your peers and competitors, but it’s not quite the same thing as a slogan, tagline, or mission statement. Let’s look at an example of a business that uses all four: Nike.
Nike’s earliest value propositions — back in the 1970s, long before it was an international conglomerate — were much more narrowly defined.
It “was a running shoe company, and the brand stood for excellence in track and field,” Nike co-founder and former CEO Phil Knight told Harvard Business Review in a 1992 interview.
Today, the brand is more customer-centered than product-centered, and positions itself as an innovative, inspirational, and sustainability-minded brand.
Mission Statement: “To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world.”
Among Nike’s more memorable slogans are “Twice the guts. Double the glory,” “Bo knows,” and “There is no finish line.”
Tagline: ”Just do it.”
Value props, mission statements, slogans, and taglines are all important accessories to your brand, but your potential customers and employees consider additional factors when choosing one business over another.
In other words, “Just do it” plastered across a city bus won’t necessarily close a sale.
But if that tagline is backed up by an earned reputation for innovation, inspiration, and sustainability, you’re much more likely to have customers lining up for the next Air Jordan release.
Your value proposition goes deep into the problems you want to solve for buyers and lays out why your product or service is the perfect solution.
Elements of a Value Proposition
Before we get into the nitty-gritty of writing a great value proposition, let’s look at the main elements of one.
- Target audience. Whose problems will be solved by your product or service?
- Product or service. What is your brand promise?
- Benefits and features. How are they different from any competitors?
- Excellent execution. Can you deliver on your value proposition?
How to Write a Value Proposition
- Identify your customer’s main problem.
- Understand your target audience.
- Understand your competitors.
- List the benefits your product or service provides.
- Differentiate yourself as the preferred provider of this value.
- Use a template to help you brainstorm.
If you’re a visual learner, check out this video to learn how to create a value proposition.
Before we start, there’s an important through line that nearly every expert I spoke to brought up: Internal alignment.
It can be tough to iron out internal disagreements about core benefits or even the target audience.
Kassandra Rodriguez, the founder and brand strategist behind 1st House Branding, says that if you proceed with a value proposition before you’re aligned in the conference room, you’re far more likely to fail once you’re outside the conference room.
“I’ve seen it many times,” she tells me. Companies make huge promises that they can solve certain problems for their potential clients. “And then when they’re not able to do it,” she says, “it really, really affects the brand.”
“Your value prop can be very helpful to your brand,” but without internal alignment, “it can also completely destroy it.”
Step 1: Identify your customer’s main problem.
As ever, know your customers. Your teammates are a rich source of knowledge: Customer service reps, marketing specialists, and salespeople can fill in the gaps about what problems your customers want to solve. They can also help develop use cases, which will be invaluable throughout the process.
For example, let’s say your business, Tax-tastic!, sells tax software on a subscription basis, and it includes automated templates in the software package.
Your ideal customer is looking for an affordable and user-friendly way to access complicated tax documents for their business. In this example, your business’ offerings could be the solution they need.
My fellow HubSpotter Jan Bogaert, Product Marketer for Sales Hub and Smart CRM, is a value prop pro. He suggests asking, “Why now?” at this part of the process to capture the urgency of your value prop.
Step 2: Understand your target audience.
“I really love digging deep into the target audience,” Rodriguez tells me. “What are they going through right now?”
Rodriguez loves to talk about value propositions — so much so that her LinkedIn tagline reads, “Does your value prop suck?”
She suggests spending some time on this step to make sure your value props don’t suck. She identifies customer problems, any issues they encounter while trying to solve them, and any customer preferences.
Social media, she says, can be a goldmine of information. Reading Google and Yelp reviews — both yours and your competitors’ — can give you a realistic view of your target audience’s mindset.
Depending on timeline and budget, Rodriguez may also use consumer insight tools like Forrester and Gartner to develop a more robust understanding of the target audience.
Step 3: Understand your competitors.
It may seem like wasted time to think so much about your competitors — your brand is obviously better, right? — but in order to write an effective value proposition, you need to know how to differentiate your brand.
Rodriguez says, “I always tell my clients that if their value proposition matches their competitors’, then there’s something wrong.”
Step 4: List the benefits your product or service provides.
Add a sentence that explains why each benefit matters to the customer.
In the Tax-tastic! example above, the value is affordable tax documentation at your customers’ fingertips, which would normally cost them thousands of dollars.
