Have you looked into how consciously the articulation of value is being executed within your organization?
No Rocket Science
Although few would consider marketing and communications a “rocket science,” this does not mean that the activities that both of these disciplines entail are obvious. In fact, something so basic as the articulation of value to your potential and existing customers is a challenging endeavor, precisely because this action is not a science but an art.
If you consider the articulation of value a science, please send me a note on Twitter @kikstwitt and I will offer you a free marketing function assessment to try to convince you that there is close to no science to the task.
Photo credit: Unspalsh by Matt Palmer
Start with WHY
In order to achieve an impactful articulation of value, you must start with the why. Why is your product or service valuable?
There are three general attributes about anything valuable: its importance, its reliability, and its usefulness. So, instead of jumping into features, your “why valuable” answer should answer three other “why” questions:
1. Why is the problem or pain point being solved important?
2. Why is your product or service reliable?
3. Why is it useful?
For example, if we were speaking about a B2B window-cleaning service, it would be of interest to first explain why cleaning windows frequently in office buildings is an important task that every office should address. We might want to mention local regulations, material care, employee happiness.
Next, we would want to mention why our cleaning service is reliable: “always on time”, “with high levels of customer satisfaction”, and “proven by the fact that we work with the top brands in the area” – these quotes give you a sense of the type of communication we are looking for at this stage.
Finally, to explain the usefulness of this service, we would want to highlight a couple of its differentiators. For example, our proprietary product that prevents fog to form on window surfaces or our 100% reimbursement policy would be two great options.
Explain HOW value is expressed
Once you have explained the “why,” it is time to explain the “how.” How is does your service express value?
Answering this question in simple, and it is something many brands do very successfully. Develop and communicate assertively a predominant use case. Your potential
Photo Credit: Unsplash by Kelly Sikkema
customers want to see your service in action and in a situation they can relate to.
Before jumping into case development, however, it will be important to decide whether you may want to showcase more than one use case in your regular communications for those cases in which you have different and clearly defined customer profiles, all of which have a significant impact on your top-line on their own.
You want to address these questions:
- Why do these top profiles assign value to the problem you are solving?
- How do they experience the reliability of your service?
- How do they experience the usefulness of your service?
Case in point:
Going back to our window-cleaning service example, we would create a use case for a top office rental company, which has been using our services for the past five years - and represents 80% of our target customers.
We might explain that our customer is in close contact with the local authorities for several business reasons, so ensuring compliance with the “regulation X”, which covers the rules for high-rise maintenance, is a top priority for the building managers who work for our customer. This states the reasons why our target customers thinks this problem is important.
In order to showcase how our customer experiences the reliability of our service, we may want to explain the customer journey from purchase to post-service calls, pointing out reliability attributes at all points of the journey. For instance, we may want to highlight how in the ten locations of our customer’s properties there have been no delays and also show customer quotes highlighting the professionalism of our window cleaners and company representatives.
Finally, usefulness. To portray it, we may want to share our top five service attributes and how our customer grades each of them, with an additional comment giving color to it. For instance, “on speed of service, this customer gives us a 98% grade, highlighting that we are faster than our competition without sacrificing quality.”
You get the gist. The most important thing to achieve here is a tangible representation of your service and how a hypothetical or real customer experiences it at every interaction with your company.
Say WHAT it is
Once you have articulated the "why" and the "how", it is time to describe your product or service. This is where you “sell” your service (even though you have been actually selling the whole time) using a positive tone and highlighting its top attributes.
Simply describing product or service features in a nice way is not enough, however. This is your opportunity to combine factual information with this positive view on your product. To do so, try to use as many descriptive facts as possible (i.e. key measurements, delivery times, etc).
In our example, we would want to describe our window-cleaning service using adjectives such as “reliable,” “professional,” “punctual,” etc. With that, we would state facts such as: “after scheduling a service, a professional agent will get in touch with you within 24hrs to finalize the programming of your building cleaning. We typically serve our customers within 7 days of scheduling and have a 94% customer satisfaction rating. We work with 80% of the top building owners in the area and they all appreciate our punctuality and reliability.”
Photo Credit: Unspalsh by Volodymyr Hryshchenko
Explain the EASY PURCHASING process
Making the purchasing process easy for your customer, particularly on a B2B scenario, is very important. Close your articulation of value by telling your audience how easy it is to buy and what action step they must take to do so.
This step will also encourage you to make sure you always keep your customer in mind when designing the buying process.
In our cleaning service example, we might close by explaining how we will provide a test service as soon as you book through a number or a given link, which takes less than five minutes and only requires basic information about your business. We might also want to mention that you have the option to speak to a consultant right away or upon booking a test service.
This step is not only a call to action, but a relieving agent for your potential customer.
Startup callout: explain credibility by using the WHO
As a new company, a startup has to do an extra effort in articulating value given that they probably don´t have a strong brand nor a ton of customers that can speak about them.
So, for startups, add a step after the "how" and explain "who" you are as a startup, what experience you are bringing to the table, and why you are embarking in this new journey – likely to disrupt or add strong value to your industry.
If our cleaning service was a startup, we would highlight that we are bringing a fun experience to the monotonous industry we are playing in, describing how the previous experiences of our founders and key team members position us perfectly to be able to do so, and we might also tell the story of how the company was born after one of our founders worked for years at the competition and realized the opportunity to make customers’ life easier at a cheaper price.
You won't solve product issues
No matter your great marketing and communication abilities, they will not solve key product or service issues. However, following this guide will certainly help you uncover them. I suggest you address those first.
At Renspire Insights, we work with top performing-clients, helping them uncover and solve their deepest business and human challenges.
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