Front-load the value
To “provide value” means to help people become successful in their lives. People like to engage with others that can help them to be more successful, even if it’s a company. The cool thing about modern marketing is that we can provide value to millions of people, whilst doing the work only once.
For example: this piece of text is an advertisement, and provides value immediately. It costs us nothing to do that, besides the hassle of writing these learnings down once.
Tips
- In our modern digital world, we can produce infinite copies of things that are valuable. Once a piece of software or a piece of content is created, the cost to reproduce it is practically zero. In many cases, it therefore doesn’t cost you anything, to give value first.
- The hard thing, in our endlessly connected world, is to earn people’s attention and trust. The easiest way to build rapport and trust, is to actually help people. The ultimate virtue is to be useful.
- Marketers sometimes get confused about what “value” means. You are valuable to the extent that you are useful in solving someone’s problems. It doesn’t matter how much effort it costs you to provide the value — it matters how useful you are, and how painful the problems are that you help people solve.
- To front-load value, is an infinite effort to provide value first. To initiate as a giver, rather than wait till others give you value. Takers ask “what’s in it for me?”, while givers rather ask “how can I be useful here?”.
- How useful is that whitepaper you put together? How useful is the webinar? How much value did you actually provide — how much did you help people actually solve their painful problems? Oftentimes, the problem with us marketers is that we aren’t adding that much value at all. Join us on an endless crusade to change that attitude!
In Practice
Alex Hormozi is a good example of a marketer obsessed with providing value first. His website (Acquisition.com), podcast and Youtube channel are all focused on helping other entrepreneurs succeed, without any restraint. Alex understands that providing value first builds trust and goodwill, and that goodwill will — in magical ways — come back to him and drive his business forward.
Freemium business models are another good example: tools like Slack, Notion, Mailchimp and many others all provide tremendous value to free users, and use that momentum to grow their business. Think of all the wonderful tools you use every day, for free.
Finally, open source software. Despite the fact that it seems completely unsustainable at first glance, open source is stronger than ever. Linus Thorvald provided enormous value to the world in creating Linux — the operating system that underpins Android, and virtually every server online. So did Matt Mullenberg, when he created Wordpress and made it openly available, free of any charge. So did even Satoshi Nakamoto, when he released the Bitcoin protocol. In our modern world, givers are the biggest winners.
Pair with
- Acquisition.com (or relevant Alex Hormozi podcast / video)