This step can be as simple as listing out every product you sell and describing its primary benefit. The benefit should be concise and focused on a single customer need.
In our Tax-tastic! example, you’d list each tax template, explain the benefit it provides, and identify why a customer would need it.
Bogaert suggests starting with a big list of all the benefits, and then looking for relationships between them so you can eventually pare the list down.
Step 5: Differentiate yourself as the preferred provider of this value.
Next, pair the buyers’ problem(s) with the elements that make your product or service valuable. Do they align?
If so, you’re ready for step five: It’s time to differentiate your products or services from the competition.
If they don’t align, repeat the steps above until you find a valid buyer need and a viable solution that your business can offer.
Step 6: Use a template to help you brainstorm.
Here’s a pro tip from branding strategist Liz Ellis.
She’s seen brands skip a crucial step to their great detriment: Ask if you can execute the value proposition with excellence. And if you can’t? It’s not a good value prop.
Ellis uses a method with clients of The Liz Ellis Word Company that packs a one-two punch. She divides a slide in two; one side has a grid with basics like target audience, key emotional benefit, and key functional benefit.
The other half has the same info, but she writes it as a short narrative.
“You can fill in the blanks [of a grid],” she tells me, “but taken in aggregate, they don’t paint a picture, they don’t hang together.”
On the other hand, “if you start with a narrative, [it’s easy] to write a few beautiful sentences that might not even be a value prop.”
Ellis combines the two components as a kind of pressure test. “If it works in both formats, that’s a good test to see if it’s a good value prop.”
Pro tip: Bogaert says to write as many long, descriptive sentences as you can, and then keep editing until you land on something that’s succinct, creative, and accurate. “Write a lot of variations. Be descriptive. And then edit and edit and edit.”
If you get writer’s block, he says that AI tools like ChatGPT can help you break through.
“Ask for something more action-focused, or a lot of synonyms — it can inspire you to try something different.”
Finally, polish your value proposition. Is there a specific customer service offering your business provides that others don’t? Do you offer any additional services that other companies charge for?
These elements can differentiate your value proposition from competitors while keeping the focus on the buyer’s needs.
Final words of advice from Ellis to test your final value prop: “Is it true? Is it relevant and motivating? And is it possible to execute with excellence?”
4 Methods to Build Great Value Propositions
- Steve Blank Method
- Geoff Moore Method
- Harvard Business School Method
- Slow Storytelling Method
There are, of course, other methods for building great value props. Here are four we like:
Steve Blank Method
Instead of focusing on the features themselves, Blank saw the need to emphasize the benefits derived from the features in a simple sentence. By following this formula you’ll connect the target market and their pain points to the solution:
“We help (X) do (Y) by doing (Z)”
Geoff Moore Method
Moore provides a template that’s more specific in identifying the industry categories alongside the benefits customers value. This makes a more clear value proposition formula as follows:
“For [target customer] who [needs or wants X], our [product/service] is [category of industry] that [benefits]”
Harvard Business School Method
According to HBS, a value proposition is executed best when it answers the following questions:
- 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?
Slow Storytelling Method
A 2022 paper in the Journal of Business Research proposes a different approach the authors call slow storytelling. It has eight steps:
- Narrating the organization.
- Redefining the audience.
- Articulating the heritage.
- Mapping the journey.
- Enhancing sustainability.
- Engaging the ethical consumers.
- Involving the customer as an advocate.
- Enriching the customer experience.
The slow storytelling method was devised explicitly for a highly digitized, post-COVID world. It’s built on the belief that activating social, environmental, cultural, and economic values makes for stronger value props.
The authors consider the context of our digitized world “by producing and communicating evocative stories of the products, by explaining their meanings to users and consumers, by presenting each product’s unique set of values, and by explaining to their customers how they are making an impact on society.”
HubSpot Value Proposition Templates
HubSpot offers 15 free templates to help you brainstorm the perfect value proposition for your brand. Not only can they help you home in on your business’ core values, but they can also give you a boost when working on your actual statement.
Some questions you will ask yourself when using the HubSpot templates include:
- Why do you do what you do?
- How do you do what you do?
- What do you do for your customers?
Before you write the statement itself, it’s important to create a value proposition canvas.
Value Proposition Canvas
A value proposition canvas is a visual tool to help you position your business‘ product or service around your customers’ needs.
The goal is to identify how your business provides value within the market. You can use one when introducing a new offer into the market or when enhancing an existing one.
