Understanding your customer before creating value is like knowing the destination before you start a journey.
You can start accelerating from the get-go, but you want to make sure you're heading in the right direction to not waste time.
WHY IT MATTERS: Crafting a Value Map using the Strategyzer framework is crucial as it allows businesses to clearly visualize and understand how their products or services create value for their customers. While the Customer Profile allows you to identify the locks, the Value Map is where you craft the keys to unlock them.
HOW IT WORKS: In the Strategyzer framework, the Value Map is an extension of the Customer Profile. It takes the insights gained from understanding the customer - their pursuits, pains and gains - and translates them into potential products or services that can meet these needs and wants. The result is a Value Map that provides a comprehensive view of how a product or service can create value for the customer.
Here's an example of what that could look like.
Form of Value
To successfully provide value to another person, it needs to take a form they're willing to pay for. Fortunately, there's no need to reinvent the wheel. Economic value typically comes in one of twelve standard forms:
- Product - Create a single tangible item or entity, then sell and deliver it for more than what it cost to make.
- Service - Provide help or assistance then charge a fee for the benefits rendered.
- Shared Resource - Create a durable asset that can be used by many people, then charge for access.
- Subscription - Offer a benefit on an ongoing basis, and charge a recurring fee.
- Resale - Acquire an asset from a wholesaler, then sell that asset to a retail buyer at a higher price.
- Lease - Acquire an asset, then allow another person to use that asset for a pre-defined amount of time in exchange for a fee.
- Agency - Market and sell an asset or service you don’t own on behalf of a third-party, then collect a percentage of the transaction price as a fee.
- Audience Aggregation - Get the attention of a group of people with certain characteristics, then sell access in the form of advertising to another business looking to reach that audience.
- Loan - Lend a certain amount of money, then collect payments over a pre-defined period of time equal to the original loan plus a pre-defined interest rate.
- Option - Offer the ability to take a pre-defined action for a fixed period of time in exchange for a fee.
- Insurance - Take on the risk of some specific bad thing happening to the policy holder in exchange for a pre-defined series of payments, then pay out claims only when the bad thing actually happens.
- Capital - Purchase an ownership stake in a business, then collect a corresponding portion of the profit as a one-time payout or ongoing dividend.
Pain Relievers
Describe how your offer alleviates customer pains
How can your product or service...
- … Produce savings? In terms of time, money or efforts.
- … Make your customers feel better? By killing frustrations, annoyances, and other things that give them a headache
- … Fix under-performing solutions? By introducing new features, better performance, or enhanced quality
- … Put an end to difficulties and challenges your customers encounter? By making things easier or eliminating obstacles.
- … Wipe out negative social consequences your customers encounter or fear?
- … Eliminate risks your customers fear? In terms of things that could potentially go wrong
- … Help your customers sleep better at night? by addressing significant issues, diminishing concerns, or eliminating worries.
- … Limit or eradicate common mistakes customers make?
- … Eliminate the fear of getting started?
Gain Creators
Describe how your offer creates customer gains
How can your product or service...
How can your product or service...
- … create savings that please your customers? In terms of time, money, and effort
- … produce outcomes your customers expect or that exceed their expectations?
- … outperform current value propositions and delight your customers?
- … Make your customers’ work or life easier?
- … Create positive social consequences?
- … Fulfill a desire customers dream about?
- … Produce positive outcomes matching your customers’ success and failure criteria
more tomorrow,
Hunter