What are your customers really buying from your company?

Increase marketing effectiveness by understanding product value from your customers’ POV  

Picture this: It’s 12:05 p.m. on a Monday. You just wrapped up a meeting with one of your employees, and you have exactly 55 minutes until your next meeting: a phone call with a prospect who’s been at the top of your company’s target list for months. You want to run through your slide deck one more time before the meeting and make any final tweaks. Time’s ticking, your stomach’s growling, and you didn’t bring lunch. Good day to order in. 

UberEats and Instacart don’t just sell food delivery—they sell time. By placing that order, you’re buying yourself more time to prepare for that important sales call and increase your chance of success.    

Likewise, BMW and Audi don’t just sell cars—they sell performance. Jared and Kay Jewelers offer more than diamond rings—they sell a promise of forever. 

Just like the big brands, when you run a small or mid-size business, you need to understand the value that your products and services deliver from your customers’ perspective so you can effectively market to them. If your message is too focused on what your company perceives the value to be (often referred to as “features and benefits”), your marketing messaging could fall flat. Moreover, you could be missing out on market opportunities.  

'Mutually beneficial exchange'

Brand strategist and marketing educator Anthony Miyazaki says marketing can be thought of as “facilitating a perceived mutually beneficial exchange relationship between a seller and buyer.”

When you think about your own business, ask yourself:   

• What is really being exchanged?   

• What value is the customer getting from this exchange?   

 

Like beauty, perceived value is in the eye of the beholder (i.e., your customer). You may think you know what value your products or services offer, but you need to dive deeper to understand this from your customer’s point of view (POV). Think about your customer’s needs, pain points, and the role your offerings play in addressing these. Test your assumptions by asking your customers directly. Listening and empathizing is key. 

'Jobs to be done'

Another way to look at this is through the “Jobs to be Done” theory, as popularized by the late Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen. In a famous example, he and his team of researchers worked with McDonald’s to understand the perceived value customers received from milkshake purchases. In other words, they wanted to know what “job” McDonald’s customers were “hiring” a milkshake to do.  

What they discovered was surprising. Most customers who purchased milkshakes did so on their early morning drive to work. They hired a milkshake to do two jobs: 1) keep them engaged during their long, boring commute and 2) keep them satiated until lunchtime. Through this research, McDonald’s executives gained a fresh perspective on what customers truly valued from the product. They also gained insights on competing products in the eyes of the customer, which included many outside the product category, such as donuts, bananas and even candy bars.   

Understanding the perceived value or “job to be done” for each of your products and services will not only help you adjust your product offerings and adapt your marketing messages to better resonate with your customers, it will also help you better understand who your competitors are and what the market opportunity is, so your company can be better positioned to capitalize on it.