Your value proposition is the cornerstone of all the marketing you do for your coaching business (or any other kind of business). Whether you are DIYing your copy or hiring a copywriter, your value proposition is the foundation of all of your copy. Here’s everything you need to know about value propositions as a business owner.
What Is a Value Proposition?
A value proposition is 2-4 sentences that strike at the heart of what your clients stand to gain from working with you. It is written from the customer’s perspective of what they value most rather than your perspective of what you think you do differently.
Your value proposition should be displayed prominently in your coaching business’ marketing materials. On your website, this means it should be towards the top of your homepage. Most businesses display their value proposition above the fold as a hook. Take a look at some examples here.
What to Write in Your Value Proposition
The best place to look for your value proposition is your client feedback. Sift through the feedback you’ve gotten from past clients and look for common things your clients rave about. These are the parts of your service that they value most. Look for benefits that make you stand out from most of your competitors.
Your value proposition will fall under one of the following categories. These are the things sales psychology tells us that customers will happily pay for:
Convenience
This is what has us paying to have our groceries or takeout delivered rather than going and getting them ourselves. From a coaching perspective, convenience happens because you know your clients’ needs and you’ve tailored your offering to your client. Every aspect of your coaching is designed to enrich and simplify your clients’ lives.
Speed
Who doesn’t want quick results?! Coaching already provides speed in eliminating the learning curve, but you can offer further value by giving your client an immediate win, no matter how small. This could be as simple as a financial coach helping their client to consolidate their debt during the first session or a business coach giving their clients a template to help them deal with difficult client conversations.
Value
Consumers want to get the most bang for their buck. This doesn’t mean you should be the cheapest coach available; it just means your clients should see the value in the pricing. Think about who your target clients are and what challenges they face. Let’s say you’re a business coach who works with new mums. A membership community and occasional in-person events could be attractive to that client type because they want to surround themselves with other people on the same journey as them. Also, they’ll look forward to an event where their baby is actively welcomed instead of barely tolerated.
Certainty
Prospective coaching clients want to know that they are extremely likely to achieve the result they are looking for by working with you. In $100M Offers, Alex Hormozi suggests looking at all the possible barriers to your clients’ success and adding value by creating resources that help them to overcome those barriers. You then become the most valuable because your clients feel confident that they will succeed.
How to Write a Value Proposition for Your Coaching Business
First, you need to get inside your clients’ heads. Use the tips above to find the primary benefit your coaching offers your ideal clients. Then, it’s simply a manner of finding the best way to communicate that benefit.
A value proposition has 3 parts:
- The benefit summed up in 1 snappy heading
- Use a pleasure point or pain point to get prospective coaching clients invested in the benefit
- Show what that looks like in tangible terms
See how other brands put this into practice.
The value proposition examples zero in on what the benefit (or lack of benefit) means to the target client. They also use emotive or aspirational language to present the benefit.
Emotive language is language that sparks a feeling in the reader. This includes words like reliable, suffer, fret, magical, or freedom. When you use emotive language, you go further than just stating facts and connect with how the reader feels about those facts.
Aspirational language is emotive language that taps into how the reader wants to feel. Some examples of aspirational language are confident, powerful, head-turning, cosy, or productive. How does your ideal coaching client want their peers to see them?
When you use emotive and aspirational language, your ideal coaching clients feel like you get them. They are more likely to work with you because they feel like you’ll understand the challenges they face and, therefore, will be able to help them overcome those challenges.
What’s Next?
Here are some tools that can help you to write your value proposition:
- How to Simplify Your Copy
- Understanding the Customer Journey of Coaching Clients
- Great Copywriting Focuses on the Client
- Book a Pick Our Brain Call to talk to us about your value proposition. We can give you feedback on where to improve your value proposition or help you write it.