The value proposition canvas is made up of two major components: the customer profile and the value map.
Here’s how to make one:
Step 1: Create a customer profile to represent your target buyer.
The customer profile makes up the first half of the value proposition canvas.
When performing this exercise, start with this section so that the customer’s wants and needs can influence the overall value proposition canvas.
A customer profile consists of three areas:
Customer Jobs
“Customer jobs” is just another way of saying, “Know your customer.”
What does the customer have to do to solve their problem? The answer might be functional, like buying your tax software to solve for simplicity and speed.
It could also be less tangible — for instance, if you sell a luxury product or experience, the “problem” could be that the McCoys wanted to keep up with the Joneses, and your luxury watch will raise the McCoys’ social status.
Customer Expectations
“Expectations” are also referred to as “gains” — in other words, what your customer is hoping to gain from doing business with you.
If you run a powerlifting gym, your customer is probably hoping to gain some #gainz (sorry); if you sell vacation packages, your customer wants to gain memorable travel experiences.
No matter what you sell, your customer has expectations. In this section, you’ll use research to explain what your customers expect from you in order to purchase your product.
Customer Pain Points
As your customer completes their job, what pains do they experience? Do they take any risks while doing so? Do they experience any negative emotions?
These pain points should be considered so that you include the most helpful products and services on the value map side of the value proposition canvas.
Pro tip: Amanda Natividad, VP of Marketing at SparkToro, has this advice for marketers who are new to value propositions: “Get really good at doing customer interviews and talking to your customers. Understand what they want, what they need, and what they use your tool for.”
Step 2: Create a value map for your products and services.
In this section of the value proposition canvas, three specific sectors help describe what the business offers to the customer.
Gain Creators
These are features your products or services have that make the customer happy. Think creatively about the elements of happiness your customers experience. Consider their financial and social goals as well as their psychographics.
Pain Relievers
In the section above, we discussed customer pains. Now let’s define exactly how your business will help customers overcome those pain points.
Products & Services
While you don’t need to list every single product or service your company offers, include the ones that will create the most gain and alleviate the most pains for your customers.
Step 3: Determine the value proposition-customer fit.
Once you’ve completed the value proposition canvas exercise, the next step is to determine how your value proposition fits within the customer profile.
To do this, you’ll use a ranking process that prioritizes products and services based on how well they address the customer profile.
All together, your value proposition canvas should look something like this:
Next up, let‘s go over some templates you can use when you’re creating your value proposition and publishing it on your website.
Value Proposition Templates
We’ve crafted 15 templates to help you create an amazing value proposition for your brand, and we’ve paired each of them with an example of how they may look for a real business.
This has all the tools you need to craft a value proposition that precisely communicates your brand to users and stakeholders, including:
- 10 value proposition writing templates
- 1 value proposition canvas template
- 1 mission statement brainstorm template
- 1 vision statement brainstorm template
- 1 competitive analysis template
- 1 brand hierarchy template
Now that we‘ve reviewed the elements, visual tools, and templates, let’s look at some brand examples that effectively identify and satisfy customer needs.
Value Proposition Examples
- HubSpot
- SparkToro
- Asana
- Booking.com
- UberEats
- Hulu
- Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams
I talked to four marketing experts and leaned into my own decade-plus of marketing experience to analyze the following seven examples of value propositions.
Because value propositions are typically internal information, not all of these are official documents — but we can still perform an educated analysis of customer gains and pains as they align with well-known products and services.
1. HubSpot: “Free CRM Software That Grows With Your Business.”
We’re pretty good at writing value props here at HubSpot (I might be biased). Our one-liner is manifest in everything we do: “Free CRM Software That Grows With Your Business.”
And in two neat supporting sentences, we can incorporate all the elements of a great value proposition.
“HubSpot Smart CRM has free tools to connect your data, teams, and customers all on one platform. Seamlessly unify your marketing, sales, and service teams with our AI-powered solution.”
Most companies will benefit from using a CRM, even freelance businesses and small family-owned firms.
The problem is that most systems are expensive, over-complicated and cobbled together, creating challenges for businesses as they grow.
Target Audience: Here’s a few hints: “free tools,” “seamlessly unify,” and “marketing, sales, and service teams.”
Put it all together, and you can deduce that our target customers are at or near the top of their small- or medium-sized business, are customer-obsessed, and are proactive (and enthusiastic!) about growth.
