To be competitive as a brand, it’s essential to constantly offer value to your customers.
Customer value is what makes the wheels of commerce go around. It’s what makes your customers buy from you, engage with you, follow your accounts, give you positive reviews, and recommend you to their friends.
If you’re familiar with our Customer Value Journey framework, you’ll already know a lot about how to create and curate customer value. In this article, we’ll zoom in on what customer value is and some ways you can deploy it in your Customer Value Journey.
What Do We Mean By “Create Customer Value?”
“Customer value” is anything that makes your product and/or brand more appealing to customers. By adding value to your brand, product, and customer experience, you bring more decision-swaying benefits to your customer’s journey.
“Value” is anything your customer wants, needs, or enjoys. The most obvious “value” is monetary—getting a quality item for a low price is something every bargain hunter enjoys—but it’s far from the only “value” available.
Let’s say, for example, that you are a Canadian telecoms brand. You produce the best business phone system in Calgary, but people still buy from your competitors. How can you bring them to you?
Adding value is the best way to turn the tide of customers toward you. You can do things like improve your customer service, add 24/7 support options, tailor your marketing in ways your customers prefer, produce engaging and educational content, add loyalty rewards, and more.
Why Is It Important To Create Value For Your Customers?
Creating value for your customers is crucial because the more value you can offer, the more likely customers are to buy your product, subscribe to your brand, and ultimately become loyal members of your customer community.
Think of every purchase decision in terms of a pair of scales. For a potential customer to purchase your product, its value has to outweigh its drawbacks.
The most obvious element of the purchase decision is the monetary cost. But there’s a lot more to it than that. Things like time, negative experience, and risk also add to the perceived “cost” of your product or service.
For example, if your website does not look safe and professional, your customer may avoid buying your product because they fear credit card scams—even if they would find your product useful and can afford it.
Similarly, if your buying process is too complicated and lengthy, or your customer service could be better, the purchase-decision scales could tip in favor of taking custom elsewhere.
By creating extra value for your customers, you weigh the scale towards the decision to buy. And the more value you add, the better the benefits get.
As well as buying your product, customers who get value from you will return again and again. They will also engage with your content, recommend you to their friends, and boost your brand reputation in general.
All in all, creating customer value is well worth doing. So, how do you go about it?
How To Create Customer Value
Use our Customer Value Journey
Our Customer Value journey is a framework that helps you to understand where and how you can add value to help your customers along their journey to conversion and beyond.
It consists of eight steps: Awareness, Engagement, Subscribe, Convert, Excite, Ascend, Advocate, Promote.
You can find plenty about our CVJ framework, but here’s a (very!) brief rundown:
Aware: Get your target audience’s attention with content that is relevant and valuable for them.
Engage: Communicate with your customers/prospects. Let them know that you care about them.
Subscribe: Try and persuade your burgeoning customers to subscribe to your emails and follow you on social media.
Convert: This is the point at which your prospect becomes a customer. You can use various value-adding tactics to nudge them through this stage.
Excite: Build on the excitement of a purchase by throwing in added extras.
Ascend: Keep up communication and keep adding value to make your one-time buyer a repeat customer.
Advocate: Ask your happy customer to write you positive reviews, share your content, or recommend you to their friends.
Promote: Keep encouraging your customer community to promote your brand, and reward them for doing so.
Provide Stellar Customer Service
The quality of your customer service can make or break your customer experience. Great customer service adds a huge amount of value to your CVJ.
What does good customer service look like? Well, it ranges from things as simple as sending emails saying “Thanks for your order,” to more complex efforts, such as having a fully equipped and responsive customer support center staffed with patient, helpful, and friendly operatives.
Another way of offering great value and customer service is by having a product that will offer unique benefits. For example, offering online business cards with a QR code that automatically captures their information so that you can use analytics and metrics to measure your networking efforts.
Build Community
You can easily add value for your customer by making them feel valued. One way to do this is to focus on building relationships and community with your customers.
