26 Pricing 5: Give great value

26

PRICING 5: GIVE GREAT VALUE

Value, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Often, good value and low price are used to mean the same thing, but they actually aren’t. Value is a combination of price, quality, usefulness and how many times you can use what you’ve bought; it can also include the extras that come with it.

If one person buys a pair of bright pink trainers at £50 and wears them every day for months until they fall apart, then she’s got good value. If another person buys the same pair during a sale at £15, and then decides she has made a terrible mistake and she’s never going to wear them, leaves them in the cupboard and fi nally gives them away, she didn’t get good value at all.

So giving good value, and building a brand identity around that, includes making sure that you are selling your wares to people who really appreciate them.

The idea The Magic Marker is a pen favoured by graphic designers and layout artists worldwide. They are now made in Japan, they’ve adopted the generic name “magic” for a marker pen, just as the Russians called a pencil a karandash (from the Swiss manufacturer Caran D’Ache). You can buy them in around 150 shades, and in sets of 12 for particular uses, like portraits, landscapes or architects’ drawings. Individually, they cost around four to fi ve times more than standard marker pens.

There are alternatives, mostly from Japanese companies, but the Magic Marker keeps its place as the one that gives the best value. So yes, designers and artists still choose them. But if you’re going to be using them to write on fl ipchart paper, why would you pay four times more for a pen that does the same thing as a standard fl ipchart marker? Because of the value they give.

The meeting rooms of the world are littered with empty husks of fl ipchart markers. If – like me – you often run workshops and turn up to fi nd that even the nice new pens don’t last the day – you’ll appreciate pens which are still fl owing after ten days’ hard work. And the participants appreciate it too. A good workshop can be ruined by the squeak of dried up pens; thoughts dry up at the same time. (Although I did see jaws drop once when I mentioned that my pack of 12 pens had cost me £50.)

So for me, this is a great example of great value. People appreciate it when they get to work with good quality materials, so although they are an investment, they easily justify the cost in the long run. So if you do have a brand that you know is of great value, how do you make that known?

In practice • Point out where the value lies in choosing your brand over the competition. That way your customers can justify the initial expense as they make their decision. • Without comparing yourself directly to other brands – as this usually puts your brand in a bad light as well – let customers know that your brand has added benefi ts, including that it pays for itself several times over.