How to Write a Value Prop in 5 Easy Steps

As you may know, a value prop is a statement about why someone should buy and use your product.

Writing a good value prop is tough. It needs to be clear. It needs to be concise. It needs to be catchy.

While it may only be a few words, but it’s going to drive a lot of your messaging and marketing.

Having a great value prop does wonders for your product. It can make people instantly “get” it. And when people “get” it, they’re more likely to become customers.

It also cuts down on the time to explain your product to others. Buh-bye glossed-over looks when you’re on minute 3 of attempting to describe what your product does and why it matters.

Creating Your Value Prop Draft

Now we’re going to go over a quick formula to write a draft version of a value prop, and it’s going to take only a few steps.

  1. Define the ability
  2. Define the outcome
  3. Define the value
  4. Put it all together
  5. Refine it

Step One: Define Your Products “Ability”

Write down what your product is/does.

For the next few steps, I’ll be using Speckled as an example. Here the ability would be “a way for PM’s to prioritize all of their feature requests”.

Step Two: Define the “Outcome”

Next, you’re gonna write down what happens when people use your product successfully. What can they do now that they couldn’t do before?

E.g. “clearly see what you’d be crazy not to work on”.

Step Three: Define the “Value”

What happens as a result of this outcome? Why should anyone pay money for this?

For Speckled, this would be something like “build things with real impact that people love”.

Step Four: Put It All Together

Now we just need to throw it all into a formula and start to play with it and tweak it. Here’s the formula to use:

If you want to [value], you can [ability] with [insert your product name here] so you can [outcome].

Go ahead and plug in your ability, outcome, and value into that formula.

E.g. If you want to build something, people love, you can prioritize your best feature requests with speckled so you can clearly see what you’d be crazy not to work on.

Step Five: Tweak It To Perfection

Now, you’re going to find that this is probably a bit wordy. Therefore, the next step is to distill it down into something that’s clear, concise and sounds a bit magical.

This is kind of where the fun part comes in and you’re going to use a little bit of your creativity and writing skills.

The great thing is you already have all the basic pieces of info you need in that first statement.

So for example, you could distill that lengthy sentence above describing Speckled’s value prop down to “prioritization for PMs with vision” or “clarity for overwhelmed PMs”.

It’s really up to you on what you think sounds good.

Get it clear, concise, and catchy.

However, don’t stress too much about this. Your value prop will be updated as your product evolves and this is only a first draft!