Value to the customer. Today’s customer has an overwhelming amount of choice when it comes to products and services. So, now more than ever, it is essential for businesses to create and communicate value to the customer in everything that they do.

Likewise, today’s marketers have an overwhelming amount of advice available when it comes to strategy. But, we’re here to tell you that almost every marketing hack can be boiled down to one thing…

Value to the customer.

What is ‘Value To The Customer’?

Customers see a market as having two prices: cost and worth. Or, price and value.

Customer Think explains this in terms of the following equation...

CV=B-C

Customer Value is equal to the Benefits minus the Cost.

A customer’s perception of the value of a product or service, against possible alternatives, depends on whether he/she feels they received benefits over what they paid.

According to the research, 48% of people place value for money as the most important factor when dealing with a business.

• Value for money, the competitiveness of price (48%)
• Customer service (47%)
• Keeping promises, reliability (32%)
• Quality (29%)
• Ease of doing business (23%)

There isn’t a huge disparity in these figures and this is likely because they all feed into one another - a business who satisfies its customers would usually be described as succeeding in all these areas.

In light of this, it’s worth thinking of customer value as a cycle.

Creating customer value → increased customer satisfaction → better customer experience → customer value.

While this isn’t to say that cost is not important (in fact 85% of consumers admit to always shopping with the intention of finding the best price), value to the customer should be considered as separate to the price tag on your product.

In order to successfully create value to your customer, you need to show that you have an understanding of what your product is ‘worth’ to your customer. That is, it’s essential to understand what the customer values, or what they would value, beyond the acquisition price.

For example, let’s say you’re deciding between two skincare brands.

One skincare brand promises you the best results for the lowest price - end of.

The other explains to you how their skincare would work for your type of skin, what you could expect in the long term and then offers you a trial product.

We’re pretty certain that, like us, you would be inclined to choose the second brand.

People are typically far more convinced of a product’s value when the business demonstrates an understanding of why the product is valuable, as opposed to merely saying “it’s the best, trust me!”.

How Do We Create Value To The Customer?

To successfully create value to the customer, there are three key things you need to consider.

• What the customer perceives as ‘value’
• How the value will persist over time
• How to get customer feedback

Understanding what your customer perceives as ‘value’ and securing customer feedback go hand in hand while understanding how the value should persist through time is more of a unique element.

To understand how the value to your customer will persist over time it is necessary to consider the entire ‘life-span’ of your product; from how your customer sees or hears about your product to how they acquire it, how they use it and sometimes even how they dispose of it.

Depending on what your business is, how your customer disposes of your product may become increasingly important as we shift toward sustainability being a priority in what we choose to consume.

While the goal of businesses is, of course, to deliver value to your customer with an equitable return what is perhaps more captivating is that you have considered the wider worth of your product, beyond cost.

Knowing what your customer perceives as value necessitates knowing how to get customer feedback.

Survey questions, focus groups, and behaviour analysis are tools you should be using to generate a list of ‘value elements’.

Value elements might be social, like the ease of which you do business, economic, like is it cost-effective or product-specific, like whether your skincare really gets rid of acne; basically, anything that affects the cost and benefits of the product.

Once you have your list of values, you can then work up marketing strategies that play on these values.

Focusing on the data in this way is essential to getting a true understanding of what value to your customer as you can analyse the behaviour of your customers and make moves accordingly.

Source - Built Visible ‘Understanding Customer Value'

For example, a recent article about the top trends that will impact customer experience in 2020, reported that consumer-behaviour is going in the direction of ease as with voice control searches and so we need to be prepared for the rise of things like embedded payments.

The study found that 77% of smartphone shoppers are more likely to purchase from companies whose mobile sites or apps allow them to make purchases quickly.

Digital Marketing is competitive so reading the data is absolutely essential for an understanding of where your customers are, what’s working well, what’s working well for your competitors and predicting the trend of the market.

That way you can stay ahead of the curb when it comes to predicted trends like that above.

The customer should always be at the forefront of any marketing move. After all, you’re not buying your product - your customer is.

The cycle of creating value, to delivering value, to getting feedback, to creating value is the heartbeat of any marketing strategy.

And creating value for your customer is the only way to truly succeed in driving sustainable traffic and sales over time.

Bio – The Good Marketer is a Marketing Agency in London which drives more traffic, generates conversions and increases sales for Small-To-Medium Sized Businesses.