Value‑Based Marketing Strategies for Success

What is value-based marketing?

Understanding value in marketing is simple.

How does your business and its products and services provide value to its customers? Are you saving them money or time? Does your product improve their life in some way?

Value marketing is part of a customer-centric business strategy based on customers' needs. It appeals to your customers' wants and needs and focuses on connecting with them to build brand trust.

Instead of marketing your business by focusing on your company's greatness, you'll focus on your existing customers' wants and needs, providing data-backed evidence for how your product provides value.

Simply put, a value-based marketing campaign can help you identify customer pain points and find ways to promote your product as a solution to their common problems.

In addition, value-based marketing can help you find new ways to market your products and services to customers without constantly selling — something your customers don't want. Instead, they want to connect with brands on a more emotional level.

Ultimately, how do customers find value in your products or services? What value does it offer them?

That's value-based marketing. There are four types of value in marketing:

• Functional: Functional value refers to the product and its use, such as the benefits to customers who use it.
• Emotional: Emotional value is anything that makes your customers feel good when they use your product.
• Economic: Economic is the cost of the product or services, with the value being the cost of your product versus the cost savings of using your product.
• Social: Social value refers to whether your product helps individuals interact with others.

You don't need to try to use every type of value-based marketing, especially since not all products will provide the same types of value.

How is value-based marketing different from traditional marketing?

So now that you’re aware of the definition of value marketing, you may be wondering how value-based marketing differs from traditional marketing.

Your business's marketing strategies should center around your customers. Value-based marketing is much different from other types of marketing.

For example, if you want to highlight your company values, you'll use value-based marketing, which focuses on the shared values of customers and brands.

Traditional marketing is a product-centric approach. Businesses market their products, which may include highlighting features. However, this type of marketing doesn't necessarily speak to customers or make them want to take action.

Conversely, value marketing identifies why customers should purchase your products and services by aligning your marketing approach with their wants and needs. If you continuously deliver customer value, you can increase your customer lifetime value, brand loyalty, and revenue by showing them why they need your product and services.

Why is value-based marketing important?

A value-based strategy focuses more on the customer, allowing you to effectively target and communicate with them to build trust.

Consumers are becoming increasingly mistrustful of brands. Over the years, companies have broken promises and used manipulative marketing tactics to earn customers. Customers don't want to be sold to; they want to find products based on their wants and needs without a sales pitch.

Unfortunately, many companies have difficulty communicating the value of their products and services to customers. Some don't even have proof that their products provide any type of customer-perceived value and instead just make empty claims.

Value marketing can help you focus your other marketing strategies by providing supporting materials for claims.

For example, if you sell automation software, you should only claim how much time your product can save users if you have the data to back it up. It can also help you develop better leads by determining the groups of prospects who will find the most value from your company's products and services to help you create more targeted marketing and advertising campaigns.

Ultimately, value-based marketing can help you build stronger relationships with loyal customers. When your customers trust your brand, you'll become more than just a business to them, and they'll be more likely to stick around and recommend you to their friends and family.

Key components of value-based marketing

There are several elements of an effective value-based marketing strategy.

First, remember that this strategy is customer-centric, not product-centric, so you must identify why your prospects should want or need your product. Your value-based marketing strategy should appeal to existing and new customers.

Here are several things to consider:

Understand customer needs and wants

Before beginning value marketing, you need to know your customers' needs and wants.

Who is your target audience? This will ultimately depend on the types of products and services you sell.

For example, if you sell automation software for businesses, your target audience is any type of business that may benefit from automation. You can start understanding your customers' wants and needs by creating customer personas for each audience segment and identifying the benefits of your products.

Identify customer pain points

Take advantage of your customer personas by using them to identify customer pain points.

Value-based marketing solves a problem by addressing customer pain points. Pain points are problems faced by your target audience.

For example, a company's pain point may be productivity. In this case, you would market the value of your product by solving their productivity issue and focus on identifying ways your product makes businesses more productive. You'd be demonstrating the functional value of your product.

When identifying pain points and determining how your product is a solution, you must provide proof points that back up any claims.

For example, telling prospects that you've increased your customers' productivity by 25% is more powerful than simply stating that your product increases productivity.

Create a unique value proposition

Your company's value proposition is a short statement that communicates the benefits of your products and services to your target audience. It sets expectations, explains what your business does, and how it can help customers.

Investing in value marketing requires a unique value proposition to capture your audience's attention and express why your business is better than the competition.

Value propositions should be specific about the benefits to customers and focus on pain points and solutions. Remember, though, your value proposition is a promise to your customers.

If you can't deliver on your promises, value-based marketing isn't right for you because customers will see through your attempts to sell them your products. So instead, your value proposition must speak to reasons why customers should purchase your products and services.

You should also have a unique selling proposition (USP) that indicates why prospects should purchase your products. It should tell prospective customers why your products are better than the competition.

However, remember that a USP doesn't necessarily highlight the benefits of your products to customers, so you should continue to focus on your value position.

Consistently deliver value

For value-based marketing to work, you must continue to deliver value to your customers, even after they've purchased your product. If your products don't provide value, your customers will stop using them.

Additionally, your marketing should consistently deliver value by giving them helpful tips for using your products to reach their goals and address common pain points.

How to implement a value-based marketing strategy

A values-based marketing strategy is a shift away from simply promoting your products and services. Instead, it focuses on your customers and addresses common pain points.

Highlighting the benefits of your products and services is a much more effective way to reach customers, allowing you to build valuable relationships that increase loyalty. But how can you use value-based marketing in your own strategies?

Here are a few ways to implement a values-based marketing strategy:

Create value-based content

Content is crucial in all types of marketing, especially values-based marketing. With this type of marketing, you have to teach customers what benefits your company and its products offer.

Then, after learning about your target audience, you can create educational, customer-centric content that can help them realize why they need your product and how your offers are the solution to their pain points.

Include real customers

Most people want to learn real customers' opinions before purchasing anything. So, including customers in your marketing efforts can help others see the benefits of your products and services while providing proof points that back up any claims you make in your marketing.

You can include customers in your marketing by using testimonials and case studies on your website, in e-blasts, and on social media to help others realize the value of your products.

Improve customer service

Customer satisfaction is crucial for businesses with a customer-centric business model. Every successful business needs a good customer service philosophy that focuses on customer needs.

Your customer service team can prove that you care about your customers and are willing to do whatever it takes to help them. This will help to create a better customer experience, which can help you stand out from competitors.

Sell outcomes, not products

As we've mentioned, most customers don't want to be sold to. They want to learn how a product can benefit them.

If you want to increase sales, you should focus on the outcomes they deliver and highlight the product's benefits instead of the features. For example, if you sell automation software, you would highlight the benefit of time saved, productivity, and efficiency.

Work with sales teams

Depending on your product, you may have a complex sales process. Marketing is there to help sales attract high-quality leads.

However, if the sales process can't highlight the value of the product, it won't succeed. If you have a sales team, they must become value advocates. The marketing team should work with them to provide them with the tools they need to demonstrate value to the customers.

They should have access to the marketing materials, including messaging documents, value propositions, and product benefits.

Improve your customer relationships with value-based marketing

Value-based marketing puts the customer at the center of your marketing strategies. Your customers want to know how your products and services can benefit them.

Values-based marketing focuses less on selling and more on educating customers, allowing you to build relationships with them over time.

Are you ready to invest in value-based marketing?

Mailchimp makes it easy to collect customer data to improve your marketing efforts and provide proof of claims to help customers realize the value of your brand. Try Mailchimp today.