Focus on added value for the client over product details

As a business owner, you’re looking to stand out from your rivals by improving the marketing of your products or services. You need a narrative that engages your client and puts them at ease, rather than just talking about your firm and highlighting all the features of your product or service.

Now more than ever, consumers are literally inundated with thousands of items of advertising material on a daily basis. So how do you stand out from the crowd? How do you not only get seen but also get noticed as an attractive and credible option?

At a time when client experience (or UX in the case of digital) is on the lips of every marketer, most business owners are now aware of the need to put themselves in their client’s shoes in order to optimise the purchasing journey. That doesn’t mean it’s easy to know where to begin, however, or to see what the stumbling blocks might be.

It’s often said that too much choice is fatal, and rightly so: too many options, too many brands offering similar products, too many lengthy descriptions of company histories and the features of their products, and too many social criteria to consider when making that purchase decision. It’s exhausting!

If you want to stand out, it’s rarely a good idea to demonstrate the superiority of your product by overloading your potential clients with information. A narrative detailing the history of your firm, values of your brand and features of its products is generally not enough to trigger a purchase or impulse buy.

The client is focused primarily on themselves, not your brand. It’s up to you to show them what value your brand adds to their life.

This is because you’re going about it all wrong. Too many brands offer a narrative that talks about themselves. But the client is focused primarily on themselves, not your brand. If you want to arouse their interest, they must become the main character for you, and your brand needs to show them what value it adds to their life. You need to position yourself as the key to fulfilling their aspirations.

In other words, your story needs to focus on the value added for the client, rather than the features of your product or service. If the value added of your offer is obvious to the client, then they’ll see all your lists of product features as a tedious cognitive overload rather than an aid to decision-making. If you want to stand out, the main issue to address is not what you do or who you are, but what you can do for the client and who you will enable them to be.

Uncertainty: public enemy no. 1

No human is a purely rational being. That may seem obvious to you, but this assertion is the opposite of what is claimed by the classical theory of the consumer, which states that they are able to rationally evaluate all the options available to them before making the optimum choice. Given the lack of absolute objectivity, there are a number of product or service comparison sites, though they sometimes makes things even more complicated. Generally speaking, they do not enable the consumer’s specific preferences and values to be evaluated. These two aspects are crucial when it comes to making the final decision.

Consumers have limited rationality and are subject to cognitive bias – they take mental shortcuts that are not always successful when it comes to facilitating decision-making. Uncertainty is the worst enemy of decision-making, and clients are searching for what will enable them to reduce this stressful uncertainty.

In the absence of certainty with regard to their future choice, economic agents will opt for the certainty of a minimal potential gain rather than taking a risk that could bring them a more substantial gain.

One of the cornerstones of behavioural economics is called the prospect theory, developed by Daniel Kahneman (who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics) and his co-author Amos Tversky. The theory states that, when presented with a choice, humans attach more weight to the potential losses than the potential gains. In the absence of certainty with regard to their future choice, economic agents will favour the certainty of a minimal potential gain rather than taking a risk that could bring them a more substantial gain.

Generally speaking, we prefer the reassuring certainty of a clearly defined option to the uncertainty of an alternative whose potential benefits are less clear, even if they may potentially be greater.

Takeaway: Even if your product is far superior to that of your rivals, you won’t sell it if you aren’t able to communicate its added value. Your aim is to reduce the client’s uncertainty regarding the expected benefits and to make it easier for them to decide, not to overwhelm them with a complex, technical demonstration of all of the product’s features.

Identifying reasons for the client’s uncertainty

Since your communication aims to reduce the client’s uncertainty, making sure they understand the added value your product or service brings is key. This doesn’t mean avoiding talking about your product, but you should include it in a narrative in which not only is the client the focus, but uncertainty is the enemy to be defeated.

To achieve that, it’s important to understand the ways in which uncertainty affects the client’s decision-making process. If the level of uncertainty is too great in their eyes, they will move on. There are basically three types of uncertainty: uncertainty related to knowledge, uncertainty related to choice, and uncertainty related to evaluation.

There are three types of uncertainty: uncertainty related to knowledge, uncertainty related to choice, and uncertainty related to evaluation.

While uncertainty related to knowledge refers to information on alternative goods and services, uncertainty related to choice refers to questions regarding a specific type of product or service: choice of brand, colour, size, or options to be selected. Finally, uncertainty related to evaluation refers to the client’s lack of understanding about how to use the knowledge they have acquired.

Uncertainty related to evaluation is what you need to focus on as a priority, because it directly affects the way in which you present your product. Addressing this means tackling four potential sources of misunderstanding: complexity, ambiguity, conflict and credibility.

Complexity refers to the relative difficulty or ease of understanding how a product works. Complexity tends to increase the cost of reflection and leads to an information overload that makes decision-making difficult.

Ambiguity is defined as a lack of understanding that forces the client to review or reassess their beliefs or current assumptions regarding products or the purchasing environment. Faced with ambiguous information about the characteristics of a product, it isn’t possible to process the information efficiently in order to arrive at a reasonable view on the relative benefits. This generally leads to a conflict in the mind of the client, who is unable to work out whether the supposed benefits match their needs, aspirations and values.

Finally, the client may have doubts about the credibility of the brand if they are unable to understand its values clearly and judge whether it matches their needs and personal values. This situation may occur in particular if a client is looking to buy an ethical product but is unable to find sufficient information regarding the production process.

Reducing uncertainty through education and transparency

There are plenty of potential sources of uncertainty for a client, and dealing with them may seem difficult. Even so, it’s quite easy to reduce uncertainty through the use of clear communication that focuses on the value your product adds for the client.

To avoid excessive complexity or ambiguity, it’s a good idea to include educational content in your communication materials.

To avoid excessive complexity or ambiguity, it’s always a good idea to include educational content in your communication materials. Communication via content is key: video-based tutorials, articles that see things from the consumer’s perspective, infographics that highlight the product’s benefit to the client in a few key figures, etc.

A great client experience helps eliminate any source of uncertainty. Efficient interaction with your clients is another good way to reduce uncertainty. This could be in the form of online messaging or a chatbot capable of responding to immediate, straightforward messages. Just creating an FAQ section in a bid to provide a rapid response to your clients and limit human involvement in complex issues is a step in the right direction.

Faced with sources of uncertainty related to a conflict of values or your credibility, transparency is essential. No one likes having to rummage around a website to find out more about product traceability or the price of a product or service.

Faced with sources of uncertainty related to a conflict of values or your credibility, transparency is essential.

Naturally, it’s up to you to prioritise your information in your best interests, but you should never lose sight of the client’s perspective. Wanting to know the price of a product is normal, and it’s counterproductive to try to hide your prices because they’re higher than the average.

Remember that the consumer isn’t a purely rational being. If you explain to them clearly the reasons for the higher price (local production chain, fair trade, superior quality, etc.), they will more easily understand the value your product adds despite its higher price. Transparency reduces the uncertainty that results from the conflict of values or credibility.

The consumer market is a dense maze. The more you focus on added value for the client and communicate in an educational, transparent manner, the more you’ll increase your chances of success with your product.