How To Define Your Unique Value Proposition

Your unique value proposition (UVP) should be the foundation for all of your external messaging and positioning as a business. It is the promise of value which you will deliver and the primary reason why a prospective client should work with you. It should be the first thing that people see or hear when they are exposed to your brand and should be reinforced at every possible touchpoint. If you can get it right, it can make a huge difference for your business.

What Is A Unique Value Proposition?

In its simplest form, your UVP is what makes your business different from everyone else in the market. It is not just whatever product or service you are selling, it is how it is unique to you and how unique the results are for your clients. Unless you have a clear value proposition as to why someone should choose you from the crowd, they probably won’t.

It is important to remember that you don’t need to tell someone how you will solve their problems with your UVP, they just need to know that you can solve their problems at this stage. Brevity is key here and a great UVP uses the fewest words possible to communicate this.

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An example of a great unique value proposition is with Stripe. Its headline explains what the company does (online payments), whilst implying that it is innovative, yet reliable as the ‘new standard’. The sub-headline highlights the niche they operate in (internet businesses) and shows that they are the leading player for forward-thinking businesses when it comes to online payments. I doubt there is a single internet business owner who doesn’t think that he/she runs a forward-thinking business and Stripe do a great job of leveraging this.

How To Define Your Unique Value Proposition

There are five steps to defining a UVP for your business before you get to your headline and sub-headline. Follow each of the steps below to ensure you are able to present a clear and concise value proposition in your messaging (this does not need to be slick advertising copy, it is for internal use only to guide you through the process):

What Do You Provide?

Write out exactly what you do and how you do it in 2-3 sentences.

What Are You Good / Bad At?

Map out everything that you are good at and everything that you are bad at, from the customers perspective. Don’t be afraid to write everything down here and be as honest with yourself about your shortcomings as possible.

What Is The End Benefit To Working With You?

Write as many bullet points as you can think of for why someone would want to work with you and what value that you can ultimately bring them.

Who Is Your Target Customer?

If you have already defined your buyer personas, this is where they will come in handy. If not and you want to fill the gap quickly, think about what your ideal customer looks like and use that here.

What Makes Your Offering Unique Or Different?

Write down what makes you different from your competitors or how you feel as though you have an edge over them.

Once you have completed all of the above, analyse everything that you have written with your team and try to understand where the greatest value is for the ideal customer you wish to target when working with you. From here, a creative touch can be helpful to craft your headline and sub-headline, which will be the foundation for all of your external communications.

Headline

This should be an attention grabber and should immediately resonate with your buyer persona. A reader should be able to understand why it is a good idea for them to work with you and be intrigued to hear more. For example, at Leadable, ours is the following:

Helping SME’s Get Enterprise Clients.

Sub-Headline

Your sub-headline should explain what you do and how it will benefit the prospective client in 1-2 sentences. You can be a little bit more descriptive here, but the aim should still be to keep the message as concise as possible. Again, at Leadable, our sub-headline is the following:

We handle the labour-intensive aspects of sales development so that your sales team can focus 100% on closing new deals.

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