8 Tips For Proving Value To Customers
If you want customers to part with their hard-earned cash, you need to prove value.
But what exactly is value? And how do you demonstrate it?
You can think of value as being the psychological satisfaction that a consumer obtains from the consumption of a product. Ultimately, it’s the feeling they get from it – even if that sensation is something as banal as convenience.
For consumers, feelings are everything. That’s why companies like McDonald’s, Apple and Coca-Cola are the biggest brands in the world. They understand this concept perfectly.
Demonstrating value, though, is challenging. How do you tell consumers how they will feel after buying your product if they haven’t experienced it yet? That’s the issue we address in this post.
Show Them Up Close And Personal
The first method you might try is to show them up close and personal. The best way to do this with a new product is to take it to a trade show. This way, interested members of the public can see it for themselves and see whether it is something that might interest them.
If you’ve never been to a trade show before, you can read trade show tips to bring you up to speed. When you get these events right, you can create a buzz which then lingers online, helping to get more people interested in what you’re selling.
Compare Yourself To The Competition
In today’s competitive market, it pays to research your rivals. Knowing precisely what they offer lets you better position your product to customers, improving your pitch.
Once you have a good in-depth understanding of what they sell, the next step is to highlight points of differentiation. Just subtle differences between your product and what your rivals are offering can be sufficient to get consumers to switch from theirs to yours.
You’ll notice that software companies do this often. They create tables that list features along rows, and then put ticks or crosses in the columns, indicating what each product has. Use this technique to flatter your products and services, and put your rivals to shame.
Talk About The Benefits Directly
Some companies make the mistake of simply describing their products, without ever really talking about the outcomes that consumers want. And that’s a problem. Customers want to know the direct sensory benefits, not the specifications.
Take cameras, for instance. Many camera companies spend a lot of time talking about the specs of their devices. However, most consumers are more interested in things like portability and ease of use, because they want convenience.
Highlighting the outcome is a beneficial strategy that you can use. For instance, if you’re selling paint, you could say something like “dries in just two hours.” This way, you give the customer a result that they can expect if they buy your product (and not your rivals’).
Highlight Other Customers’ Experiences
You can also demonstrate value by highlighting other customers’ experiences of your products. Customers are always looking for so-called “social proof” – evidence from people just like them that you offer real value. If you can deliver this in the form of testimonials or reviews, they will be much more likely to take your products and services seriously.
Setting up social proof is easy. Just send out an email to your customers asking them to leave a review of your business. The more reviews you gather on Google and other platforms, the higher you’re likely to rise in search rankings.
Offer Ongoing Support
Customers often want to pull the trigger and buy from you, but many worry that you won’t provide them with sufficient support after you purchase. And that’s a problem.
The simplest way to solve this issue is to simply bake support into the purchase agreement itself. So, for example, if you sell cars, you want to include things like free services and warranty at the upfront price. Likewise, if you sell software, you need to tell your customers that you’ll be there to provide support should they run into trouble.
Offer Improvements
Customers love companies who are continually trying to improve. Not only do they typically offer better products, but they also convince customers that they have their best interests at heart. It’s a way of demonstrating a desire to offer genuine value.
Tesla is a great example of a firm that continually improves what it does. Although the car company is only a little more than ten years old, it is creating vehicles that are miles ahead of the competition, and continually receive software updates, like smartphones. This means that Tesla is practically the only company in the world that can improve its vehicles over the airwaves. Just a single update gives them more capabilities and driving options. Fantastic.
Reward Loyalty
While all customer transactions are an exchange – money for goods and services – customers still want you to provide them with loyalty perks. They feel that if they stick with your brand, they should always get something in exchange.
You may not agree with this view. However, it can be an extremely powerful way to hold onto valuable customers. If you can provide them with some type of loyalty scheme, they will be much more likely to stay with you over the long-term. It’s also another way of building value, particularly if you sell a relatively generic product, such as coffee.
Gather Feedback
Lastly, you can also use feedback to your advantage to prove value to your customers. In many industries, consumers want brands to hear their voices and respond by building products that serve their needs.
Unfortunately, in many sectors, this sort of two-way communication simply doesn’t exist. Firms largely conduct their own research and don’t pay much attention to their customers at all.
To get around this, you can collect feedback. Feedback is important for two big reasons: it shows that you care, and it also provides an impetus for improving your products and services. As you collect more feedback, you’ll get a better sense of what customers want, and your enterprise will become increasingly responsive to their needs.
