At a Glance
A strong value proposition is the foundation of product success — but it only works when it’s positioned clearly in the market. This blog breaks down three common mistakes teams make when shaping value propositions: failing to define what they’re positioned against, choosing the wrong comparison target, and focusing too much on functional benefits while ignoring emotional or social value. Jana shares practical questions to help product leaders craft a sharper, more compelling value proposition that guides better product decisions and resonates with customers.
Why do some products succeed and others don’t? There can be so many reasons why products fail, but successful products usually have at least one thing in common – a well-positioned value proposition.
A product value proposition is your promise to customers and your reason for doing what you do. But we don’t build products in a vacuum, that is why positioning is necessary. Positioning elaborates on your value proposition to define when, where and compared to what or who your product is valuable.
When thinking about crafting a value proposition that truly sings to customers and forms the basis of product development, we often see a few common missteps. These mis-steps time and time again lead to value propositions that don’t resonate, or don’t support high quality product decisions. Below we highlight three of the most common in the hope of helping you create product value propositions positioned for success!
Misstep #1: Not Considering Who You Will Position Against
Conventional wisdom is to start by building a product value proposition before considering positioning. However, we are rarely selling a universally valuable product and it is almost always most valuable when compared to something else. This is why it is important to consider who or what your product is best positioned against as you consider your value proposition. The best way to show this is with a simple example.
Let’s take Uber and one of their older value propositions – “Tap the app, get a ride” – this is a bit out of date now as there are many apps with this value proposition, but this was a big one once upon a time. If Uber in this case was not clearly positioning against analogue point-to-point transport services like taxi’s, an equally valid value proposition might be against public transport “Don’t wait, tap the app” or against personal vehicles “Tap the app, save on fuel”. All of these are potential valuable benefits for Uber, but by choosing to position their value against point-to-point transport services, they can hone in on what was truly valuable about their product.
2. Going After The Wrong Target
Just like not choosing a target can lead to a weak value proposition, so can choosing the wrong target. When considering your products comparative value you ideally want to choose a target that:
- Is an easy comparison: where customers understand the pain of the current solution and where most of them face the problem. While it is possible to “make” a market (where you educate customers about a problem they don’t know they have) it is always easier to go for one that is already clear before expanding to solve additional problems.
- Where your features uniquely shine: positioning against a boring or painful way of doing things makes it easy to see how your product’s features can do it better. This may mean foregoing a clearer direct competitor for a more favourable comparison. While it is possible to compete on ‘degree’ of functionality (e.g., easier, faster, cheaper) if you can find a comparison where your value shines uniquely, this will lead to a stronger value proposition.
A good example here is Slack. In the early days they chose to position against email over nascent direct competitors like Google Chat. At the time more people used email than instant messages, the pain of this communication style was well understood and the features of Slack shone more uniquely against email then the relatively more comparable GChat (which would have been competing on degrees – e.g., more usable). As customers used Slack, they expanded usage into other areas, eventually living the fuller value proposition “Where work happens” (not just work that would have once lived in email).
3. Function Over Feeling
The final mistake we see often in value propositions is neglecting to consider all the types of benefits your product may offer customers. This most commonly means the choice of exclusively functional benefits. But this is only one type of customer benefit.
All products have functional benefits, but it is often the social and emotional benefits (when present) that are the most powerful. For example, a community platform may choose to promote its functional benefits of how easy it is to share information through posting, or they may look at how this makes people feel – connected to community, included etc – with the second being the more powerful.
Even when products do have mostly functional benefits, the way we express them can be more or less emotive. The use of tactile wording and assonance can bring fun and emotion into functional value propositions. Take for instance the “Tap the app” wording of the Uber example above that uses both assonance and a tactile word “tap” rather than a more functional one like “use” or “open”. This can bring emotion into even the most functional value proposition.
A Few Questions To Get You Started
When done right, value propositions are a fast and powerful way to communicate what your product does better than anyone else. This can support customer messaging and also things like product development by aligning teams to the product’s purpose, like a rallying cry!
There is no hard and fast rule for how to go about crafting a value proposition that sings, but ensuring you consider your position in the market and any emotional and social aspects that are relevant to your product’s value is a good start. To get started consider the following questions:
- What do we do best?
- Who do we do it best for?
- How does that feel? (social / emotional)
- Who do we CHOOSE to compare ourselves against? On what problem?
- How do we do things differently? (by degree e.g., usability, speed, price; or uniquely)
- Why is that better? (again look for feeling AND function if possible)
Crafting a value proposition is also a journey best taken with others. While it is good to start by considering your own thoughts, bringing in trusted stakeholders to collaborate with will be necessary. After all, more minds are better than one and when it comes to ensuring your value proposition drives customer and business decisions, co-creation is a powerful tool.
