The 3 Levels of Customer Value

What is it that your customers value about you that brings them to pay for your service and work with you? Today’s marketing “triple” is the three levels of customer value, and we’re going to start at the bottom – the lowest level – which is you.

Level 1: Your company

What they value is not about you, it’s about what they need, right? You’re going to hear this more through the other levels, but the very first level, it’s important. It’s what your company does and how they do it: Your processes, your people, all of the things that you bring that enable your solutions for them, right? So that’s the foundation. You need it to be there, but that’s a, a pretty low level of measurable value for your clients.

Level 2: Your solution

The next higher level is what your company produces. The product, the solution, the offer, the service that is more valuable than your company because it’s actually what your clients are using, or touching, or experiencing, right? But it is only the second highest level.

Level 3: Your customer

The third highest level is your customer’s pain: Your customer’s problem, your customer’s need, your customer’s opportunity. It’s about what they are trying to do. So they’re going to measure the value of what you do through the value of what they need. That is an easy way to say, you need to start with them in all of your conversations and all of your messages about what it is that you do. It needs to be about solving their problem first.

Bonus level 4: Your customer’s customer

That’s the marketing triple, but I’m going to give you a bonus: A home run. There’s actually a fourth level that trumps all three of these other levels, and it’s one that people don’t often think of, but can be a home run for you – literally a home run for you – if you can tap into that value, and that is your customer’s customer.

If you truly are putting yourself in your customer’s shoes, what they care about or what they should be caring about to be successful is what their customers need. So if you can frame what you provide to your clients in terms of how it helps their customers, there’s your home run.