Value Proposition: Why They Should Buy from You
As in any other marketing, online businesses face a strict competition. Most online companies sell products or services that are not unique and that are available somewhere else. So, if you are one of those businesses who struggle for potential buyers, your main objective is to convince the prospects to buy from you and not from your competitors.
As you know when people decide to buy something, the first thing they wonder is “what’s in it for me?”. In other words, they want to know how the thing can help them, how it can make their life easier and how they can benefit from it. It’s a common sense. Why do I buy it if I don’t know what it can do for me, right? So, it’s all about the benefits the thing can provide them with. This is a normal practice and marketers use it to promote their products and services.
But it’s sometimes not enough to only list the benefits. If you face a strict competition in your marketing niche, you need to stand out from thousands of similar promotions and advertisements. You need to have your unique selling proposition. Simply put, you need to add more value to your proposition, take the risks away to make people trust you and convince them your product or service is the best of its kind.
If you have an online business and make sales, so you already have a value proposition that attracts buyers. But you may not understand what it is and may not tell about it clearly. Just think why people buy from you. Do they buy only because your product or service is great? Or, do they buy because you have something to offer that others don’t?
Once you find how your marketing proposition differs from others, you need to clearly convey it to the prospects. You can even express it differently on different pages of your web site. For example, if you sell a software program, on your download page or on the home page you can write: “30-Day Free Trial. Download a fully functional version now”. And on your ordering page you can state your “risk free” policy: ”100% money back guarantee. If you don’t like the product, contact us for immediate refund”. The key words in both phrases that convey your value proposition are “free”, “fully functional” and “immediate”. They make the prospect think “Oh, I can use a full version for free during a month and even if I buy it and don’t like it, I can get refund on the same day I request it. I don’t lose anything. Great! I’m gonna buy it”. You know even a single word can make a big difference. Other businesses may also guarantee refund but how quickly? Your “immediate refund” absolutely wins. So, you just need to sit and think about what advantages you can provide the prospects with and then clearly tell about them in your value proposition.
A great idea is to use testimonials. Place the testimonials on your web site whenever they are appropriate. They will reinforce your value proposition and build trust with potential buyers. People like to read what others are saying about your product and someone else’s experience can urge them on making a purchase.
And now one more important thing – when composing your unique selling proposition, you’ll want to avoid the following mistakes:
- Making false declarations. Before you state something, ask yourself if you are able to accomplish it. Think and answer frankly. If you can’t do something, better do not state it. A falsehood is the fastest way to ruin the credibility into your business. If people don’t trust you, they don’t buy from you. So, if you say something in your value proposition, be sure you can do it and keep your promise.
- Offering an excellent tech support as your value proposition. It’s implied that companies must offer a great customer service in case if buyers experience any troubles with products they purchased from a company. So, if prospects think this is all you can offer, it’s not enough to convince them to buy from you.
- Lowering the price. This is absolutely not a way to go. A lower price will not add a value to your selling proposition. Instead of lowering the price, think about what else you can offer to your prospects in addition to your product or service. It may be a bonus like a free download, or a free subscription, or a discount for another product or service, or something else that can add more value to your selling proposition. Don’t forget to mention that they will be able to keep the bonus even if they ask refund for their purchase. So, there is no risk for them. Not only won’t they lose anything but can get something for free.
Above are the most common mistakes that marketers should be aware of when thinking about their unique selling proposition. However, there are more pitfalls to avoid. You can read about them in this article Top 10 Deadliest Internet Marketing Mistakes
A strong unique selling proposition is a must-have for your online business if you want to succeed. It will help you leave your competitors behind and make your business the best one in your market niche. Think about your prospects’ needs and tell them how you can help by listing your product or service benefits and reinforcing your proposition by a valuable offer. You’ll find faithful customers who will spread a good word about your company and bring you more sales.
Please, share your thoughts in comments below.