HubSpot’s value proposition targets active CRM users who are tired of handling over-complicated systems, and beginners who are intimidated by legacy options. These users want a system that makes growth easier, not harder.
Product or Service: A customer platform with software, integrations, and resources that connect to your marketing, sales, content management, and customer service.
Benefits and Features: While each product in HubSpot’s Smart CRM can be used individually, the true benefit comes from using each hub in tandem.
Instead of having to deal with incompatible software and productivity tools, you can manage all your marketing, sales, content, and customer service needs in one place.
To that end, the product’s value proposition emphasizes its ease of use and ability to synchronize different teams across the business.
Bogaert walked me through the value prop he’d worked on for HubSpot’s Sales Hub.
The core message is, “Sales software that connects without complexity, drives productivity with easy-to-adopt tools, and supports scaling sales orgs.”
You can see the relationship to HubSpot’s primary value prop: “Sales software that connects” echoes “connect your data, teams, and customers.”
“Easy-to-adopt tools” references “seamlessly,” and “without complexity” refers to “all on one platform.”
Pro tip from Bogaert: Write the core message last.
2. SparkToro: “Do better marketing.”
Amanda Natividad, SparkToro’s VP of Marketing, tells me right off the bat, “We’re not sure that a lot of people are even searching for audience research.”
Historically, audience research is expensive, it’s time-consuming, and it’s slow. Smaller businesses or lean teams may not even pursue it, thinking it’s out of reach.
Natividad says that SparkToro’s value prop is heavily focused on education — “spreading the word about the problems [so] we can lay the groundwork and spread the word about our solutions.”
She also tells me that SparkToro has experimented with several value props, although they’re philosophically similar. An earlier example, “We make audience research fast, easy, and accurate,” indicates SparkToro’s internal emphasis on educating its potential customers.
The company’s product page shows the current value prop, “Get instant audience research. Do better marketing.” In just seven words, it speaks to its audience, defines the product, teases the benefits and features, and demonstrates how it can solve long-standing audience research problems.
Target Audiences: Natividad tells me that SparkToro is ideal for in-house marketers, lean marketing teams, and agencies — “people who are doing a lot of research on different kinds of audiences.”
Product or Service: Instant audience research that’s accessible to a much larger audience than traditional methods, online behavior analysis and trend monitoring, and competitor analysis and benchmarking features.
Benefits and Features: These are summed up on SparkToro’s website as a target audience’s “behaviors, characteristics, and demographics.”
That includes:
- Precise audience insights for targeted marketing campaigns
- Increased engagement and conversion rates through audience understanding
- Competitive intelligence for informed decision-making and strategy planning
- Customizable reports and recommendations for optimizing marketing efforts
- Easy-to-use tools for discovering audience demographics, behaviors, and preferences
3. Asana: “Work works better with Asana.”
As a bit of a workflow geek, I’ve used Asana (and some of its competitors, like Trello) for several years.
I’ve worked at some smaller companies that don’t have enterprise-size resources for project management and training, and I’ve used Asana to set up automated workflows for things like copy editing and approvals.
Asana says that “Work works better with Asana” is the company slogan, and that one version of its value prop is, “Asana helps cross-functional teams overcome their organizational growing pains and ensures that goals, processes, and collaboration can continue to scale.”
In 2024, Asana announced a new campaign that “celebrates the power of connection,” leaning into qualities like seamlessness and effortlessness.
These help differentiate Asana from competitors like Trello, which emphasizes productivity in the era of remote work.
Target Audiences: Business professionals and teams looking to manage projects efficiently, organizations who need task management and collaboration tools, remote teams and freelancers, managers and team leaders who want to streamline workflows and communication, and individuals and teams looking to increase productivity and prioritize tasks.
Product or Service: A SaaS designed to help teams collaborate on goals and processes, project management platform for task organization and tracking, team collaboration tools for efficient communication and sharing, customizable project workflows and task assignments, integration with other tools and platforms for seamless workflow, and reporting and analytics to track progress and performance.
Benefits and Features: Centralized platform for organizing and managing projects and tasks; collaboration tools for real-time communication and sharing of updates; customizable project templates and workflows for tailored task management; integration capabilities with popular tools such as Google Drive, Slack, Jira, Notion, etc.; and reporting and analytics features to track project progress and performance.
4. Booking.com: “A piece of paradise just for you.”
Booking.com’s homepage proclaims, “A piece of paradise just for you.”
