For many online businesses, it’s easy to track the metrics that are important to the business side of your company. From capacity planning to resource management and everything in between, knowing the exact value your company has for your shareholder and employees is relatively simple. What isn’t as simple is quantifying and improving the value you’re able to create for your customers.
The trouble with knowing what, how and why to provide value to your customers can be especially difficult for online businesses who don’t see many customers face to face. However, there are many online businesses who have made a great reputation based on their ability to add value to their online customer base. To find yourself among those top valued companies, here are three tips for creating value for your online customers.
Determine The Type Of Value To Provide
Value can have many definitions depending on the type of company or business you’re running and the specific kinds of products or services you’re rendering. For this reason, determining the exact type of value you’re able to provide will be a great jumping off point for creating more value for your customers.
According to Seth Kahan of FastCompany.com, there are three ways a company can add value to their online customers: new value, more value, and better value. Adding new value means you’re adding a new element to the areas that are already valuable to your customers. Creating more value usually has to do with making the price point of your product or service more beneficial to your customer. And giving customers better value means you’re improving the quality of your product or service. Analyze your business plan to see what type of value you can best provide to your current online customers.
Discover What You Can Be Best At
To bring unique value to your customers, you have to find the one aspect of your business that you can be the best at. Rick Spence of the Financial Post explains that businesses like Amazon.com and Tim Hortons found the unique value they can provide by being the best at a specific characteristic within their industry—fast, cheap shipping and generous promotions. To bring a value to your businesses that is unique to you, you have to be willing to be better than any of your competitors at one definitive thing. Find that one thing, and you’re well on your way to giving your online customers much more value.
Disseminate Free Online Resources
One of the best ways to add value to your online customers is to provide them with free online resources they can only get from you. Kimber Powers of VerticalResponse.com shares that by being a resource for reliable information online, whether you disseminate it through PDFs, white papers, or other guides, you’re giving your customers inherent value from your company. By doing this, not only are you able to add value to your customers, but you’re also able to better market to your target audience, killing two birds with one stone.
When it comes to online customers, they need to be able to see and feel value from your company if they’re going to be loyal to you. And by implementing the tips mentioned above, your business can easily find an area in which value can be added in the exact way your online customers need.
Originally posted on September 15, 2015 @ 12:47 am