This guest blog was written by my friend Steve Robins and first appeared in his Solutions Marketing blog
Value is Key to Solution Marketing
You might think the most critical aspect of marketing a solution would be what goes into it. What goes into a solution are just pieces, products, or components. But value is about the benefit and cost of those components to the user or buyer.
More specifically, value is equal to the difference between (1) the benefits as perceived by the user and (2) the total cost of the solution. Perception means the user or buyer must appreciate and want the resulting benefit. If they don’t perceive it as a benefit to them, it’s not a benefit but just a useless feature.
Value is attractive in many ways, some counterintuitive and not so obvious. Following are a few essential examples – both obvious and not so apparent.
【Value is a core component of SEVA (or SIVA) solution marketing strategy which also includes (1) Solution, (2) Education & Engagement and (3) Access.】
Value is in the eye of the beholder (not the seller)
Obvious: A cheap solution or product that delivers significant benefits is a great value. If you like double cheeseburgers, then a $1 McDouble double cheeseburger is a great value. Remember, this is about what the buyer perceives.
Not evident: A cheap solution targeted to the wrong audience delivers NO value. A $1 meat McDouble is a bad value if you’re a vegetarian. It would have no value to you.
Unique and needed solutions provide more value.
Obvious: A $100 aspirin tablet delivers low value if other tablets do the same thing and deliver the same benefit at a lower total cost than the $100 tablet.
Not apparent: A $100 tablet of a lifesaving drug is an excellent value if it’s the only want to save that life. (And in many cases, it is). That same $100 tablet would have great value if the only comparable treatment were a $50,000 operation.
Total cost counts
Not obvious: Assuming both are equally effective, a once-and-done (only one dose required) $100 lifesaving drug, at a total cost of $100, is more valuable than a competitive product requiring ten doses at $5 each for a total cost of $50.
Value is core to social media.
Maybe it is evident that value also applies to your marketing, such as social media. Social media is about sharing content – tweets, photos, blog posts, comments, and pluses – with other people who see its value. If you share low-value content – perhaps boring self-centered content (“I just woke up; going to be another crappy day”) or sales, or promotional pitches (buy my stuff now!), you’ll turn away your friends, your network, and your prospects. Once again, different people will perceive different values based on their interests.
Not so obvious: Social media’s low out-of-pocket costs (i.e., no fee to read content) do not mean it delivers high value. Low benefit minus low cost still equals low value.
Value shifts as new options emerge
Not obvious: Value is partly comparative, so as alternative solutions or products increase, the relative value of your unchanged solution may decline. Once upon a time, newspapers, network TV, and radio news shows had a lock on the news since few other options existed. But once the Internet came on the scene, you could obtain new (and free) news through search sites, personal portals, and free online Web pages. Suddenly, the same benefit could be achieved for almost no cost to the reader; the value of print news started to decline, as evidenced by a parallel decline in newspaper readership.
Value – it’s everywhere the user or buyer perceives it to be. And it should be a core element of your solution and solution marketing strategies.
Steve Robins is the principal of Solution Marketing Strategies. This strategic marketing consultancy helps companies better understand and market to their customers through targeted research, segmentation, solutions, messaging, sales tools, and demand generation. For the last 15 years, Steve has been transforming technology firms into market-leading, customer-focused solution providers. Steve has held senior marketing roles at FirstBest Systems, EMC, Documentum, and KANA Software. An industry thought leader; Steve started the top-rated solution marketing blog, guest writes a CMO-focused marketing tech column for TechTarget, and was an analyst at the Yankee Group. Steve is also president of ProductCamp Boston, the world’s largest; he leads the marketing committee and serves on the board of the Boston Product Management Association;
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