Its About Us page expands on the value that Booking.com brings to customers: “By investing in technology that takes the friction out of travel, Booking.com seamlessly connects millions of travelers to memorable experiences, a variety of transportation options, and incredible places to stay — from homes to hotels, and much more.”
Compare that to competitor Expedia’s key differentiator: “When we power more travel, we unleash more opportunities to strengthen connections, broaden horizons and bridge divides.”
Booking.com is more technology- and service-focused, and Expedia is more people-focused.
Target Audience: Travelers looking for accommodation options worldwide; individuals or groups planning vacations, business trips, or special events; budget-conscious travelers who want competitive pricing; travel enthusiasts interested in a variety of accommodation styles; and travelers seeking user-friendly and convenient online booking platforms.
Product or Service: Frictionless booking of hotels, flights, and other travel experiences; an online travel accommodation booking platform; a wide range of accommodation options including hotels, vacation rentals, apartments, and hostels; real-time availability and pricing information for easy comparison; secure online payment options and reservation management; and customer reviews and ratings for informed decision-making.
Benefits and Features: Extensive selection of accommodations around the globe, best-price guarantee and price comparison tool for cost-effective bookings, and a user-friendly platform with easy search and filter options.
5. UberEats: “The easy way to get the food you love delivered.”
UberEats has a bit of an advantage in the value prop game: By the time UberEats was introduced in 2014, Uber had been a recognized brand for seven years.
When your company name is widely used as a verb, simply adding “Eats” to it is … pretty descriptive, actually.
UberEats’ value proposition focuses on convenience (“the easy way”) and selection (“the food you love”).
Compare Uber Eats to DoorDash, which differentiates its brand by focusing on local economies and connection: “When consumers get their goods, local merchants get business, and Dashers get paid.”
Target Audience: Hungry users who want food from their favorite restaurants delivered to their door, people who want convenient food delivery options, busy professionals looking for quick and easy meal solutions, food enthusiasts interested in exploring various cuisines, and customers who want a wide range of restaurant options.
Product or Service: Food delivery platform connecting users with local restaurants; a variety of culinary options ranging from fast food to gourmet meals; real-time order tracking and updates for improved transparency; and special promotions, discounts, and loyalty programs for users.
Benefits and Features: Access to a diverse selection of cuisine choices from local restaurants; seamless ordering with easy payment options and quick delivery; real-time tracking and updates on order status; special discounts, promotions, and rewards for users; and a user-friendly app interface for straightforward navigation and ordering.
6. Hulu: All the TV You Love
If you watch half as much TV as I do, you know that Hulu is the streaming service of choice for watching premium-cable shows the day after they air on their respective channels.
Hulu has a reputation for delivering on the promise of “All the TV You Love” — emphasis on all.
It offers at least four different add-ons for other premium streaming services, like Paramount+ and STARZ. And that doesn’t even include live options like sports and Spanish-language live streams.
Hulu’s About Us page opens with a long and descriptive brand position: “Hulu is the leading and most comprehensive all-in-one premium streaming service that offers an expansive slate of live and on-demand entertainment, both inside and outside the home, through a wide array of subscription options, that give consumers ultimate control over their viewing experience.”
Simple it is not, but customized and expansive? Very.
Compare that to Netflix, which says, “We want to entertain the world.”
Netflix’s brand promise is quality, simplicity, and accessibility. It’s available in nearly 200 countries — Hulu is primarily available in the U.S. — and its three subscription levels vary based on how many ads you can tolerate and how many devices you want to use.
Target Audience: Entertainment enthusiasts looking for on-demand TV shows and movies, viewers who want popular and original TV series and movies, sports fans who want to watch live TV and sports events.
Product or Service: On-demand streaming platform offering a varied library of TV shows and movies, live TV subscription package with access to live channels, original content, including movies, series, and documentaries, add-on packages for premium channels and additional features, personalized profiles and recommendations for tailored viewing.
Benefits and Features: Extensive library of current and classic TV shows, movies, and original content; customizable viewing preferences and personalized profiles, live TV option for real-time access to channels and sports events, ad-supported and ad-free subscription options, compatibility across multiple devices.
7. Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams: “A creative-led, community-spirited company on a mission to make better ice creams and bring people together.”
“We are a creative-led, community-spirited company on a mission to make better ice creams and bring people together.”
Compare that to Häagen Dazs, which promises luxury, quality ingredients, and flavors that go far beyond the strawberry-chocolate-vanilla basics (rum raisin ice cream, anyone?).
