“No pain, no gain” may be an awesome motivational mantra in the weight room. But in the board room? Not so much. To succeed in business, you need to understand your customers’ pain points and clearly explain how you’ll remedy them better than anyone else—which is where your value proposition saves the day.

Alaina Chiappone, a PR specialist at Otter Public Relations in St. Petersburg, Florida, discusses why a value proposition is vital to a business’s success.

Why is a value proposition important?

It’s essentially a promise to your customers about the benefits your product or service will deliver to them. It’s also an important tool to differentiate yourself from your competitors. With attention spans being so minimal today, you must clearly communicate your value to your customers almost immediately or they are going to lose interest and miss it. So having a concisely written value proposition, placed where they’re going to see it, is vital for converting a casual researcher into a customer. That’s where the value proposition packs the biggest punch.

Where exactly should a customer see it?

The more often they see it, the better. It should definitely be on your website. But it’s also important to repurpose it into other content, especially social media, to drive your message about what you’re offering customers. You must make sure that the value is being communicated anywhere that somebody finds you.

What are the key elements of a value proposition?

Typically, there are three things. First is the headline, a concise statement that says what the potential customer will gain from purchasing your product or service. Then there’s the subheading: a couple of sentences that explain the who, what, where, why, and how—who will benefit, what they will get from using your product or service, where they can get it, why they need it to solve their problem or achieve whatever goal they have, and how you’ll do it and do it better than the competition. Finally, a lot of times there will be a visual element to help illustrate your points.

It comes down to understanding them not only from a demographic perspective but also from a psychographic perspective. What are they trying to accomplish? What is getting in their way, and what do they expect of a product or service that is addressing the problem? Getting into the mind of the consumer is so important because once you understand how they’re thinking, you can better communicate how you’re going to solve their problems. That’s why clearly stating your value is so essential to the core of your communication strategy. If you’re not constantly referring back to those ideals of your value proposition, you’re wasting an opportunity to relay that message to your audience.

Can companies be too detailed with their value proposition?

Definitely, especially when it’s something that the founder has such excitement about. They want to tell you everything, so you have to rein them in a little bit. While additional information is helpful, it usually clutters the value proposition space. The value proposition should be kept concise and very clear: this is what we offer, this is how we do it, and this is who is going to benefit from it. I wouldn’t go over three lines at a time without breaking it up with visual representation, because that’s critical to keeping people’s attention. A block of text can deter people and mask your value proposition. So keeping it clean and on your home page is most important, and making sure that your value proposition is near your call to action and that both are near your Subscribe or Sign Up button gives them the right amount of information to take the deep dive.

How do value propositions mesh with calls to action?

In a perfect world, you will convert someone solely on the value proposition. That said, nobody is going to complete your CTA if they don’t understand the value. So I would say that if your CTA is elsewhere, and it’s buried in a sea of information, they’re going to forget the value proposition that they just read. Always keep in mind that wherever your CTA is, you need your value proposition right there. They are so integral to each other. For example, a potential customer may just say, “I don’t know if I want a free trial. It’s just an email that I’m going to have to unsubscribe from.” Reminding them of the value is going to keep their interest and their business.

What’s the most common mistake with value propositions?

Going too creative. You have this one statement, followed by a couple of short sentences. If you get too artsy with it, you’re going to lose the meaning and information behind it, and your value proposition morphs more into a tagline or slogan. It becomes too abstract.

What makes a value proposition different than a tagline?

That’s a good question. Let’s take Apple as an example. Apple’s tagline is Think different. That’s not their value proposition. It doesn’t tell me as a consumer exactly what I’m getting, why I’m going to benefit from it, and how it’s different from Android. The tagline is more of an idea about the brand that conveys its voice and message versus its value.
It goes back to abstract versus concrete: more of your brand’s image, voice, and persona versus the value that your specific product or service provides. When you think of Apple, it’s constantly innovating to make life easier, and when you have
an Apple device, you’re a part of that community. That’s its value proposition.

Is it possible to overstate a value proposition?

No. It needs to be apparent at the various touch points of a potential consumer, whether they’re coming to you from a brochure, a billboard, your social media, or your website. It needs to be apparent at their first point of contact and the key factor behind all your messaging, graphics, testimonials, product pages, and main pages. After all, it will drive your overall strategy.

Unfortunately, I think a lot of companies focus on their slogan, tagline, mission statement, and even their positioning statement and sometimes forget the value proposition. But it’s a very important tool that’s often overlooked.