Raise Your Price

I actually want to encourage you to raise the pricing of your products and services. That’s because pricing is a key element that we use to make subconscious decisions about products and services, just like the products name, the packaging it comes in, and even the people selling it to us.

I want to share a story with you from a book called Influence. It’s over 30 years old, but still just as applicable to marketing today. In Influence he talks about a local jeweler who invested in way too much turquoise jewelry. No matter what she did over several months, everything she tried failed to move any jewelry out of the store. Finally, on her way out of town, she left a frustrated note for her staff to slash the prices in half just to get it all out of the store. When she came back she was very pleased to find that all of the jewelry had been sold, but she was actually shocked to find that the staff had misconstrued the note and instead of slashing the prices they had instead double the prices for twice the cost.

Now how is it that all of the jewelry could fly out of the store at twice the price that she couldn’t sell even one piece at. That’s because of the perceived value that comes with the right pricing. I want to encourage you to think about the value that your products and services offer and start there when pricing your products and services. Most people start from a standpoint of cost. What does this product cost to make and then I’ll basically add a margin on top of it. If you think about how much time your product saves somebody, how much joy it brings them, or what it allows them to do that other products and services can’t, you get a much bigger picture of pricing that you can apply to you product.

I actually want to challenge you to take it a step further. I want you to actually consider pricing marketing into your product and service. Let’s say you have a $20 product that cost you $10 to make. What would happen if you sold it for $30 and actually spent $10 on marketing? What would happen if you sold it for $50, spent $25 on marketing and actually had a higher profit margin? This is what a lot of companies do. Even if other competitors are selling at half the prices of you, you have a competitive advantage if you have that $25 per product to actually go out there spend in marketing and bring the entire marketplace to you. You want to avoid obscurity and actually price marketing into your product and that will be your competitive advantage. Think a little bit differently before you price your next product or service.