Jeni’s revolving flavors include novelties like sweet cream biscuits and peach jam (pro tip: it’s delicious), but the brand promise is quite different from Häagen Dazs — even though both brands boast a freezer full of far-out flavors that you can’t get elsewhere.
Where Häagen Dazs goes for luxe vibes, Jeni’s value prop is more community-centered.
Target Audience: Ice cream enthusiasts who want to indulge in unusual and gourmet flavors; consumers interested in high-quality, artisanal ice creams; people who value locally sourced ingredients; foodies and culinary enthusiasts looking for inventive flavor combinations.
Product or Service: Handcrafted artisanal ice creams in a variety of unique flavors, seasonal and limited-edition flavor releases, online store for nationwide delivery of ice cream pints, retail locations and scoop shops for in-person purchases.
Benefits and Features: Creative and inventive ice cream flavors using high-quality ingredients, rotating menu with seasonal and exclusive flavors for variety, nationwide shipping for accessibility outside of local areas, sustainable and eco-friendly practices in production and packaging, community engagement through events and collaborations with local producers.
Now that you’ve seen some top value propositions, let’s review examples of value proposition canvases.
Value Proposition Canvas Examples
- HubSpot
- SparkToro
- Asana
- Booking.com
- UberEats
- Hulu
- Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams
Value proposition canvases are typically internal marketing documents. But we can use publicly available information — and extensive personal experience eating ice cream and watching TV — to map out the examples above.
1. HubSpot Value Proposition Canvas
Customer Profile
- Customer Jobs: HubSpot customers need to effectively enable their sales teams to do their best work while avoiding complicated workflows.
- Gains: Customers want to increase their sales rep productivity levels and boost sales.
- Pains: There are plenty of CRM options, but they’re often over complicated and create silos.
Value Map
- Gain Creators: HubSpot Smart CRM offers streamlined contact management software and productivity tools that will help sales teams do their best work.
- Pain Relievers: The user-friendly interface and unified platform offers ease-of-use and high visibility across systems.
- Products & Services: The HubSpot customer platform includes natively built CRM, marketing, sales, customer service, website content management, commerce, and operations software, open APIs, and hundreds of certified integrations.
2. SparkToro Value Proposition Canvas
Customer Profile
- Customer Jobs: Identify and understand target audience demographics, discover where and how to reach target audience online, and monitor industry trends and competitor activities.
- Gains: Precise audience insights for targeted marketing campaigns, increased engagement and conversion rates, data-driven marketing strategies, competitive intelligence for informed decision-making.
- Pains: Lack of accurate audience data for targeting, difficulty understanding audience behavior and preferences, limited visibility into competitors and industry trends.
Value Map
- Gain Creators: Targeted outreach and engagement strategies, data-driven marketing campaigns, market trend monitoring and alerts, customized reports and recommendations for growth.
- Pain Relievers: Accurate and up-to-date audience data, insights into online behaviors and preference, targeted audience profiling for effective marketing, competitor analysis tools.
- Products & Services: Audience research and segmentation tools, online behavior analysis and trend monitoring, competitor analysis and benchmarking, and customizable market research reports.
3. Asana Value Proposition Canvas
Customer Profile
- Customer Jobs: Asana customers need to efficiently manage projects, collaborate and communicate across teams, stay organized and on track with tasks, and easily share progress.
- Gains: Streamlined project management process, increased team productivity and collaboration, visibility of progress and tasks, and better communication.
- Pains: Difficulty keeping track of multiple projects, lack of transparency, inefficient communication, and missed deadlines.
Value Map
- Gain Creators: Seamless team collaboration, project timeline visualization, progress tracking and reporting, integration with popular apps and services.
- Pain Relievers: Centralized project management system, real-time updates and notifications, customizable dashboards and reporting, task dependencies and due dates.
- Products & Services: Task and project tracking, team collaboration tools, customizable project workflows, and integration with other tools and platforms.
4. Booking.com Value Proposition Canvas
Customer Profile
- Customer Jobs: Find and book accommodation easily and quickly; compare prices and options for hotels, vacation rentals, and other accommodations; access reliable reviews and ratings for accommodations; manage reservations and travel plans in one place.
- Gains: Wide selection of accommodations, best price guarantee and price comparison tool, trusted reviews and ratings from other travelers, convenient reservation management with real-time updates.
