Uncovering & Prioritizing Customer Value Drivers

Value drivers: the fastest path to relevance (and growth).

Great brands don’t try to win everywhere—they win where it matters most.

They understand what truly drives choice for customers and prospects, then focus their energy there. Those high-impact factors are what we call Value Drivers: the attributes and experiences that have a disproportionate influence on consideration, choice, and loyalty.

When you know what matters most, everything from your brand platform to your marketing to your strategic roadmap becomes sharper, more relevant, and more effective.

Whether your audience is B2B buyers or consumers, the goal is the same: understand what drives choice.

Why “what matters most” isn’t always obvious.

Ask customers what’s important, and they’ll tell you. Ask the data, and you may get a very different answer.

Most organizations rely on what people say matters. That’s useful—but incomplete. Humans are complex. They make decisions through a blend of conscious reasoning and subconscious cues. What people think drives their choice often differs from what actually does.

That’s why understanding Value Drivers is essential: it separates assumption from evidence.

What value drivers really are.

Value Drivers are the attributes that most powerfully influence brand choice. They can be functional (“easy to implement”), emotional (“reduces risk”), or symbolic (“aligns with my values”).

They’re not just benefits—they’re the benefits that change decisions.

The impact of identifying value drivers.

• Companies that tailor messaging to customers’ needs achieve up to 80% higher conversion rates and reduce customer acquisition costs by as much as 50% (Forbes and McKinsey).
• Studies show that derived-importance modeling can reorder up to 60% of stated customer priorities, revealing subconscious motivators that standard surveys miss (Harvard Business Review).
• B2B organizations that systematically link brand proof to key value drivers report 15–25% faster sales velocity and 20% higher renewal rates (Gartner and LinkedIn B2B Institute).
• Brands that stay aligned with shifting customer priorities are 2.5x more likely to maintain market share during downturns (HBR Analytic Services).

Mapping what matters.

To uncover Value Drivers, we look at two sides of importance:

• What people say matters — the conscious, stated priorities customers can easily name.
• What actually drives their decisions — the behavioral or data-derived factors that correlate most strongly with consideration or choice.

When we plot these two dimensions together, the picture becomes clear. The framework reveals how people think versus how they act.

Line under visual: Mapping stated versus derived importance reveals where your brand should focus, differentiate, or streamline.

From value drivers to your brand platform…and beyond.

Understanding Value Drivers isn’t the end of research, it’s the beginning of strategy.

1. Build your brand platform on what matters most.
   Anchor your brand where customer importance, your strengths, and competitor weakness intersect. That’s where differentiation lives.
2. Focus your brand pillars.
   Translate top drivers into 2–4 proof-backed pillars. Each pillar should ladder directly to a driver, supported by credible evidence.
3. Align messaging and proof points.
   Your brand messaging strategy  should link every message to a value driver. When communications mirror what people truly value, relevance becomes effortless.
4. Guide product and experience.
   Value Drivers aren’t just for branding and messaging, they inform innovation, service design, and culture, ensuring the entire organization delivers on what matters most.

Customize value drivers to key subgroups.

Every audience contains subgroups that make decisions differently. Understanding those variations, and how to manage them, is what separates strong, relevant brands from unfocused ones.

Step 1: Break your audience into meaningful subgroups

Start by segmenting around decision context, not just demographics. The goal is to uncover groups that share similar drivers or barriers to choice.

Common segmentation lenses include:

• Role-based: Decision-makers, influencers, and end users each define “value” differently. A CFO may focus on total cost and risk; a user may care about speed and ease.
• Company size or maturity: Enterprise buyers often prioritize integration, compliance, and scale. SMBs lean toward simplicity, speed, and service responsiveness.
• Industry vertical: Drivers shift across sectors, trust and compliance may dominate in healthcare, while innovation and speed matter more in technology.
• Customer lifecycle stage: New adopters look for proof and guidance; experienced users seek optimization, ecosystem, and partnership.

Step 2: Identify universal vs. segment-specific drivers

Once you’ve mapped drivers across segments, identify which are universal, core reasons everyone values your brand, and which are contextual, meaning they rise or fall in importance by group.

• Universal drivers anchor your brand position and platform.
• Segment-specific drivers shape messaging and proof points that make the story relevant without changing your strategic foundation.

Mapping Value Drivers across your current and potential customer base helps you personalize messaging without fragmenting your brand.

A quick example: hidden drivers in B2B software.

In one software category, every competitor led with “ease of use” and “robust functionality.” Surveys confirmed those as top priorities—until the derived importance told a different story.

The real differentiators were flexibility and the ability to deliver on business outcomes and drive revenue growth—attributes few brands highlighted. Customers didn’t say those mattered, but the data showed they had the strongest impact on choice and retention.

When one company reframed its narrative around partnership and impact, it shortened sales cycles and improved retention.

That’s the Value Drivers effect: evidence turned into competitive advantage and financial performance.

A simple starting point.

If you’re new to Value Drivers analysis, start small:

1. List what you believe drives customer decisions.
2. Gather both stated and behavioral data. Surveys, CRM metrics, and even reviews are all inputs.
3. Compare perception to reality. Where do people’s words and behaviors diverge?

Even a light version of this process can challenge assumptions and sharpen your focus.

The risk of guessing.

Skipping this work doesn’t just waste research, it weakens strategy.

• Wasted spend: Marketing and sales promote benefits no one values.
• Commoditization: Competing on table stakes erodes pricing power.
• Strategic drift: Your brand story diverges from what actually drives choice.
• Churn: Misaligned messaging erodes customer satisfaction and long-term loyalty.

Without clarity on what truly matters, even strong brands lose direction.

Our approach: turning data into direction.

At The Brand Consultancy, our approach to branding starts with uncovering and activating Value Drivers through an integrated Research & Analytics approach that connects data to brand meaning.

We combine advanced analytics with behavioral science and cultural context, interpreting every finding through a brand lens. The result: a clear, evidence-based roadmap that links brand to business impact and gives leaders confidence to act.

Because the goal isn’t just to measure what matters—it’s to build brands that matter more.

FAQs

Q: How many value drivers should we focus on?

A: It can vary but generally fewer creates focus; more dilutes impact. Keep a longer list for internal insight but build your brand platform and messaging around the vital handful.

Q: What’s the difference between value drivers and benefits?

A: Benefits describe features’ outcomes. Value drivers are the outcomes that change decisions. Every driver is a direct or indirect benefit, but not every benefit is a driver or choice.

Q: How often should we revisit our drivers?

A: It depends - after big shifts, such as new competitors, product moves, regulatory changes, evolving customers, or macro trends that reshape expectations.

Q: Do value drivers only live in marketing or messaging?

A: No. They should also guide product, pricing, service standard, sales enablement, and more – they should come to life in many aspects of your business.

Final thoughts.

Understanding Value Drivers transforms how organizations make decisions. It replaces assumption with evidence and activity with focus. When you build your brand around what truly drives choice, you stop competing on noise and start leading with meaning.