The Best Way To Communicate Your Value

Failure to effectively communicate your value can make or break your business proposition. As such, it’s important to fully understand the value your product or service brings and communicate that clearly, so your audience is convinced to buy into your service. It’s about making sure that your audience gets the message so you can get the business.

Understanding Value

During her feature on The Value podcast, Communications Strategist and self-published author, Milène Paul, shared that there are three types of value; absolute, relative and added value.

She explained that absolute value is what we are. You embody value simply because you exist. This value is absolute, and no one can take that away from you.

This is different from relative value, which is value that depends on someone else’s preference or needs.

As with most things in life, everyone has different needs and desires and even a preference for how things are done. As such, if two business owners sell the same product, each consumer makes a choice of who to purchase from based on their own partialities.

A terrific example would be the great Apple vs. Samsung debate.

Both companies seem to create some top-notch devices with features that revolutionized the modern telecommunication experience.

However,

Apple loyalists often flat-out refuse to purchase Samsung phones or any other brand for that matter.

This suggests that the relative value of a Samsung phone to an Apple user is significantly less despite an appreciation for several features of Samsung devices.

Absolutely, the Samsung brand holds value simply because the phone fulfils its various functions as a mobile device. But relative to users in the mobile device market space, owning a non-Apple branded device does not add much value to those consumers’ lives.

A consumer’s choice to purchase one brand over the other is simply a matter of personal preference and relative value.

Taking another perspective, service providers often fear rejection from consumers believing that this rejection means they have no value. Truthfully, rejection in one space may simply be an indication that you should move your product or service to another market where consumers are likely to see the value in your offering. Furthermore, in a different market, people may be willing to pay a premium for something others rejected.

Next up is added value.

This refers to what you show your prospects to empower them to decide to work with you. It is the value you are adding to the customer’s life and represents the summation of the functional and emotional benefits your product or service provides to customers.

Added value, when pitched to potential customers, describes what your product or service allows customers to do as well as what these functions can bring emotionally to the target.

As an example, local furniture retailers like Courts and Standards offer customers the opportunity to furnish their homes using credit plans instead of cash payments. Functionally, this service allows customers to afford expensive purchases while completing home décor projects.

Emotionally, these credit plans provide peace of mind, a sense of accomplishment and a safe space for familial bonding.

This combination of function and emotion is what is usually shown in audio-visual marketing campaigns aimed at convincing consumers to buy products or services.

Communicating this type of value demands a rigorous analysis of the characteristics of your offering, what those characteristics allow consumers to do, what emotional benefits this brings, what this means to consumers and what it empowers your customers to do.

So, let’s look now at how you can go about assessing your value.

Assessing Your Value

Career and Employment company, Indeed, speaks about value communication as communicating the positive or helpful aspects of your products to your customers. The ‘value’ referred to here, incorporates the various elements of your product or service including its price, purpose, convenience and usefulness to the customer. This can be communicated using various marketing materials and media to create value propositions that will convert your audience into customers.

Adding this idea, B2B Marketing proposed a Values Ladder Approach that breaks down how brands can clearly identify their value. It involves considering the characteristics of your company’s total offering, as well as the functional AND emotional benefits your product or service provides to customers.

When put together, those functional and emotional benefits describe the promises you make to customers.

But the Value Ladder doesn’t end there. End value considers the ways in which your product or service empowers your customers but also looks at the greater impact your offering can have on their community.

These are the areas you should consider when trying to understand your brand’s value.

How to Effectively Communicate Your Value

In her interview,  Milène Paul offers 5 steps to effectively pitch your value with confidence so that your audience understands what you sell and consequently buys into your service:

Be clear for yourself and for your audience

Step one involves gaining clarity on your offering before attempting to communicate any messages about your brand. Here, the Value Ladder Approach mentioned earlier becomes relevant.

Practice

Over time, you should refine your message to communicate it clearly and efficiently. This likely means you need to get feedback from persons within your target audience to test their response toward the different methods you may want to use. Market research tools like focus groups are helpful in understanding consumer sentiments that will aid in sharpening your message delivery.

Fall in love with the people you want to talk to

Falling in love with your audience means understanding them intimately. The importance of market research cannot be understated here.

Take time to observe your target audience to understand where they are at and what they are looking for. Then, align your communication with their words. Put your offer into their context so that they understand clearly the language they use. It’s important that they relate to your messaging for them to buy into it.

Be vocal, own your voice well and have a perspective

Recall that relative value is all about the market you’re in. Your product or service is not for everyone, so your communication shouldn’t be either. Therefore, understanding your audience intimately is key. Talk to people who are willing and interested in what you offer. Your challenge is simply to understand who these people are and how you can share a perspective that you know can help them, that they are looking for and willing to pay for. But also, speak often enough that people become familiar with your message and your brand.

Have an objective in mind for the conversation and speak strategically

Finally, don’t speak simply for the sake of. Think carefully about what you hope to accomplish every time you craft a brand message. This may be to inform persons of your offer and its benefits, to encourage your audience to refer your product or service to others or to persuade them to buy more.

All in all, it takes much preparation to effectively pitch your value to others. Most of the work entails sitting with your business and getting a clear understanding of the value you offer, using market research to refine your message to the language your target audience uses, articulating a clear position within the market space and speaking strategically based on clear objectives.

Once you’ve done the work, show up with confidence knowing that once you get it, your audience will also.