What is a Value Proposition Canvas?
The Value Proposition Canvas is a tool which can help ensure that a product or service is positioned around what the customer values and needs. The canvas was initially developed by Dr Alexander Osterwalder and can be used when there is a need to refine an existing product or service offering or where a new offering is being developed from scratch.
The Value Proposition Canvas has two building blocks – customer profile and an organisation’s value proposition.
In the Customer Profile block, we look at the following elements:
- Gains – the benefits which the customer expects and needs and the things which may increase likelihood of adopting a value proposition.
- Pains – the negative experiences, emotions and risks that the customer experiences in the process of getting the job done.
- Customer jobs – the functional, social and emotional tasks customers are trying to perform, problems they are trying to solve and needs they wish to satisfy.
A customer profile is created for each customer segment, as each segment has distinct gains, pains and jobs.
In the Value Map block, we look at the value proposition that an organization offers through its products and/or services, including:
- Gain creators – how the product or service creates customer gains and how it offers added value to the customer.
- Pain relievers – a description of exactly how the product or service alleviates customer pains.
- Products and services – the products and services which create gain and relieve pain, and which underpin the creation of value for the customer.
Why do a Value Proposition analysis?
The Value Proposition Canvas can help any business or organization to:
- Define their customer profiles. By brainstorming and analyzing the Customer Profile block, companies can identify their customers’ major jobs-to-be-done, the pains they face when trying to accomplish their jobs-to-be-done, and the gains they perceive by getting their jobs done;
- Visualize the value your organizations’ product or service create. Define the most important components of your offering, how you relieve pain and create gains for your identified and targeted customers.
- Achieve Product-Market fit. Adjust your Value Proposition based on the insights you gained from customer evidence and achieve Product-Market fit.
Who should use a Value Proposition canvas?
The Value Proposition Canvas is a great tool for marketing experts, product owners, and value creators and their teams, who work to develop products and services to a targeted audience. It is also valuable for any teams and organizations who are trying to understand how customers make decisions and what offers to create that they will find appealing.
Use the Value Proposition Canvas to help with:
- Understanding who your customers are, including what their lifestyles and real needs are to help create relevant products and services;
- Develop value propositions for your products and services for effective communications and marketing to your identified customers;
- Increasing the sales and profitability of your products and services;
- Reducing time wasted on developing ideas that customers may not be interested in.
- Business Model Canvas
- Stakeholder Analysis
- Ansoff’s Matrix
- Feature Request Planning
- Lean Canvas
- Empathy Map
- We suggest starting with the right side – the Customer Profile – if you are interviewing your customer segments. But you could begin at the left and map out your value proposition as far as you understand that and use that to imagine your ideal customer.
- On the left side – the Value Proposition – we suggest starting with your product or service, but you could start with the pain relievers and gain creators and use those to brainstorm new products or services.
- You may find that there are sections of the canvas you can’t brainstorm on and so you may need to pause and go do some research – client interviews, surveys, online research – to gather more information before continuing with the canvas.
Value Proposition template
The customer profile
This section also looks at the Gains & Pains – the positive and negative states our customers want to attain/avoid.
The value proposition
How to do a Value Proposition analysis
Start a Value Proposition for a product or service by filling out the template and see where there are gaps. You can use the gaps as validation to run more experiments, ask more questions, try out new ideas. By understanding your customers’ preferences, biases and thoughts, you’ll find new ways to delight them and grow your business.
Brainstorm
Brainstorm ideas for each area of the Value Proposition canvas.
Group
Review responses, and collate ideas.
Rate
Rate the ideas according to likely impact on the organization.
Share
Share the outcomes of the session to relevant stakeholders.
Start brainstorming ideas by focussing on the right hand side of the template – the Customer Profile.
Start with the customer jobs and mention all the functional, emotional, and social jobs your customers do on a daily basis. Also include how they do that job, how they feel, and what social qualities come into play. And don’t forget to rate them according to their importance.
Ask a lot of whys, whats, and hows. They’ll lead you to uncover all the pains and gains behind the job. Notes:
- use your customer research, interviews and data to help you brainstorm this section.
- You might have more than one customer segment, if that is the case, it is recommended you do a customer profile for each segment.
Once this is done, move to the left side – the Value Proposition section. The customer profile has already provided you with many problems to solve, now all you need to do is to rate the problems according to the severity and find exact solutions for all or most of them.
Start with defining your product offered and go on to brainstorm all the whats, whys, and hows, on this left hand side of the template.
Online collaboration tools like GroupMap significantly reduce the amount of resources required to combine independent lists. They also make organizing and prioritizing the ideas faster and more straightforward, thus providing savings in time and effort over traditional brainstorming tools such as a whiteboard or post-it notes.
After listing gain creators, pain relievers and products and services, each point identified can be grouped from nice to essential in terms of value to the customer.
A fit is achieved when the products and services offered as part of the value proposition address the most significant pains and gains from the customer profile.
In GroupMap, grouping based on the above mentioned criteria can be easily and visually done by everyone by identifying the grouping and adding the ideas under each group.
Once you have identified the problem-solution fits from your brainstorming and grouping activities, now is the time to vote on the most important fits to be explored.
Provide each participant with up to five votes and count the votes at the end of this activity to determine where to next.
Combining individual voting into an overall score is much easier and faster if you use an online tool like GroupMap, especially if you have a few ideas to vote on.
Share the overall process and voting results of your Value Proposition workshop and brainstorming with the rest of the team to help validate the next steps in building a product or service and the marketing messaging around it.
GroupMap automatically generates visually appealing reports and action plans in several formats for distribution, saving time and effort after the analysis.
Save effort, time and money with GroupMap
Whether you have your best minds together in the same room, or distributed around the world, GroupMap’s unique technology allows groups of up to 2000 to submit ideas independently at separate times, from different places, in different timezones. Prevent dominant personalities swaying the group, drowning out the opinions of others – GroupMap allows everyone to brainstorm independently then effortlessly combines that information to reveal the full spectrum of ideas. GroupMap templates keep the objective front and center throughout the session, keeping everyone on task. This ensures the activity identifies actionable issues rather than becoming just a discussion on ideas. GroupMap gives you all the group decision making tools you need to prioritize, decide and take action.
Create your first map and invite people in to start sharing their thoughts right NOW. Experience the power of GroupMap with our 14-day, no risk, FREE trial. You don’t even need to provide your credit card details to access to all of our features, including the entire suite of templates, for a full 14 days.