You can strengthen your customer relationships through things like sending emails on their birthdays, personalizing your marketing content so that it’s relevant for each customer, and generally showing that you are listening to them and you care for them.
You can expand on this by providing space for your customers to communicate with you and one another. Loyalty clubs, social media pages, events for loyal customers, and so on can all help to build a rewarding community that will add value for your customers.
Focus On Quality Over Price
It’s a common misconception that making an item cheaper adds value for the customer. While price is certainly an important consideration in purchase decisions, quality often trumps it.
However low your prices are, your customers won’t be impressed if your product is low quality. Most customers are happy to pay a bit more for a product that works well, looks good, and will last.
Most customers understand that true quality costs more. So, if you drop your prices too low, customers will automatically assume that your product is low quality.
The old “quality vs. quantity” debate is, to an extent, false—but it is still important that your customers have a good experience with your product. And that means creating something of acceptable quality.
So, we recommend focusing on the quality of your product first and foremost, and deciding the price once you are aware of your profit margins. A quality product that costs a little more will gain you more repeat customers than a poor-quality product at a low price.
Play To Your Strengths
Your strengths are where your true value lies. Maybe you have an excellent customer service team, the best quality product on the market, or a fantastic social media following. Whatever it is that you do best, play to it.
Your strengths form your USP (or, at least, part of it). Your strengths are where your value exceeds that of your competitors. So, make the most of them!
Producing great content is a quick and easy way to add a lot of value and boost your brand’s presence and reputation.
Blog posts, videos, newsletters, social media posts, competitions, games, and webinars—all of these are great for entertaining, educating, and engaging your customers.
Anything you can put out there that your customers will enjoy or find interesting adds value to your product, no matter what your product is.
Let’s say, for example, that you provide online fax services in Canada. On the face of it, this may not seem like a promising topic, but the right content can bring a huge amount of interest to your brand.
You could produce how-to videos, talk about the history of faxing, run case studies, and more. All of it will add value for your audience and bring in new customers.
Reward Loyalty
A loyalty scheme adds value for your customer and directly encourages repeat purchases.
You can use your loyalty scheme to add value in a variety of ways. Many retail businesses use point schemes, in which customers get a certain number of points per purchase which they can then use to offset the cost of later purchases.
Other examples of loyalty rewards can include:
Exclusive content
Free gifts
First looks at new product lines
Discounts
Privileged access to events, products, and services
Enhanced customer service
Boost Your Business & Add Customer Value with A Customer Value Journey
By designing a Customer Value Journey, you will give yourself a head start when adding value.
A Customer Value Journey will show you exactly where in your customer journey to add value and the form it should take.
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For example, a speedy and safe website adds value at the point of sale. It encourages people to convert quickly and with confidence.
After a sale, a loyalty scheme and follow-up emails reinforce your customer’s positive experience and help strengthen your brand/customer relationships.
At all points, a positive brand presence, rewarding content, and a quality product are brilliant for adding value for your customers.
So, to give your customers the value that they deserve, sit down and plot your Customer Value Journey.
In the world of content creation and customer experience, AI’s ability to alleviate tedious tasks has been hyped. However, for a successful digital asset management strategy, librarians still know best how to generate and manage complex information libraries using metadata.
In this webinar, content experts will explain what content creators, managers and users need to know to ensure you can find, use and control your content in order to deliver maximum value.
Cynthia Ramsaran is director of custom content at Third Door Media, publishers of Search Engine Land and MarTech. A multi-channel storyteller with over two decades of editorial/content marketing experience, Cynthia’s expertise spans the marketing, technology, finance, manufacturing and gaming industries. She was a writer/producer for CNBC.com and produced thought leadership for KPMG. Cynthia hails from Queens, NY and earned her Bachelor’s and MBA from St. John’s University.
In the world of digital marketing, data is king. With so much information available, it can be overwhelming to try and make sense of it all. One of the best ways to gain insight into digital marketing trends is through the use of graphs.
