How to Create Powerful Value Propositions

Value propositions are what drive users to complete some desired action. Whether it’s purchasing a new product or submitting a form in exchange for something, the value proposition can best be defined as the reason why someone will buy a product from you or a service that you offer. Providing strong, legitimate value for users has already become integral to every digital marketing strategy.

Here’s a guide on how to create powerful value propositions that can grow your sales, increase the number of leads you are getting and help establish you as a thought leader in your industry.

Uses for Value Proposition

One of the best uses of value propositions is to get leads and increase sales. This is best explained by a couple of simple examples:

• Example 1: A small business owner is looking to increase the number of leads they are getting. They do a quick Google search and click on one of your ads promising them to double their leads in 90 days. Just having a form and a call-to-action on a landing page isn’t enough to get them to give you their name and email address. So instead, you offer them a free download of something in exchange for their contact information. Now, the user will see the value in giving you their name and email. Ideally, what you’re giving them should be related to the landing page and what their intent was when they landed on it.

• Example 2: A shopper lands on a product page selling dog collars and it’s exactly what they want. However, the price is a little higher than they’re willing to pay. So, you offer a discount of x amount to every new buyer in exchange for their email address. You may have lower margins on this particular purchase as a result, but now you have their email address and hopefully, attention.

Value propositions should be used in combination with all of your traffic sources, both paid and organic. By placing powerful value propositions on pages that people land on organically, such as blogs, you can also increase the chance of a conversion.

Types of Value Propositions

There are several different types of value propositions. Here are a few of the most common ones:

• E-Books: An e-book is a digital book (usually a PDF file) that covers a topic in great detail. It could be a detailed guide on how to conduct optimal SEO on a website or it could be a detailed instruction guide on how to build your own computer step-by-step.

• Whitepapers: A whitepaper usually offers a detailed skeleton framework on how to accomplish something. It could lay the foundation for how to increase sales in 90 days or how to build an inbound marketing strategy.

• Online Tool: A online tool or app might let users analyze their website’s search engine optimization and provide them with a report in exchange for their email address along with steps they can take to better optimize their website.

• Promotion/Discount: This is the most self-explanatory. Simply offer users a promotion or discount if they provide their name and email for a newsletter or other purpose.

• Template: A template is a document that is essentially an outline waiting to be filled out by the person who downloads it. Sometimes, these can be email templates or Photoshop files. Your industry and goal determine what exactly these templates are.

Whatever type of value proposition you choose to create, it should be related to what the user is looking for when it’s offered to them. If someone is looking for a luxury shoe-buying guide, offering them an e-book on how to build a computer isn’t going to work. Visit a few websites related to your industry and see what kind of value propositions they’re offering, along with what you have to do to get them.

Creating Value Propositions

Value propositions can’t just look good, they need to BE good. If you think that putting together a mixing pot of content to serve as your value proposition in an eBook or whitepaper format, then you’re going to be in for a bad time.

Thin, poor and lazy content that offers little value won’t work well as a value proposition and may cause users to distrust you. After all, they gave you their name and email because they thought you were going to provide them with a valuable piece of content. Make sure you meet those expectations.

To speed up the content creation process, consider using templates from Graphicriver. You don’t need to go crazy, but your value propositions should be presented in a clean, professional format such as in a nice PDF document. A Word doc or PowerPoint isn’t going to cut it.

You can look for a freelancer on Fiverr or UpWork to put together the template once you have the content ready.

While you can outsource the placing of the content onto a template, chances are you’ll want to create the content that goes on the template yourself, outsourcing it will probably lead to something that is poorly written and offers relatively little value. Use your knowledge as an industry insider and expert to share things most of your target audience probably doesn’t know but should know—and probably wants to know.

Make sure to brand the content you create and include call-to-actions within the content, but especially at the end. Don’t go overboard and slap your logo and website everywhere, but definitely have it in there.

Here’s a checklist of critical items your content needs:

• Brand colors
• Brand logo and website
• Table of contents with links
• Clear titles, headings, sub-headings
• Descriptive images and graphics
• Hyperlinks to helpful resources
• Page numbers
• Proper spelling, grammar, punctuation and phrasing
• Contact information (at the end)

It helps to establish and revision and approval process with your team to ensure your content is as best as can be. Creating the content may take time, but the end result is well worth it.

Using Value Propositions

Once you have created a few pieces of truly valuable and well-designed content, you can begin planning how you’re going to use it to increase your sales and generate leads.

Paid advertising is one way to get your content out there. Design a target audience on Facebook that might be interested in what you’re offering. Then, create an attractive ad and compelling copy to promote your content. To learn how to create effective Facebook ads, read some of our best tips here. Look into Google AdWords as well and see if it’s a viable option for promoting your content. Then, create a great landing page (learn how to do that here) in order to give users access to your content.

Putting banner ads, modal popups, heads up bars, or bottom-of-the-screen pop-in boxes are other ways to promote your value propositions on your website. The more channels you take advantage of to promote your content, the better.

Generally, you’ll be asking users for a name or email for them to be able to download your content. This can of course vary considerably depending on what your goals are. If you’re wondering what you might do with all those emails, one effective and popular option is a drip marketing strategy. This involves sending users a steady stream of emails that provide further value in order to build a relationship with the user and eventually get them to convert. Learn more about how to execute a drip marketing strategy here.

Evaluating Your Value Propositions

Once you’ve created your value proposition content and have decided how you’re going to distribute it, you need to know if it’s working or not. Are users submitting forms or purchasing items as a result of strategically placed value propositions? If yes, you can probably argue that you’ve created great content and are sharing it with the right people. If not, maybe you need to reevaluate your targeting or identify if your content provides true value.

Browse the web a bit and see what your competitors are offering as value propositions to give you an idea of where you need to go. Enter your email and download a few samples of content from different websites. Then, pay attention to the emails you’ll probably start to receive as a result.

This can all give you insight into how effective it can be to stay in front of a user that gives you their email address in exchange for something. It may also help you fine-tune and optimize your strategy and content.