Greetings!

I’m Justyna, LiveChat content writer and you’re listening to Business Sidekick, a podcast dedicated to building and growing an online business.

In previous episodes, I’ve told you how to do market research and what you should keep in mind when you want to build your website from scratch. In today’s episode, we’ll move to the first part of selling your product, and it’s writing a damn good copy that sells.

Website design is something that your customers will notice at the first sight, but it’s copy that will get them familiar with your product or services, and it’s copy that will convince them to buy. The secret of such copy is value proposition.

What is value proposition?

It’s a promise that you’re giving to your customers, a promise of a benefit that will be delivered and experienced once they buy your product or services.

Other words, it’s not about you, it’s not about your product or selling, it’s about your customers and addressing their needs.

(By the way, that’s why doing a really good market research is so crucial for your business, so if you did not hear the first episode of this podcast, I recommend doing that!)

OK, so you know the theory, but I guess you want to know how does it look in practice. So, I’m going to show you the best value proposition example ever, and you probably already know it very well.

Can you recall advertisements of weight loss pills? All these ugly banners with ridiculously fit women holding tailor meters and smiling? Of course you do! And let’s recall how these magic pills are advertised.

Here are several “fat-burning” slogans and benefits they promise:

“Lose 10 pounds in three days” - a promise of burning fat “Contains green tea essence!” - a promise of healthy supplements “Insulin function increased. Energy!” - OK, I don’t know what it does, but hey! It promises more energy! “Potent metabolic enhancer!” - wow, it also boosts metabolism!

You may laugh, but what if I tell you that this value proposition is better than most of the marketing texts that can be found on websites?

On most websites marketers would describe burning pills this way:

“It’s white, round and was created to bring fantastic results! Your friends and family won’t recognize you once you buy it! Take your body to a new level with our awesome pills and remember, if you buy one, you’ll get another at half price!”

Can you see the difference?

The first version is really, really bad, but in the end it is more persuasive than the second one as it is clear about what you’re going to gain when you buy these pills.

So, here’s a quick chat about value proposition I had with Szymon, our Chief Marketing Officer. He gives some tips on how to create a strong value proposition when you’re starting your business.

Justyna: Hello Szymon!

Szymon: Hi Justyna!

Justyna: Can you tell us something about how to create a unique value proposition?

Szymon: Well yes, you need to start with identifying your right audience, just to make sure that the messaging that you’re going to use, is going to be good for this particular target.

Justyna: So you’re talking about using the right vocabulary for example?

Szymon: Yes, but also presenting the right data and the right content on the website, that is going to be of interest of people who are going to read it. You don’t want to talk about the enterprise solutions to small business owners. Once you do the market research about who your target, who your customers are, you’d need to prove your experience to them. You need to show them that your product has been already used by customers who are similar to them. Also you will need to make sure that what you’re pitching them with is also distinguishing you from your competitors. The last thing, maybe a little piece of advice, is that if you don’t have any particular customers in this particular vertical you’re trying to target, if you have no experience in targeting this particular group of customers, you might also start with giving a product for free to some companies, just to use their name, their brand for marketing purposes.

Justyna: Because this is what LiveChat did, right?

Szymon: Yes, we did it in the past a couple of times. We gave our product for free to some well-known customers just to show that big brands are using our product and despite is was kind of investment for us, it turned out to be pretty good because we were able to land bigger brands afterwards.

Justyna: And it worked?

Szymon: Definitely.

Justyna: Cool. OK, so you were talking about enterprises and I thought that maybe we could talk a bit about an example of such website, for example livechatinc.com/enterprise, because this is project you were working on.

Szymon: Yes, I’ve prepared this particular page a couple of months ago.

Justyna: And what steps did you make?

Szymon: Like I said, I did a little market research, I looked at other businesses, not necessarily from our industry, but I also looked at other SaaS vendors. I wanted to make sure that we will prove that our product really works

Justyna: You wanted to give a clear value!

Szymon: Yes, I think that’s what you can see on a website. It tells you: “real life results, no bullshit.” I wanted to show, to prove that our product really works and I’ve listed three areas that make our product work, which are the benefits of using LiveChat. “Improved customer support,” “it makes customers happy” and “increased online sales.”

Justyna: Well, and you gave some details about it, yes?

Szymon: Definitely, our website doesn’t only say that our product gives you results, but we’d rather list the companies with real life results to prove that our product is actually used by them and that their businesses benefited from that. I gave them numbers instead of nice words.

Justyna: I love it! Thank you very much!

Szymon: You’re welcome.

So, if you want to write a stunning value proposition, start with a good market research.

Don’t try to copy your competitor’s benefits or values, as you want to distinguish yourself from them. Other websites can be your inspiration if you don’t know where to start, but you need to think about your clear value proposition.

Ask yourself a couple of questions:

• Who are your customers?
• What are their needs?
• What are their problems?
• Why are you better than your competition?
• And the most important ones: how is your product going to help to solve these problems? How will it benefit your customers?

Once you respond to these questions, congratulation! You have your unique value proposition.

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Once you have it identified, you have to write compelling copy. If you want your copy to sell, you need to forget about slogans; you’ll have to get to the point.

Let’s take as an example a website that we’ve discussed with Szymon, our livechatinc.com/enterprise.

Here are the elements of this website.

We have a headline: “LiveChat Enterprise Plus” and then a sub-headline: “Premium product for premium customer service”.

Is it clear? It sure is.

Then comes a picture of our product so our website visitors know how our application looks like and a brief statement: what we are good at and how we can help.

And then comes the most important part of the website: a list of key benefits. The reason why your customers should choose you over your competition.

Don’t talk about features, speak about benefits. Don’t tell your customers that your weight loss pills are white and round, tell them that they will make them look beautiful on vacations.

If it’s true, of course!

You need to remember that people can smell bullshit so don’t try to make anything up. If you want to sound reliable and genuine, ask a couple of customers for feedback!

This is exactly what we have done on this website.

In fact, we didn’t write the list of benefits; our customers wrote it for us. “98% customer satisfaction rate,” “30% of revenue comes through LiveChat,” 70% of tickets handled in under 2-hours” - these are real, important business results.

If you don’t have any customers yet, you can offer someone a free trial, demo or simply give your product to a company and ask for a review in exchange. It may sound expensive, but trust me - good testimonial is priceless.

Last but not least, remember about a clear call to action! “Contact us,” “Buy now,” “Get free access” are examples of common, simple and effective call to actions.

You can also add some value proposition boosters like information about “free shipping,” “no setup fee” or “cancel anytime.” These are additional benefits that can convince your customers to buy product or service!

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OK, let’s sum everything up.

Remember that you don’t sell a product or service, you sell values and benefits.

Forget about nice slogans because your customers are looking for real results and useful values. Write a clear headline, a clear sub-headline and a clear list of benefits.

Ask your customers to write reviews for you and use them on your website. Talk about concrete results and use a language your customers use.

You can compare yourself to your competition by writing “it’s free” or “it’s twice as effective,” you can also mention your unique features. Don’t forget about persuasive calls to actions and boost your offer with additional benefits so :) your customers cannot resist it and fall in love with your brand!

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That’s all for today! Thanks for listening!

We will publish the next episode of Business Sidekick in two weeks, so stay tuned if you want to learn about the mysterious creature: Search Engine Optimization. I’m sure you don’t want to miss it, so subscribe to our podcast on iTunes, Stitcher or Soundcloud.

Check out our website livechatinc.com/podcast and remember: “good friends never say goodbye, they simply say “see you soon.”