What kind of value is meaningful to users?

Actual value cannot bring users. What users care about is only the valuation.

While you are constantly iterating and working hard to improve the value of your product, users choose a product that you think is less valuable than yours.

When you focus on user needs, strive to provide high-quality solutions, and continuously bring higher value to users, users choose a product that you think cannot solve user problems better.

Is it that my own products are not good enough, or is it that I have a biased view of other products? Both are right and wrong. You are right. From your perspective, you are clear about the value of your own products, understand what value your competitors' products can provide, and make rational judgments. That’s not true. Users will never understand your product as well as you do. When users choose between your product and your competitor’s product, they rely solely on their psychological valuation of the product. If you can increase users' valuation of your product, you have already won at the starting line.

1. Understand valuation and understand users

Valuation is a value judgment model born out of information asymmetry. When it is impossible to grasp the true value of a product, people will use existing information and experience to make judgments on product valuation. Even your understanding of the value of your product is only an estimate. And your psychological valuation of your product can never be fully conveyed to any user. Because there is a huge gap between you - the psychological map.

1. Mental Map

Mental maps are a psychological principle proposed by Alfred Kosboski.

Each of us has a psychological map in our thinking patterns. We "draw" this map based on all the people, things, and things we have come into contact with, understood, and felt from birth to the present. In our interactions with the world, all our actions, emotions, and thoughts will react according to the mental map.

When users learn about our products, they will naturally understand and judge them according to the psychological map, and finally form specific feelings and incorporate them into their psychological map. There are two factors in this process that prevent users from understanding the product as well as we do.

(1) Maps are not real scenes

Today's map apps are becoming more and more detailed, including not only streets and landmarks, but also roadside shops, and even satellite maps and real-life maps. However, no matter how detailed the map is, even if it is called a "real-life map", it is not real life after all. Everything we see on the map is definitely not as rich and accurate as in reality, and there are bound to be differences.

The same is true of mental maps, which cannot truly convey objective reality. In the process of introducing products to users, whether it is copywriting , design, or sales staff, we must present them based on our own understanding. In other words, the "product" we show to users is not the product itself, and it has lost its authenticity in countless intermediate links. Naturally, users are unable to understand the true product situation.

(2) Everyone’s base map is different

Everyone's experiences are different. From birth to now, the people, things, and objects that they hear, see, touch, and feel are different, which makes the basis of each person's psychological map different. When we convey certain information, different people will understand and judge it based on their own psychological maps, and naturally it is easy for them to identify different meanings for the same information.

When we convey certain information to users, different users will receive different information based on their own understanding. Every time a user learns about a product, they need to receive and process multiple pieces of information. When every piece of information has more or less misunderstanding, the product that users ultimately understand will inevitably be different from the product itself.

2. Valuation

Because cognitive biases are bound to exist, the product value we create is definitely not the product value understood by users. Before choosing a product, users will evaluate the product based on the product information they have access to and their own psychological map.

Just like when a company goes public and seeks financing , the company's own valuation, investor valuation, and third-party valuation are usually different numbers. Although the company itself cannot determine the valuation judgment of other parties, it can also influence the valuation of other parties in a variety of ways. Common financial operations of some listed companies and the currently popular Tmall Double 11 have all effectively changed the valuations of other parties.

"Start from the user's perspective" does not only mean that we should make products based on user needs, but we also need to market products from the user's perspective and start by raising the valuation in the user's eyes in order to truly attract users. Sometimes, giving users the feeling that you can solve a problem is more important than actually solving the problem.

2. Raise the valuation and win users

In the development of marketing theory, the 4P combination gradually evolved into the 4C combination, which also marked the gradual shift of marketing focus from the perspective of the enterprise itself to the perspective of the customer.

If we want to raise our valuation and attract users, we naturally need to bridge the gap between us and our users, minimize the errors that exist when we convey information to users, and at the same time, continue to maintain a high-value image and gradually give users the feeling that we can "effectively solve problems."

1. Imagination experience - reducing information errors with users

Users value products from their own perspective. Therefore, when we deliver information to arouse users' interest, we must not only convey to users the parts that we think are interesting, important, and valuable.

When users generate interest and leave impressions, their minds usually experience imagination first. For users, they do not understand and analyze the value of a product from an intellectual perspective. Instead, they use existing information and their own experience to imagine the scenarios in which they use the product and imagine the feeling of using the product to bring value to them. They then judge the value of the product based on this imagined feeling.

For example, when we first come into contact with a taxi-hailing product, our initial reaction is usually not to evaluate its convenience and speed, but to subconsciously quickly imagine a scenario of using it to hail a taxi when we need one. The way the human brain works requires that we provide it with the raw materials of our imagination. What kind of raw materials can bring a good experience?

As shown in the picture, each of us needs sensory input first in the process of understanding and perceiving the world, so as to experience it. Experience is also the basis for our thinking and judgment. When we convey information to users, if we directly convey the value and significance of the product, users need to think in reverse. However, this way of thinking does not conform to the normal thinking process of human beings, so it is difficult for users to have a sense of experience.

