How to Craft a Unique Value Prop to Become the Obvious Choice For Your Customer Niche
Three steps to craft a unique value prop, real top creator examples, and my custom GPT to help you start today
Dear subscribers,
Today, I want to share how you can craft a unique value prop (UVP) to stand out.
A great UVP makes you the obvious choice for your target customer niche.
If you haven’t read my guide on how to find your target niche — start there first. This is a follow-up guide that covers:
Three steps to craft a great unique value prop
Examples of unique value props from top creators
My custom GPT to help you craft a great value prop right now
Three steps to craft a great unique value prop
The 3 steps are:
Do the values exercise
Write your unique value prop story
Craft your unique value prop statement
I’m going to walk through these steps using James Clear (author of Atomic Habits) and me (a far less successful creator 😅) as examples.
James Clear’s unique value prop
I’m sure you’ve heard of James Clear from his best-selling book, Atomic Habits. But you probably didn’t know that it took James years to identify his unique value prop.
Before habits, James wrote about travel photography and personal finance. He even spent $1,500 building an app called “Passive Panda” that only made $17.
You can reduce this trial-and-error process by following the steps below.
1. Do the value exercise
This exercise (inspired by Justin Welsh’s new course) involves filling out the following:
Life experience
Ideal customer
Top 3 pain points and aspirations
Movement
Here’s what the values exercise might look like for James:
Life experience: James noticed that readers loved his posts about habits and productivity the most. He doubled down on this topic with his blog and book.
Ideal customer: James targeted people who already believed in the power of habits but struggled to implement them.
Pain points and aspirations:
Don’t know how to build good habits → Want to achieve goals.
Don’t know how to drop bad habits → Want to get life back on track.
Don’t know how to get started → Want a proven system that works.
Movement: Don’t trust people who promise quick hacks. Instead, use this system to build good daily habits that’ll help you achieve your goals.
2. Write your unique value prop story
Below is how James describes his value prop on his website. Note how he weaves in his life experience, his ideal customer’s pain points + aspirations, and his movement:
I’ve been writing about habits since 2012. I’m the author of Atomic Habits which has sold 15M+ copies worldwide. (life experience)
The central question I explore through my work is, “How can we live better?” (ideal customer) I want to find great ideas and explain them in a way that applies to daily life.
My writing focuses on topics like…(pain points and aspirations)
How to start (and stick to) good habits
How to make good choices and avoid bad ones
How to accomplish more in less time
How to create better systems and processes
How to achieve meaningful results without overwhelming yourself
Most of all, I write about how to put these ideas into practice in daily life. (movement)
3. Craft your unique value prop statement
It’s also useful to express your value prop concisely in a single sentence. Here is James’ one-line statement:
An easy and proven way to build good habits and break bad ones.
My unique value prop
Now let’s run through the same exercise for a far less successful creator — me 😅.
I want to be vulnerable here to show you that these steps are valuable even if you’re still figuring things out.
1. Do the values exercise
Here’s my attempt at following the values exercise: