One of the biggest shifts among businesses during the past years has been best encapsulated by Tim O’Reilly, when he first encouraged companies to “create more value than they capture”. For most companies, the desire to capture all of the value they create prevents them from creating as much value. In other words, if you strive to capture 100% of the value you create, you’re preventing yourself from capturing a larger number of a bigger pie.

_{Source: (CC) Brian Solis, www.briansolis.com / bub.blicio.us / CC-BY}

Automattic, the creator of Wordpress, is a great example of this. While Automattic is a for-profit company, Wordpress is an open-source content management system that powers over 19% of the internet. They’re only able to get numbers like that by giving the product away. How does Automattic make money? Instead of trying to sell Wordpress to people directly, they instead give it away and offer services on top of it, knowing that with such a large install base that there’s always going to be a market for what they offer. They give away a lot of value for free, because that then fuels their company’s growth.

This helps to explain the shift in marketing (and sales) that is happening right now. Marketers are starting to give away resources for free to help the people they are targeting to succeed. They make something easier for the prospect, either by helping to keep them informed of trends in the workplace, or by being a resource for a personal purchase they’re considering. The point of marketing is no longer just advertising (in reality, it never was, but let’s not go there). The purpose of marketing is now focused on creating value.

Enter Value-Added Marketing

Think about it this way - the company of the past focused on advertising to their future customers. The thinking being that if you could combine the right wording with the right placement and maybe the right time, you could then convince a person to purchase. The cost was not only in developing the ad, but in buying space or time to get that message across. The person you paid was responsible for building and maintaining the relationships with their customers, and then you paid them for the right to present them with a message about your company.

The company of the future has the ability to not only build their own channels to market on, but to shift how they advertise to those prospects. Rather than just telling your prospects how valuable your company is and hoping they remember it when it comes time to make a purchase, you can demonstrate it with marketing that adds value to your prospects lives.

Put yourself in your prospects shoes and ask yourself which would you prefer?

What Does Value-Added Marketing Look Like?

Here are some examples of what Value-Added Marketing might work:

Many financial institutions are trying to reach more savvy, well-off customers. One of the best ways to do that is by creating resources that this person might find useful. If you’re an investment group, put together a guide on some initial investment options a young professional might be looking at, and explain to them the advantages of each one.

Pair that with regular content that explains financial news in terms the average person understands, and you have the beginnings of a community. The advantage here is that you’ll have created something valuable, and it will pull in the people you would have otherwise spent a lot trying to reach. And instead of just telling them you’re valuable, you’ve proven it to them.

If you’re a manufacturer, help educate your prospects on the importance of partnering with a facility that focuses on quality. Develop a guide that explains what to look for in a manufacturing partner, since the average person might not know. You’re not only getting in front of the right people with a resource like that, but you’re making their job easier, and showcasing that you know what you’re talking about.

Focus on Creating Value, and Capturing it Will Come

The advantages of this method are pretty clear. The company of the past spent their time and resources on getting to their ideal customer on other people’s relationships. They would pay a premium for this, and in return, people ignored them. They flip past their ads, change stations on the radio, use the DVR to get past commercials, and install ad-blockers to avoid being bothered.

The company of the future doesn’t focus on interrupting people, but instead looks to add value to the lives of the people they want to market to. They create more value in their marketing and sales process than they capture, and in turn, the people they want as customers seek them out and look for their content. They create groups who are interested in hearing from them, and who are ready to turn to them as resource anytime they have a problem. They make their prospects lives easier through what they create, and gain the right to continue to add value until their future customers are ready to buy.

Value-added marketing isn’t just something we talk about. It’s something we believe in. Here’s a guide we’ve assembled for getting started with generating leads from your blog. It’s targeted at B2B businesses who are looking to grow through online marketing. We hope you find it useful, and that when the time is right, we can talk more about ways we can work together. But if nothing else, we hope it’s valuable for anyone trying to generate leads for their website.