What is a value proposition

Definition

A value proposition answers the three questions a stranger has in the first seconds: what do I get, is it for me, and why here and not elsewhere. It is a promise in the customer's words, not a list of features and not a slogan. The phrase is credited to Michael Lanning and Edward Michaels, in a 1988 McKinsey staff paper titled A business is a value delivery system, and Alexander Osterwalder and colleagues later drew it as a canvas in Value Proposition Design (2014). Ash Maurya's Lean Canvas uses a narrower form, the unique value proposition, one line on what makes you different. The value proposition lives where people meet you first: the headline of the site, the first line of the ad, the WhatsApp auto reply and the Google Business Profile description.

Why it matters

If the first line says whom you help and with what, the right people stay and the wrong ones leave early, which saves both sides time. Empty words such as best, professional and quality answer none of the three questions, so they take the space where the promise should be.

Directly related: Positioning, ICP, Persona.

Improvement tips

• Answer three questions in the first line: what the customer gets, who it is for and why here.
• Replace each adjective with a fact the customer can check, such as the class size or the distance.
• Use the same promise in the site headline, the first line of the ad and the WhatsApp auto reply.
• Show your headline to a stranger: can they say in 5 seconds what you sell and to whom? It is a rule of thumb, not a measured statistic.

Common mistakes

• Listing features without saying what the customer gains from them.
• Promising results you cannot stand behind for every customer.
• Writing one promise on the site and a different one in the ads.