Identifying What Customers Value Is Critical to Your Business Marketing Strategy

Cutting through the noise to make a difference in the modern marketplace is harder than ever. Every marketing space is so crowded that it’s hard to make yourself heard. Whether it’s on social media or in the search engines, it feels almost impossible to gain ground against your competitors. At first, it’s hard to attract attention, and then when you get it, it feels like you’re paying a lot for traffic that doesn’t convert into sales.

The secret to attracting interest that turns into sales is identifying what your customers value. You can then use that value to create a business marketing strategy that gives potential customers exactly what they are looking for. This uniquely targeted advertising works because it links what you are uniquely positioned to provide with customers who are looking for exactly that. Even if this is a small audience at first, it gives you a position of strength that you can build on to expand your market reach.

Value Is Why Customers Buy from You

Customers are looking for good value for their money. Whenever they consider making any purchase, they will compare the cost of that purchase against its perceived value. They will only buy something if they think its value exceeds the value of the money they will spend. Not only that, but in a crowded marketplace, people will only buy your products if they perceive that the value you offer is better than the value your competitors offer.

Note that in all these cases, it is the perceived value that matters. In other words, it’s what your customers think is valuable, not what is actually valuable in any objective measure. It might not even have anything to do with what you think is most valuable about your offerings. Though we naturally want to start marketing to our perceived strengths, it’s more important to identify the parts of our offerings that successfully connect with our customers.

Different Types of Value

Value is a complex concept, and many people perceive different aspects of a product as being more valuable than others. To really target the things that matter to your customers, you have to figure out what types of value matter to them and emphasize them in your business marketing. You want to show how you offer more of this type of value than your competitors do. Here are several different types of value that customers often consider important.

Technical

Technical value relates to the function of your product. For example, the 0-60 time for a car is a technical value. With cars, other types of technical value include the cornering ability, the feel of the suspension, and maybe even the engine’s compression ratio. As you can see, technical value can be very specific, and marketing on this basis can be very effective if your product is technically superior in a way that matters to some customers. However, technical value in business marketing can be challenging because the people who appreciate these technical specifications are a small group and may not even be the final decision-makers.

Economic

Economic value is related to price, but it goes beyond simple pricing. Aspects of pricing like financing, volume discounts, and even customer loyalty discounts can make a big difference for some customers. In B2B marketing, economic aspects can also come in the form of pass-through value if a customer can use your brand name to increase their profitability. A similar value in B2C marketing is resale value, an economic value that is very important to some customers.

Service

Many customers value service as much as they value your product itself. They want convenient delivery, billing that fits their accounting system, and simple returns. Above all, some customers want you to be responsive to concerns and complaints. In fact, customers are often happier if they had a problem that you resolved for them than they would be if they never had a problem in the first place.

Social

Social value relates to how your people interact with their people to make an effective functional relationship. If people feel that they can talk to your salespeople, have a sense that you know and value them personally and they experience positive interpersonal relations, you are delivering good social value. Social media can offer genuine social value by allowing your company to interact with people in noncommercial interactions.

Style

One important value that matters to many customers is the style of your offering. This may be something visible in the product, such as a unique or trendsetting design. However, brands can often build a style reputation that means the brand itself is stylish, independent of the products. The presence of a brand mark can make even a mundane object into a stylish accessory. Style is typically more important in B2C marketing, but in some cases strong styling can offer significant pass-through value for B2B

Philosophical

Philosophical value isn’t necessarily anything related directly to your product or your interaction with your customers. Instead, it’s about a perception that the way your company does business aligns with their values. For example, if you follow eco-friendly practices, customers might be prepared to pay more for your products if that is a philosophical position they share. Social media is a great way to build philosophical value for your company.

How Value Contributes to Your Brand

Your brand is more than just your company’s name and its logo. Your brand is a value promise. You build a brand reputation by promising value and delivering it. Once built, a successful brand carries significant value with it, and people are prepared to pay extra for that value. It’s not unusual for a leading brand to be able to charge 50% more for a comparable item than weak or unknown brands.