- Pains: Difficulty finding suitable accommodations within budget, lack of transparency in pricing and availability, uncertainty about the reliability of accommodation, inconvenience of managing multiple reservations and travel plans.
Value Map
- Gain Creators: Personalized accommodation recommendations, special deals and discounts for users, instant booking confirmation and seamless payment process, mobile app for on-the-go reservation management.
- Pain Relievers: Extensive accommodation options for all budgets, transparent pricing and availability information, verified guest reviews and ratings, centralized reservation management and itinerary planner.
- Products & Services: Accommodation search and booking platform, price comparison tool, accommodation reviews and ratings, reservation management dashboard.
5. UberEats Value Proposition Canvas
Customer Profile
- Customer Jobs: Order food conveniently from a variety of restaurants, enjoy fast and reliable delivery services, track the status of food orders in real-time, discover new dining options and cuisines.
- Gains: Access to a wide range of restaurants and cuisines, quick delivery times and tracking, reliable and efficient food delivery service, convenient and hassle-free ordering process.
- Pains: Limited dining options, long wait times for food delivery or pickup, uncertainty about the quality and reliability of food delivery services, lack of convenience in ordering food.
Value Map
- Gain Creators: Personalized recommendations based on user preferences, loyalty rewards program for frequent users, seamless payment options for convenient ordering, user-friendly app interface for easy navigation and ordering.
- Pain Relievers: Diverse restaurant selection for different tastes and preferences, fast and accurate delivery services, transparent delivery fees and estimated delivery times, quality control measures for food preparation and delivery.
- Products & Services: Food delivery platform with a variety of restaurant options, real-time order tracking and status updates, special promotions and discounts for users, customer support for order-related issues.
6. Hulu Value Proposition Canvas
Customer Profile
- Customer Jobs: Watch a wide variety of TV shows, movies, and original content; access on-demand streaming on multiple devices; discover new and popular TV series and movies; watch live TV and sports events.
- Gains: Extensive library of TV shows, movies, and original content; personalized recommendations based on viewing preferences; flexibility to watch content anytime, anywhere; access to live TV channels and sports events.
- Pains: Limited access to current and popular TV shows and movies, expensive cable or satellite TV subscriptions, inconvenience of fixed TV schedules and commercials, difficulty finding and navigating content across platforms.
Value Map
- Gain Creators: Exclusive original content and award-winning TV series, seamless multi-device streaming, live sports coverage and special events programming, customizable viewing preferences and user profiles.
- Pain Relievers: Current and up-to-date TV shows and movies, ad-free viewing, user-friendly interface for easy navigation and content discovery.
- Products & Services: On-demand streaming platform with a diverse content library, live TV subscription package with access to live channels, personalized user profiles and recommendations, ad-supported and ad-free subscription options.
7. Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams Value Proposition Canvas
Customer Profile
- Customer Jobs: Indulge and explore high-quality, innovative ice cream flavors; experience artisanal and handcrafted ice cream creations; enjoy a premium dessert.
- Gains: Wide variety of creative and inventive ice cream flavors, premium quality ingredients and artisanal production, convenient access to gourmet ice cream in stores and online.
- Pains: Limited availability of gourmet ice cream, uninspiring and repetitive traditional flavors, difficulty finding high-quality ice cream with natural ingredients, inconvenience of traveling long distances for premium ice cream.
Value Map
- Gain Creators: Flavor innovation and collaboration with local producers, eco-friendly packaging and sustainable practices, community engagement through events and partnerships, membership programs and rewards for loyal customers.
- Pain Relievers: Authentic and natural ingredients for high-quality ice cream, rotating menu of innovative and seasonal flavor offerings, nationwide shipping, engaging and interactive customer experiences.
- Products & Services: Handcrafted ice cream in unique flavors and varieties, seasonal and limited-edition flavor releases, online store for nationwide delivery, retail locations and scoop shops for in-person purchases.
1. Conduct research to determine the value proposition of your competitors.
Because your value proposition is the differentiating factor between your business and the competition, it’s important to research your closest competitors.
You can use the value proposition canvas in this post to determine how each company meets the needs of your buyer persona.
Be honest here — it‘s tempting to focus on the areas in which your competition doesn’t excel, but you‘ll have a better idea of where your product or service fits within the market if you home in on your competitors’ strengths.
2. Explain the value of your products and services.
You‘re probably familiar with outlining the features and benefits of your product and service offerings. This tactic takes that concept a step further. By matching the benefits of your offerings to specific values that your customers have, you’ll be able to align what your business provides with what your customers need.
