Three types of digital value that drive customers to buy

These three levels of value explain what your B2B content needs to do to be memorable and call to action.

Digital engagement is a complex process that is constantly getting more complicated. In 2023, a study of omnichannel marketing by Gartner found that marketers manage nine different channels on average. It also found that 80% of digital marketing leaders plan to add new channels in the next year.

However, any marketing director knows that the bulk of the marketing job is not just about managing channels. It's also about creating content for all channels, ensuring consistency and coherence, targeting customers and tailoring content to them - all covered by the old mantra: "The right message, to the right person, at the right time."

This content, more than anything else, must provide real value to the consumer, otherwise marketers risk losing their content as consumers tune out brands due to the sheer noise they face on a daily basis.

What should a marketer do? In the face of declining consumer attention spans, most marketers are turning to value. Marketers believe that if they offer more valuable digital content, their brands will receive more attention and more engagement (a vicious cycle), as well as more business results that digital technology is supposed to deliver. For example, more purchases, increased purchase frequency and customer engagement.

A Gartner study found that 73% of customers who recall a recent digital interaction say it was valuable. But there's a catch: only about 5% of consumers and 25% of B2B buyers actually remember any recent digital interactions with the brands they've considered. And to make matters worse, even if your customers do remember and value their digital experiences with you, those experiences probably aren't generating business value. Sixty-seven percent of CFOs say that digital initiatives, especially those focused on customer acquisition and growth, are not meeting management's expectations.

Rely on value framing and value-affirming content

It turns out that the answer lies in what value marketer content conveys (not how much value is conveyed, or how quickly or smoothly marketers convey it). And most marketers are probably not hitting that value bullseye.

Generally speaking, value falls into two categories: "framing" value or "validating" value. "Framing value helps customers understand the value of a solution, product, goal, or even a solution - it helps customers understand what to do. "Confirmation value helps customers feel confident and satisfied that they have benefited from a decision (including, of course, a purchase decision). In other words, good marketing answers the customer's questions "What should I do?" and "Did I do the right thing?".

Once a marketer has committed to asserting, shaping, or doing both, there are three more levels of value that they must communicate: functional, personal, and catalytic.

• Functional value is product-oriented. It is content, experience, and tools that tell the consumer how the brand's products and solutions solve a problem, make their lives easier or faster.
• Personal value helps customers connect with others and find common ground, or consider what others have done to solve a problem - which in turn can help customers make their own choices. Or it guides customers to the right product for an already identified need, helping the customer feel confident that they are making the right choice.
• Catalytic value goes beyond a single customer choice or task and is aimed at the customer's overall goal and the path to it. Catalytic digital content, tools, and experiences support self-discovery (helping the customer identify a new need or goal), self-reflection (helping the customer learn something new about themselves), agency (helping the customer feel in control of their decision), and affirmation (helping the customer validate their choice).

Of the three, catalytic value is the most powerful. A single catalytic experience doubles the likelihood of commercial outcomes, such as making a purchase, being willing to pay a higher price, or recommending a brand to other potential customers. It also has a greater impact than 100 memorable or valuable experiences (even if they are high value).

Of course, the question arises: does every digital interaction have to be "catalytic"? Perhaps not. Catalytic experiences are powerful, but functional and personal value also contribute to commercial returns. And in fact, most brands that create great catalytic value are creating functional and personal value at the same time.

For example, a running shoe brand researched by Gartner recently launched a quiz to help customers choose shoes that match their goals. The tool asks customers about their goals and encourages self-reflection on how they run (e.g., foot position and how they move, relative pressure on the knee joints). The test has a catalytic value through self-reflection that can help clients formulate new goals or a new path to a goal (e.g., a new training plan for a 5K race - and the realization that "the cheapest running shoes I can afford" may not be the best option).

But it also provides personal value: customers learn what other runners like them are using or considering, and they get the right product to meet their needs. In addition, through education, they have some functional value: customers learn that there are road and track shoes that serve different purposes and therefore "solve" different problems.

Now a brand can tell customers about its products, its product category, what to buy and how to buy it, and tell customers something more about itself, all at the same time.

Good marketing helps customers make the choices they like to do the things that matter to them. Creating value and validating value are two sides of the same coin, and within this framework, all three levels of value: functional, personal, and catalytic are legitimate ways to create value for customers, which creates commercial value for brands.

Marketers may want to reassess the balance of value they create through digital activities - if you're not creating any catalytic value now, where could you start? - but CMOs who deliver all three levels of value will drive customer learning and trust, as well as digital revenue growth, even in a complex, saturated digital landscape.

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