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Tags: marketers, prospects, software program, unique selling proposition
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Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Internet Marketing
Good suggestion about not lowering the price to “supposedly” add value. What about the “free” concept? I.e. “free articles” etc.? I often wonder how others feel about that word. I’ve think “complimentary” has a better connatation in itself. Overall, I think how you word it and picking the best descriptive words is vital in how you make the presentation. It would be interesting to hear what others think about the wording “free” though . . .
Lowering the price is not always a mistake. Sometimes, you’ll earn more with a lower price. Other Times, you’ll earn more with a higher one. So, obviously what you should do is test it. And if you conduct your business on the Internet, that’s really not that hard to do.
Try it; set a couple of different prices and send visitors to your sales page. After you send enough people to your site, you’ll get a clearer picture of what your perfect price should be. It could be higher than the one you have now or it could be lower. It will almost never be the same.
Julia, this is exactly what you guys have done. I was using your free version for a long time, and then came back here to read your great posts. Finally I saw that I might as well buy the very reasonably priced software, since you guys worked so hard on it, and it offered real value (at a VERY reasonable price). No hype, just real stuff.
I am a digital designer and giving something away free is always the way to go. People love free things and a lot of people then in turn buy from you. If you can lower the price and offer freebies, that would be a bonus. Great tips!
Testing is very important.
Your price may be out of line in the market, it may make a statement about your product. It is important to test different price points and see what this does to conversion. A slightly lower conversion rate with a larger margin is a good place to be ( unless you have a lot of value in back end sales – take the lifetime value into consideration).
This is good advice but a couple of comments.
If you can build up your traffic so that you get a significant number of hits and you have what people are looking for at a reasonable price, that could be all that you need. Some people will definitely comparison shop among a bunch of sites and then the value proposition becomes very important. However, many people don’t have the patience to do this and will settle for the first reasonable site.
Sometimes the “value” can be simply that you appear to be the expert on the topic and can be trusted to guide the buyer to the right purchase.
well you gave it a shot and maybe it is hard to really introduce people into marketing principles…
but you could at least mention once that for example mistake number two is a mistake because tech support has become a so called expected feature…
any other value or benefit also can get a expected feature, not just tech support
nevertheless nice example
Mistake 4 is to copy others and use tired sales pitch and cliches. You need to talk DIRECTLY to the reader, like it’s one-to-one conversation. Keep it informal and RELAXED. Don’t scream at them with italics or capitals or too many exclamation marks. Above all, work on your products. If you’re selling crap, you’re making it extremely hard for yourself. Improve your products and services if you feel they can be improved, then come back to the market.
I SEO small business sites and my relationship with clients is strengthened with how to sell on the web. When I get a complaint about no increase in sales even though I am driving a lot of traffic to my clients site, when a visitor gets there and isn’t impressed with what they see, it’s probably the site,. Not my SEO. My experience has been to share marketing rules like yours which are outlined very nicely to get a few light bulbs to go on inside my client’s head.
This is a great informative article and knowing your competition is key. I don’t really like the idea of putting testimonials on websites. Most testimonials are written by the website owner themselves and I think readers seem to think the same about them. Thats why I would stay clear from them.
Thanks – these are good points. For me and others I’ve talked to, I think the main issue with online business is TRUST. Just as most of us wouldn’t buy something from the shady guy hanging around in the alley outside the pub, as online businesses we need to work hard to establish credibility. I suspect that sometimes it’s got a lot to do with how long you’ve been around…
I have an odd way of doing things. I actually build my sale letter for marketing and than build the product from that. I’ve found that when I’m hyping, I will go over the top or something. This way I make the product that meets the needs of the sales letter. Of course when I’m talking about a product, I mean ebook. A little harder doing it this way with a real product.
Never lowering the price is an interesting take that should be observed more widely. I’ve seen countless sites where instead of improving their product they instead just mark down the price. I’m always skeptical of these sites and i know countless other people that are aswell.