3. Describe the benefits your ideal customer will experience when they choose your product or service over the competition.
When crafting this part of your value proposition, include details about how your product or service will benefit the customer and use examples where you can. Videos, photos, and live demonstrations are all effective ways to illustrate your value proposition because they show the customer exactly what they can expect from your business.
4. Develop a unique value proposition for each buyer persona you serve.
Ideally, you’ll focus your marketing efforts on a specific target audience.
You’ll also find that this audience will have different needs based on their buying behaviors. Buyer personas can help you segment your larger audience into groups of customers with similar desires, goals, pain points, and buying behaviors.
As a result, you’ll need a unique value proposition for each persona. Different products and services you offer may solve certain customer pain points better than others, so developing a value proposition for each persona will better serve each one.
5. Test your value proposition with your audience using various marketing channels.
Each of these tactics will likely be developed internally by your team, which means you’ll want to validate your work with your target audience.
Your value proposition will be communicated through various marketing channels like your website, social media accounts, video, audio, and in person.
Test your proposition with members of your audience (both existing customers and non-customers) using each of these channels. Tools like UserTesting can help you streamline this feedback process so that you can implement changes quickly to finalize your value proposition.
6. Deploy and monitor your value proposition at scale.
After adjusting your value proposition based on the initial tests, the next step is to deploy at scale.
Keep in mind that you’ll likely need to make some adjustments — totally normal!
Your target customers will react differently depending on the marketing channels they use, and your value proposition must have a consistent impact across all customer touchpoints.
It’s best to unify your data with tools like HubSpot’s marketing analytics software, so you can identify patterns across different channels and audience segments.
This helps solidify your buyer personas with concrete evidence regarding your audience’s pain points and what makes them tick, while any inconsistencies can indicate that your value proposition needs further refinement.
We know the makings of a value proposition, so how can you make it a good one?
Here are our final three tips.
What makes a good value proposition?
1. Clear Language
Your value proposition should address a primary customer need.
Limiting your focus keeps your value proposition clear and easy to understand. With just one main idea, your audience can quickly decide whether your product or service will be the best solution for them.
2. Specific Outcomes
Next, you’ll want to communicate the specific outcomes your customer can expect to receive from your product or service.
Will they save time? Demonstrate how. Will their workflow become more manageable? Show a before-and-after workflow diagram.
The specific outcomes will be critical components of your value proposition as they’ll exemplify exactly how your customers will use your solution to solve their problems.
3. Points of Differentiation
Not only are your potential customers evaluating your business‘ offerings based on their own needs, but they’re also comparing what you offer against competitors.
As a result, your value proposition needs detailed points of differentiation. These will help customers understand exactly what sets your company apart.
Use Kassandra Rodriguez’s litmus test: “You can tell a business has a strong value prop when everybody in the organization can be a salesperson for the brand.”
4. Ability to Execute with Excellence
It’s not just about whether you can execute on your value proposition. You’ve got to be able to execute it with excellence, Liz Ellis told me.
The inability to execute with excellence isn’t necessarily a commentary about your own strengths and weaknesses — here’s a great example she gave me:
“Say I’m selling a cancer drug and I know that there are clinical studies that show amazing results. Obviously I want that to be at the heart of my value proposition.
“However, legal regulations and the way the drug marketing industry works [might] make it impossible for me to publicize this claim.
“That‘s not a good value proposition because it’s not possible to execute with excellence.”
Value Proposition Frequently Asked Questions
What is the purpose of a value proposition? To effectively communicate the unique value and benefits that a product or service offers to its target customers to differentiate it from the competition and attract or retain customers.
What if the value proposition fails? If the value proposition fails, it can result in difficulties attracting and retaining customers, losing market share to competitors, and ultimately impacting the product‘s or service’s success and sustainability.
Can you change your value proposition? Yes, a company can change its value proposition by identifying and addressing customer pain points or needs, modifying its product or service offerings, and effectively communicating the new value to its target audience.
Compose a Remarkable Value Proposition
The factors that influence a potential customer to become a loyal customer are limited.
Whether your industry has a lot of opportunities to differentiate (like retail) or virtually no unique identifiers (like dairy), you’ll find that a value proposition will help you understand your ideal customer and position your business as the best solution for their needs.
Use the tactics, tips, framework, and examples in this post to craft your unique value proposition.
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