The best material we can give users is direct senses, which allows users to experience things according to their normal thinking process and ultimately make judgments. At the same time, it can also reduce the distortion in the process of information transmission.

Let's understand this concept through some different descriptions of steak:

Sensory Input:

“The sizzle of grilled steak”

"The aroma of smoke from the grill"

“Tender meat with a caramel color and rich juice when bitten”

Experience input:

“This steak is really delicious”

“The feeling of eating steak is very pleasant”

Judgment input:

“XX’s steak is very cost-effective”

"To enjoy high-end luxury steaks, go to XXX steakhouse"

Although they are all describing how delicious the steak is, the sensory input full of details is most likely to allow users to experience it with their imagination, thus bringing a feeling of deliciousness and arousing strong interest. When we create more sensory input for users, it is easier to reduce communication errors, strengthen the user's imaginative experience, and ultimately increase the valuation of the product.

2. High-value entry - keep the valuation high from the beginning

The impression and feeling created when a product first comes into contact with a user will set the tone for the user's future valuation. Just like the "premiere effect" emphasized in psychology and the "first impression" that people often talk about, when a product comes into contact with users while maintaining its high value, it will largely influence users' valuation of the product in the subsequent stages.

Imagine if you knew a certain star because of some negative news, what kind of prejudice would you hold against her for a long time? Similarly, when you first heard about Wanglaoji when you donated money in the Wenchuan earthquake, what attitude would you have towards this company? Although sometimes negative content may be more contagious and more interesting than positive content, this low-value communication method will make users maintain a low valuation of the product for a long time, so it must not be a temporary solution.

The perfect first contact can be created by leveraging force. Just like if a person always praises his own good points in front of you, you won’t believe it, but if other people always praise someone to you, you will also feel that that person must have some strengths. Nowadays, various product reviews and newsletters are effective ways to quickly get close to users with the help of others.

Although many people may doubt its authenticity, rational doubts will not affect the user's subconscious positive feelings. Just like the buyer shows on Taobao and the diaries on SoYoung, consumers know that many cases are uploaded by the sellers themselves, but this does not affect their desire to buy.

Users cannot understand the real product, so the fragments of their feelings about the product will temporarily replace their overall feelings about the product. The process of users understanding a product is like playing a puzzle that can never be completed. They can only judge the outline of the overall pattern from the existing puzzle pieces. What we need to do is to continuously provide users with gorgeous puzzle pieces to make the overall picture they imagine better.

3. Staged climb - let users always have something to look forward to

"Eating what's in the bowl, looking at what's in the pot, and thinking about the next meal." Human desires are endless, but the value we can provide to users is ultimately limited. When users feel they can fully enjoy our value, their valuation of us will also decrease.

For example, when we search online for a TV series that we watched many years ago, before we find it, we usually have high expectations and believe that it can satisfy our emotional needs. But when we actually find scarce resources, most people only look at them for a short time and then leave them in the online disk and no longer pay attention to them.

Just like the example above, the user’s value judgment before and after obtaining the product is completely on different levels. Let’s take a more common situation in life. When Apple releases a new mobile phone, you are full of expectations, think about it often, and always want to buy one. At this time, your valuation of Apple phones is high. But when you actually buy the phone, that feeling of pleasure will only last for a short time. After some time, this new phone will become as ordinary as your normal life, and it will no longer be able to arouse the strong emotions that you had before buying it.

In order to keep user valuations at a high level, we need to always give users something to look forward to.

On the one hand, we can strengthen the hierarchical division of functions and set up more thresholds for users to use different functions, so that users can use some functions while also using functions that do not meet the usage conditions, in order to maintain users' valuation of the product.

Nowadays, more and more games have changed from a buyout to an in-app purchase charging model. The reputation of either hard work or kryptonian games seems to have reduced the experience, but in fact, for similar games, the average gaming time of users has increased significantly compared to the previous charging model. The establishment of large and small thresholds within the game has played a big role.

On the other hand, the product is constantly iterating to provide better solutions to user needs. However, the iteration of the product itself is only the basis. More importantly, it is necessary to constantly and proactively tell users that the product will provide newer and better functions and experiences. Establish a beautiful vision to keep users looking forward to it, thereby steadily increasing their valuation of the product.

Many American presidents are perhaps the ones who have played the valuation game best. During the election, every president will speak passionately about his future plans, create a beautiful vision, increase voters' evaluation of him, and get people to vote for him. After taking office, he will continue to create phased visions to make people support his decisions. If we look at his achievements objectively after he stepped down, we will find that most of the time they were not as good as he enjoyed. But for the president, he has succeeded and he has gained the support of the people during his term in office. Moreover, most people will not criticize the president because his political achievements are inconsistent with his vision. People feel that the president has worked and struggled with them.

Our starting point has always been to solve user needs and create value. But as we continue to experiment, we find that if users cannot feel the value, no matter how much you provide, it will be meaningless. When you get the valuation right, you win the user.

The author of this article @墨饕 is compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!

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