Providing useful products and services for your customers can encourage sales, improve loyalty and grow your brand’s reputation. You can employ many strategies to enhance customer value at your company, and learning how to create value for your customers can directly impact your company’s long-term success. In this post, I’ll explain what it means to create customer value and discuss strategies to help you generate more value for your customers.
What Does It Mean to Create Value for Customers?
Creating value can increase your brand’s reputation, profits, and long-term success. Creating value for customers means providing useful products and services that customers consider worthy of their time, energy, and money (after all, customer value is their perception of your brand and products/services). For customers to find value in a product or service, its perceived benefits must outweigh its cost. Benefits include quality, convenience, speed, accessibility, and longevity. Customers who feel they’ve made a good purchase have confidence and trust in your company and are more likely to buy from you again and share their positive experiences with others.
20 Ways to Create Customer Value
Learning what benefits your customers value can help you improve your products, increase sales and encourage customer loyalty. Use these 20 tips to create customer value for your products and services. Remember, value can exist outside your product or service too.
1. Design an Effective Value Proposition
Take the time to do a competitive analysis on each of your competitors so you can figure out your advantage and use it. You can use these differentiators in your marketing materials, on your website, and as part of your brand story. If other companies offer something like you, find where your value exceeds theirs and communicate that to your customers. By finding your strengths, you can tell customers why your company or product is the best option for them.
2. Improve Your Buying Process
Find ways you can make it easier for customers to buy from you. Consider establishing an online purchasing option and provide incentives for customers such as free shipping, volume discounts, fast delivery, and easy return policies.
3. Focus on Brand Perception
Customers like to buy from brands that represent the same core values they do. Cause-driven brands can connect with their audience through their charitable efforts. Use your marketing to show your authenticity and how you create value for your customers.
4. Get Customer Feedback Regularly
The best way to learn what your customers find valuable is to ask. Customer feedback can help you improve your offerings and maximize the value of your products or services. Consider sending out surveys, asking for reviews, and making it easy for customers to contact you. Use this information to train your team based on feedback. Then, demonstrate value to customers by letting them know you take their feedback seriously and have made meaningful changes.
5. Use Video Marketing
Video marketing is essential to any company’s marketing strategy. You can use video to build sales relationships, engage new customers, and thank your customers. It’s an effective way to build brand awareness and drive sales. There are five main types of videos:
- Explainer Videos: These videos are designed to explain a product, service, or concept.
- How-to Videos: These videos provide step-by-step instructions on how to use a product or service.
- Product Demos: These videos showcase a product in action, highlighting its features and benefits.
- Testimonial Videos: These videos feature satisfied customers discussing their experience with your product or service. They are great for building trust and credibility with potential customers.
- Brand Videos: These videos showcase a company’s personality, values, and mission. They are great for increasing brand awareness and connecting with the audience.
6. Make a Unique Product
Focus on your niche specialty. Highlight your unique features, mission, and offerings that can draw customers to your brand and make them choose you over a similar product or service. Do market research to learn the best ways you can leverage your niche.
7. Slash Customer Response Times
How fast you answer the phone or return calls in your business adds value. Do you offer live chat on your website? Customers value real-time service online. Live chat allows your website visitors to get immediate support via a convenient chat window. If you don’t have the staff resources, you can outsource live chat to a company like Ruby.com
8. Provide an Excellent Customer Experience
Great service can increase the value customers find in your offerings and keep them invested in your brand. You can create customer value through a positive experience with you and your team. You can enhance the customer experience by sending thank you emails to follow up with online transactions. If your customer base is smaller, sending personalized notes or stickers with each purchase can be an excellent way to provide value and form a unique and favorable impression.
9. Share Social Proof
Research shows that 88{1652eb1ffa4184925f6a63a9c04ea6b421acb7a78117241e7d4325cdca8339fa} of people trust customer reviews as much as word-of-mouth referrals from family and friends. Show your value to customers through social proof from happy customers. Gather photos, reviews, and testimonials to share across your social media footprint. You can also use this content on your website, in case studies, as highlights on any landing pages you create, and in social media videos.
10. Highlight Customers Across Social Media
Every company should incorporate customers into its social media marketing efforts, but going beyond the basic post could really add value. For example, you could feature customers on the cover of your company’s Facebook page. When a customer takes the time to post a picture or write a nice comment online, repost it. Create case studies on your website to highlight how you serve your customers.
11. Prioritize Quality Over Price
Although price is a significant consideration for customers, many are often willing to pay more for quality products. When marketing your products, emphasize the quality and your brand. That way, if customers compare your product or service to a competitor’s, they may select your higher-priced option instead of a cheaper one.
12. Adjust Your Marketing Strategy
Once you learn why your customer buys, you may need to adjust your marketing strategy to fit your customer’s value expectations. This can help you highlight your product or service’s benefits that most resonate with their wants and needs.
13. Onboard Customers
Providing your customers with relevant and helpful content created just for them demonstrates your value in a powerful way. Ensure your customers get the most value out of your product or service by providing onboarding resources on how to use your product or service. Demonstrations, tutorials, webinars, FAQ pages on your website, and responsive customer service reps help your customers maximize your product’s use.
14. Identify Your Target Audience
Identify the customers that find the most value in your product or service. Consider doing market research and surveys to solicit feedback from your target audience so that you can get clear on the features and benefits your customers value.
15. Build a Customer Community
Creating an online community for your customers lets them know that you are committed to providing them with value in the long term. It’s the perfect way to anchor them to your brand. You can create a Facebook or LinkedIn group, forum, or any other type of online community that will give your customers a place where they can come to exchange information and get their questions answered.
16. Give Customers a Chance to Value Your Service
Offer free trials, discounts, subscriptions, and co-branding opportunities to encourage new customers and reward existing ones.
17. Reward Loyalty
Loyalty programs can show customers how much you appreciate their business, encouraging positive perceptions of your products or services. You can create a program that rewards customers for making repeat purchases. Send exclusive offers and special discounts to increase brand perception and customer value.
18. Provide Valuable Educational Content
You can create brand value for customers by offering free content on your website that is useful and relevant. This can enhance your brand’s credibility and grow your reputation. Original content, such as blog posts and podcasts, can help educate your customers and provide them with valuable information.
19. Host a Social Media Contest
Hosting social media contests or giveaways can provide interactive content on social media, which can be a great way to connect with your audience online. You will encourage people to get to know your brand’s personality.
20. Become a Community Sponsor
Sponsoring local groups can give your brand visibility and help build community with your target and existing customers. Consider setting up a table or booth at an event to meet potential customers and educate them on your products and services. Creating positive associations with your brand can increase perceived value.
Working on adding more customer value is key to keeping customers for life. Customers want to know that when they spend their time and money on your brand, they receive full value in return. Use these 20 tips to demonstrate value to your customers and enjoy the many benefits that come with them.