Graphs can help to visualize complex data sets and identify patterns that may not be immediately apparent when looking at raw data. In this article, we will explore the top nine graphs for revealing digital marketing trends.
Line Graphs For Digital Trends
Line graphs are one of the most commonly used graphs in digital marketing. They are particularly useful for showing how a particular metric has changed over time. For example, a line graph could be used to show how website traffic has changed over the course of a year.
By plotting data points over time, it is easy to see any trends or patterns that may have emerged. Line graphs can also be used to compare data sets over time, such as comparing the performance of two different marketing campaigns.
Chord Diagrams Connecting Different Marketing Channels
Chord diagrams are a type of visualization that show the connections between different variables. They are often used to show the relationship between different parts of a complex system or network.
In digital marketing, chord diagrams can be used to show how different channels (such as social media, email marketing, and search engine marketing) are related to each other. By visualizing the connections between different channels, businesses can optimize their marketing mix and ensure that each channel is working together to achieve their marketing goals.
Scatter plots are often used in digital marketing to show the relationship between two different metrics. For example, a scatter plot, designed by a graph creator, could be used to show how the bounce rate on a website correlates with the time spent on the site.
By plotting data points on an x and y axis, it is easy to see any correlations that may exist between the two metrics. Scatter plots can also be used to identify any outliers within a data set.
Bubble Charts Show How Differing Variables Relate to Each other
Bubble charts are similar to scatter plots, but they add a third variable to the mix by varying the size of the bubbles based on a third data point. This can be a useful way to visualize trends and patterns in complex data sets.
In digital marketing, bubble charts can be used to show how different variables (such as ad spend, click-through rate, and conversion rate) are related to each other.
Bar Graphs for Quick Comparisons
Bar graphs are another common graph used in digital marketing. They are particularly useful for comparing different data sets. For example, a bar graph could be used to compare the conversion rates of two different landing pages.
By presenting data in a visual format, it is easy to see which landing page is performing better. Bar graphs can also be used to compare data sets over time, such as comparing the number of leads generated by two different marketing campaigns.
Heat maps are a unique type of graph that are particularly useful for analyzing website user behavior. Heat maps show how users interact with different parts of a website by using different colors to represent user engagement.
For example, a heat map could be used to show which parts of a landing page receive the most clicks. By analyzing heat maps, marketers can identify areas of a website that may need to be optimized to improve user engagement.
Pie Charts For Categorical Divisions
Pie charts are often used in digital marketing to show how a particular metric is divided among different categories. For example, a pie chart could be used to show how a company’s social media followers are divided among different age groups.
Pie charts are particularly useful for highlighting the most significant categories within a data set. However, it is important to keep in mind that pie charts can be difficult to read when there are too many categories.
Funnel Charts Reveal Bottlenecks
Funnel charts are a type of chart that shows how many users or customers move through a series of steps in a process. They are often used in digital marketing to track the conversion rate at each stage of a sales funnel.
By visualizing the drop-off rate at each stage of the funnel, businesses can identify potential roadblocks or bottlenecks in the conversion process and take steps to optimize their marketing strategy.
Gantt charts are a type of bar chart that show the duration of each task in a project, as well as the start and end dates. They are commonly used in project management to track progress and deadlines.
In digital marketing, Gantt charts can be used to plan and track the progress of marketing campaigns. By breaking down a campaign into smaller tasks and assigning deadlines to each one, businesses can ensure that their marketing efforts stay on track and meet their goals.
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In conclusion, digital marketing is a complex field that requires businesses to track and analyze a large amount of data. Charts and graphs are essential tools for visualizing this data and identifying trends and patterns.
By using the right types of charts and graphs, businesses can gain insights into their marketing performance and make data-driven decisions to optimize their marketing strategy.
From line graphs and scatter plots to heatmaps and chord diagrams, there are a variety of charts and graphs that businesses can use to reveal digital marketing trends and stay ahead of the competition.
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