How to instantly show your value
Here are my favorite ways to convey a product’s value prop. These apply to products and brands, but feel free to apply this to people too. These work for job interviews, selling yourself as a consultant, etc.
Use before-and-after: Everyone loves a good before-and-after contrast. Before-and-afters are a powerful application of the idea of “show not tell.” That’s why you see so many before-and-afters when scrolling through your feed: weight loss (not-your-best self vs toned/healthy), home renovation (dingy bathroom vs shiny new renovation), messaging copy (bad writing vs strong writing), etc. A before-and-after is like a jump cut that skips all the boring parts--it emphasizes contrast, which heightens drama and interest. When talking about yourself, show what a project was like before you arrived and what it looked like after your contributions.
Pour salt on the wound: No pain, no sale. People will only value your solution if they value their problem. If they don’t think their problem is that big of a deal, they won’t pay for you to solve it. When in doubt, exacerbate, aggrandize, and emphasize the pain. Don’t just jump right to the solution. This goes for showing value in your contributions at work too. Explain how much $$$ the problem was costing the company, the frequency and magnitude the issue was happening, how the issue was eroding brand equity, how it was slowing everyone down. THEN talk about your solution and the thing you did to make the problem go away.
Show, not tell: I recently came across AI-driven software that reduces background noise on calls. The thing that caught my eye on their homepage is the toggle “on” and “off” button where you can hear a sound sample without their tool versus how much sharper the sound is with their tool. It was pretty incredible and instantly sold me. As a marketer, I’m always on the lookout for when I change my mind. It’s hard to change people’s minds, so when it happens successfully, try to learn what worked. Think of how you can demonstrate the value of your product like this.
Experiential, temporal, sensory: It’s hard for most brands to describe your product’s value quickly. It’s especially hard if your product has an experiential, temporal, or sensory component.
Experiential: How do you convey a sense of community and belonging? The altMBA had this challenge. In-person courses had websites that showed photos of participants drawing on post-its and pointing at white boards. But our course was entirely online. Photos of people sitting at a computer would hardly do justice. We ended up using screenshots of Zoom gallery view among other things. Not perfect, but we chose to rely less on photography and more on other design elements given this constraint.
Temporal: How do you convey the value of your product if it lasts 10x longer than competitors who are selling for cheaper? How do you convey the value or benefit of your product if there’s no immediate benefit in a world that loves instant gratification? Think of examples of products you’ve purchased where there’s less immediate value but more long-term value, and how the value prop was positioned.
Sensory: How do you convey smell through a computer screen? How do you convey how good your weighted blanket feels? To solve this, consumer products will focus more on the emotion, less on the product features. For body wash, the brand doesn’t talk about how the sulfates will get you clean, how it smells, and the ounces of product you get. They talk about taking a moment for yourself.
Don’t worry about correct grammar. Go ahead and break grammar rules. The only thing that matters is that your customer takes action and you build trust in the process. I add that last part about building trust because you want to aim for conversion, but not destroy your brand equity in the process. It’s a delicate balance per the Brand vs Performance Marketing Spectrum.
Increase desire, don’t just decrease friction: People jump through hoops for things they want. Did you pick your spouse because they were the most convenient option? No, you picked them despite needing to overcome obstacles. We tend to focus on removing friction because it feels comfortable and there’s a checklist of ways to do it. There’s less of a formula for increasing desire--which makes it all the more worthwhile because there’s upside potential that fewer people attempt to tap into.
Be/Have/Do: This is one of my favorite frameworks for showing transformation. You want to show how your product helps a brand transform. What does your product let your customer be that they weren’t before? What do customers have that they didn’t have before? What can they do now that they couldn’t do before? This is a good exercise to focus your value proposition and generate talking points for business development, sales, and marketing copy.
Aim for “No brainer status”: You need to aim for an instant yes. Not a yes after a hundred hours of nurturing. Think about what features, benefits, and value would make this an instant yes for your prospective customers. By the way, even if you think it’s an instant yes, you’ll still need to work at getting the yes. Everything takes longer than you think. The reason to aim for a no brainer status is because this is like a rubber band. We’re stretching it, but it will snap back a bit.
Do what makes their eyes light up (ELU): You should have your pitch ready, but watch out for what makes people’s eyes light up. What makes them lean in? You can tell when someone doesn’t really care about what you’re saying. Then there are moments when suddenly a spark of aliveness flashes in their eyes because you just said something they care about. Watch for ELU.
Avoid backstory scope creep: This applies to showing your value via email, pitches, or conversations. Remove the 90% of stuff that’s only moderately relevant, and be ruthlessly focused on the 10% that’s most relevant to your audience. Talking about your camping trip? Start right before you almost get eaten by a bear. Not a detailed agenda of the days leading up to arriving at camp.
Consider overhauling and starting from scratch: If you’re struggling to describe your value, figure out if the problem is the marketing or the underlying idea. If you’re underlying idea isn’t very good, no amount of improving the messaging will help.
Choose the right heuristics and appeal to “people like us”: Upon landing on a website, most customers are judging you within a few seconds. “People like us” refers to whatever group you might identify with. For example, people like us could be thoughtful, design-conscious knowledge workers at tech startups.
Focus on what your customer wants to hear about, not what you want to talk about: This is an easy way to figure out what to trim from your talking points. You might think, “I have so much to talk about. Where do I start?” Start by asking yourself what would change your audience’s behavior for the better. I call this principle Strategy, Not Self-Expression.
What’s a product that instantly sold you? I’m curious and would love to know…