In traditional terms, this is what’s often described as your “unique value proposition,” (or “unique selling proposition”). You are attempting to build a brand that differentiates you from your competitors by offering value to your customers that your competitors can’t match. This value is typically a blend of the different types we’ve talked about above: technical, economic, service, social, style, and philosophical.

Although you can start a brand with any type of unique value proposition, you will only successfully build it if you are able to deliver on the promise you made. Your brand builds its reputation one interaction at a time. Every interaction that meets or exceeds your customer’s value expectations helps to build the promise that your brand delivers value.

Value Case Histories

One way to understand and communicate your value to potential customers is using value case histories. You might call these testimonials or customer stories, but the concept is the same: giving a detailed narrative of how your product delivers value to companies and individuals. Whatever you call these in customer-facing sections of your website, it’s important to remember that the central focus of these stories is “value.” You want to demonstrate that customers are getting value from your products and services that they feel is worth the price.

Building Your Business Marketing Strategy Around Value

As you come to understand your value, it can help you identify what customers you should be targeting. You want to target the customers who truly value (and are willing to pay for) the type of value your brand delivers.

For example, if your company offers a significant technical value, you might build a content marketing strategy around highly technical information. You might start with a detailed analysis of the performance aspects of your offering and provide data showing the ways in which your offering achieves better results than similar products on the market.

Building a strategy around a style value these days would likely involve the use of influencers. Philosophical value might benefit from influencers, but it might not be necessary if your social media campaign is well-run.

Analyze Data to Confirm You Know What Your Customers Value

As with any marketing approach, your success depends on constantly reevaluating and adjusting your strategy based on data. As you collect data from your site visitors and customers, you will understand how your customers really think about your brand.

• Sales Data –This is the basic representation of what customers are really buying from you. If you clearly understand what your customers value about your brand, you will be able to explain why some items are selling much better than others. Pay attention to items that don’t fit your understanding of what your customers value – you might not have the full picture yet.
• Search Data – Search data shows you what searches brought people to your site, which includes considerable data about their values. This data is a lot harder to utilize than it used to be, due to privacy changes on the Internet. Often, paid search advertising gives more complete data, but it’s all still more fragmentary than it used to be. Combining search data with navigational data can help you home in on the thought processes of your customers.
• Navigational Data – Watching how customers navigate their way through your website can give you critical information about what matters to them. Technically minded customers will spend a lot of time looking at spec sheets, whitepapers, and studies. Economically minded customers will follow tags like “bargain” and “sale,” and they will look more at your financing options. Philosophically minded customers will gravitate toward your “About Us” page and browse mission statements or your core values. Reinforce the paths that lead to sales and expand their reach with social media and search campaigns.
• Personalized Experiences – Offering personalized experiences to your customers is another way to check if a particular sale was a fluke or representative of a value pattern. When customers can log in to your site, you can offer them products and services that you think reflect their values. If they take advantage of those opportunities, you know you really understand them.

By constantly reevaluating this data, you will be better able to connect with customers who are drawn to the value your business provides.

Start Marketing to Your Strengths

If your marketing efforts aren’t reaching the customers you hope to win, Webolutions can help. Our transformational Intrinsic Multiplier™ Approach to digital marketing has been crafted to help you grow your business smarter, faster and easier.

With this unique approach, we work closely with your company leaders to clarify the elements of your business and your offering that make you truly unique and special. We’ll use this discovery process to craft effective brand messaging that clearly conveys the value you provide to your customers in ways that will connect with them on an emotional level. This process drives more effective communications and more connected user journeys, improving your marketing results.

Contact us today to learn how Webolutions can elevate the effectiveness of your marketing efforts and help you grow your business. We serve clients nationwide from our offices in Denver, Colorado.