How to Show Your Value to Customers.

- - Advice

Modern consumers are obsessed with finding the best bang for their buck. To make matters even more complicated, there are very few industries where your product or service will be entirely unique. So, if you and your competitor offer the same product, what’s going to make customers choose you over them?  Value.

As a business, it’s your job to come up with creative ways to demonstrate value to consumers so their decision becomes that much easier. Contrary to popular belief, there are many factors beyond the price tag that consumers look at when deciding who to purchase from. In this Blog, I have outlined a few simple tricks you can use to show your value not just to new customers, but your existing customers as well.

How to Show Value to New Customers

Even though this may sound straightforward, showing your value goes far beyond simply listing off the various features of your product or service. Buyers only want to know what’s in it for them—how your product or service is going to directly benefit them. Below we’ve covered a few simple ways you can demonstrate your value to new customers.

Highlight the Outcome

The faster you can take your customer’s mind off the price tag, the more likely you are to win them over. It doesn’t matter if the product or service you’re selling costs $10 or $1,000, the goal is to get the customer focused on the benefits they can have. By putting yourself in the shoes of the consumer and thinking about the problems they’re trying to solve, you’ll gain a much better understanding of which benefits you should be advertising.

For example, if you sell paint, instead of saying “quick drying formula” or “dries in 2 hours”, highlight the benefit by saying something like “get the job done faster”. Another powerful way to demonstrate value is by showing consumers the benefits and positive experiences other customers had.

Observe Your Competition

Even if you and your top competitor offer the same product down to the penny, there’s almost always something you can leverage in your favor. The fastest way to figure out an advantage is by doing some recon work on your competitors. Hence the saying, “keep your friends close and your enemies closer”.

Learn everything you can about whatever it is they’re offering and make a list of the features and benefits they mention so you can easily pick out weak points. Almost all customers do some kind of comparison research these days, so if you can highlight even just one or two benefits that your competition doesn’t offer or simply forgot to mention, you should easily be able to win them over.

Offer Ongoing Support

Whether you sell a product or service, almost all consumers want to feel valued by a company they do business with. Pulling the trigger on a purchase is one of the hardest stages to overcome in the consumer buying process. An easy way to quell that fear is by offering some kind of ongoing support after they’ve made the purchase. Highlighting this shows them that they won’t be forgotten about once they give you their payment information, rather, you’ll continue to stay in touch with them. The simple act of making your company easily accessible to customers is a powerful psychological factor that can sway someone sitting on the fence.

How to Show Value to Existing Customers

Just because a customer buys from you doesn’t mean they’re loyal to your brand for the rest of their life (as nice as that would be). As it turns out, a groundbreaking study by Harvard revealed that new customers are anywhere between 5 to 25 times more expensive than retaining existing customers. Below, we’ve outlined a few easy ways to continue demonstrating value after the sale.

Ask For Feedback

In case you haven’t realized by now, just about everyone on the planet likes to be a critic in one way or another. Even if you don’t take constructive criticism that well, the simple act of asking for feedback from your existing customers can work wonders. Not only does it demonstrate that you value their opinion, but it also allows you to take their feedback and better meet their needs as well as those of new customers. Depending on the size of your operation and customer base, this can be done via email or over the phone if you want to add a more personal touch (it goes a long way).

 

Build a Customer Community

Another easy way to demonstrate value and keep your existing customers satisfied is by creating a customer community. Whether you choose to create a Facebook page or even an entire membership platform on your website, having a customer community is great for creating a sense of exclusivity. In addition to giving customers that VIP feeling, it also creates an ecosystem in which customers can communicate with each other and share information. Having the ability to learn from others and bounce ideas off each other is a powerful way to anchor customers to your brand.

Continuously Offer Improvements

In a perfect world, once you finalize your product or service, it will continue to be the best until the end of time, requiring no updates or attention. Bringing you back to today, just because you have a product or service that beats out your competitors today doesn’t mean that’s going to be the case tomorrow. You need to always be looking for new ways to improve upon your existing products so that you’re staying ahead of the competition and continuing to offer your existing customers the best of the best. Doing so will eliminate the need for your customers to look elsewhere by always looking for new ways to meet their needs.

Comments

comments

Post Tags:

Nishanth Muraleedharan, also known as "Nishani," is an IT engineer who transitioned into entrepreneurship, driven by a profound passion for the textile industry. As the president of Save Handloom Foundation, (SaveHandloom.org) and the Founder & CEO of DMZ International Imports & Exports Pvt Ltd., I am passionate about reviving the Indian handloom industry and empowering the weavers and artisans across the country. With 25+ years of experience in the textile industry, I have developed deep market insights and a rich network of handloom weaving societies, master weavers, and self-help groups, who exclusively make products for our trust.