What is Your Marketing DNA (Part IV of IV)

The final component of your Marketing DNA is “A” for “add value.” Adding value is the most important piece of your marketing DNA because value is how you monetize the business. If a business cannot add value, the business serves no purpose. So just like the three previous posts, we’ll dig into four areas: what adding value is, why it is important, how to do it and who is doing it well.

1) What is Adding Value?

Value is essentially the relationship between perceived benefit and price. For a business to be able to sell anything, it must use marketing to create a perceived benefit that exceeds the cost. All marketing efforts thus must communicate the added value that a consumer will get by purchasing a product or a service. This is true across industries, products, services and more. True success through adding value is when price becomes insignificant. Let’s dig into this further by seeing why adding value is important.

2) Why Add Value?

As noted above, a business must add value in order to exist. The primary function of a business is to get and keep customers. In order for a business to achieve success, it must genuinely add value for its customer and continue to provide value. Otherwise, customers will go elsewhere. Adding value is the cornerstone of sales. Through its sales and marketing tactics, a business will generate sales only when it can communicate a direct benefit or feeling associated with a product or service. If a business cannot communicate the benefit, there will be no sales. No sales, no business. So adding value is really the lifeblood of a business and its marketing efforts.

3) How to Add Value?

Adding value is subjective and dynamic that continues to evolve, progress and advance. Here are a couple of ways that have proven successful, but new ways are always possible:
• Make it Easy to Do Business With You: consumers are smart and lazy. They will seek out the easiest options, even if it means spending a bit more.
• Eliminate Waste: a business can create value by subtracting wasteful steps and resources. This works for internal business processes as well as customer processes.
• Provide Solutions: name any successful business and I will tell you what solutions they provide. This is a no-brainer.
• Give, Give, Give: wow your customers, exceed their expectations and give them more. The returns will come.
• Sell Feelings: people buy feelings and feelings sell. Piece of mind, exclusivity, wellness and savings are all strong feelings that sell very well.
• Conquer Fear: much like feelings, fear sells. Conquer your customers fear and you’ll have customers and brand advocates for life.

4) Who Adds Value well?

Here are just a few business that add value well:
• Global Powerhouse: Toyota. Toyota’s legendary TPS (Toyota Production System) is legendary for reducing waste. Toyota has created value by reducing and eliminating wasteful operations.
• Regional Superstar: Buy.com. Buy.com first added tremendous value with is price comparison and price matching. It upped the ante by partnering with competitors. Users of buy.com can purchase from a competitor without ever leaving the buy.com site which makes the user experience very seamless.
• Local Hero: Compagno’s. With sandwiches bigger than a football, Compagno’s in Monterey, CA is a local favorite. And if the sandwiches aren’t enough, their home-made cakes take two to three people to finish.

Adding value is the final piece of your Marketing DNA. It may be the last, but it is certainly the most important.