Value Proposition - The Companies' Friendship Promise

Why is it so important a strong value proposition, and what benefits can bring to companies?

We can think of a successful value proposition like an honest relationship with a friend. Good friends know our strengths and what they can expect from us. We aim to be real and honest with them and avoid at all cost disappointing surprises along the way. Similarly, a value proposition is a promise of unique benefits to users. The objective is to describe real and concrete strengths so users can feel confident about the value that the company's product can create.

A clear value proposition enables us to attract the friends/users we crave. Those who will be happy with our product and will become loyal users. These users are likely to stay for a long time as long as we continue to understand their pains and objective tasks.

The friend analogy highlights the importance of companies developing concrete and differentiated benefits for users. A company can provide many benefits to users; however, only those superior or exclusive to other market products should be included in a value proposition.

A Value Proposition Canvas is an essential tool to help us identify the core strengths of our product. These strengths should tackle users' pains and effectively accomplish their tasks on a platform.

Value Proposition Canvas

I have worked previously with Value Proposition Canvas for different products and services during my professional experience, and I have always found them unique and challenging. I consider for these tools that "the practice does not make perfect."

The Value proposition Canvas aims to create different, innovative, and fitted products that will captivate users. Thus, every Canvas is different and needs to be approached with new and fresh lenses. An in-depth analysis of users' needs, desires, tasks, and obstacles is needed to prevent us from developing mainstream value propositions with few differences from the competition.

When developing the Canvas for our group project, I was surprised by our insights. The results were quite different from what we have initially discussed. After developing the customer profile and value map, we were able to identify concrete features needed to accomplish the users' tasks. It also helped us ground the differentiating elements that we must include in the value proposition and align them with the personas we defined after our interviews.

Going back to the friendship analysis, the more real, transparent, and understanding we are in our relationships, the easier we can attract loyal and long-term friends. Companies go through a similar situation; if they want to attract the right customers, they need to listen, understand and have a clear value proposition. Doing this will allow them to tackle users' pains and maximize their gains when accomplishing their desired or needed tasks in their platforms. Also, to attract loyal and long-lasting users satisfy with the experience provided on their platforms.