How to Create Value-Based Messaging

When helping clients with writing, I find it’s very easy for them to focus on what I call “speeds and feeds.” These would be the product/service specs. How many TB of storage, how fast it goes, how big or small it is, how many hours of service are included. But I’ll give you a tip: those details are inconsequential in most cases.

What really matters is value.

Today, I want to provide a few tips for adding value to your messaging, or what I’ll call creating value-based positioning.

Identify what keeps your customer up at night.

Value-based positioning starts with showing you understand your customer and (most importantly) their challenges. So we start with that exploration.

• Why are they seeking a new solution?
• What problems are they encountering?
• What challenge(s) do they want to solve?
• How do they want to improve? What are their goals?
• How are their competitors affecting their success? HINT: Their competitors could be doing something wrong, right, or just better.
• What is important to them?

Think about what your product/service can do to solve what keeps them up at night.

Without mentioning “speeds and feeds,” answer the following:

• Why is your product/service better than what they might have today?
• How do you fix their problems (or eliminate them)?
• How can you help them solve or eliminate their challenges?
• How will you help them improve/meet their goals?
• How do you stack up against the competition? What do you do better? Or what do you do differently that is more helpful to your customer?
• How does your product/service align with what is important to them?

Tying it all together.

So you know what keeps them up at night. And you know what your product/service can do. Now it’s time to make some connections. When you think about your “speeds and feeds,” how do they help to address your customer’s challenges/goals/priorities? Here are a few examples:

• 100% uptime takes the worry/hassle out everyday necessities and enables them to focus on more important business/personal goals.
• 5 TB of storage gives them plenty of space to store their business files/data/backups or kid’s soccer game footage so they can create highlights to share with friends and family.
• Your safer, faster, more reliable product or service gives them piece of mind.
• Show them what is important to them is important to you too:
  • Your safety/data/memories is/are important to us too.
  • Together, we’re making the world a better place/solving this challenge.
  • We take reliability as serious as you.

It’s time for action

Using a value-based messaging approach will help you build rapport with customers, and subtly conveys that you have their best interests in mind. If you are not ready to revamp your entire website and collateral, do some testing with social media, email, or ads and see whether putting value first makes an impact on performance.

How I can help

Crafting value-based messaging is one of my favorite things to do. Let’s connect if you need to realign your content. I am your go-to marketing expert for print and digital graphic design, writing and editing, website development, branding, strategy, social media, email, and CRM management. When you hire one — instead of a separate marketer, designer, writer, and project manager — the savings add up!