Anybody who has ever done an Economics course will find that that is one of the cores of Economics, supply and demand.
In other words, if there is not much supply, if there’s hardly anything and the demand is high, then you can charge more. If there is lots of supply, it’s plentiful and there’s not much demand, then you’re not going to get many sales.
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I know for all of you Economics majors it’s a little bit more complicated, but for the rest of us, that’s the basic theory of it.
To give you an example of how this might apply to you, although I doubt that you sell toilet rolls; something so simple as toilet rolls, it’s a basic life necessity, it is essential.
Toilet rolls are very cheap, unless you buy the lovely aloe vera ones that they sell in the stores.
But anyway, still cheap enough.
Now if there had has been some fire at paper mills and there were no more toilet rolls and there are going to be no more toilet rolls for a couple of months and you happen to have a warehouse full of them, you could put a sign out on your lawn and sell them from your home.
You could charge pretty much whatever you want because people must have toilet rolls and you are the only one who sells them. Honestly, what’s the alternative?
So that is a very basic example of supply and demand. So, how does this apply to you? You’re thinking yawn, yawn, yawn. “Jon, you sometimes talk such utter rubbish, you are a complete idiot. What are you doing? We don’t sell toilet rolls.”
Well, listen on. What I’m going to suggest is that you make your own market for your own product and service.
Market Your Own Products and Services
So if you sell something that is being commodited, an example of that, in my fire protection business, one of the main products we sell it is fire extinguishers.
Now we happen to sell the better quality fire extinguisher, we don’t make them, there is only a handful of manufacturers, but our manufacturer is Chubb Fire which is the biggest in the UK and they have a trade site.
So their product is made under a tighter quality control system and is of a better quality than most of the others. That means longer life, better guarantee, manufacturer’s guarantee, everything that goes with it.
However, when you look online, to the average user who has no interest in fire extinguishers, they are just the red, shiny fire extinguishers with a label.
They’ve got the British mark which says they are approved and the supplier on the website says it’s got a five year guarantee.
Good enough, they all look exactly the same, so which one is the cheapest?
That is what happens when a product is commodited. When TVs and things like that, half the brands, you’ve never heard of them, you just end up looking on Amazon or looking around on the Internet, who is the cheapest, if it’s got so and so features.
So it’s difficult to separate a service, it’s just the product you want and you’ll get it from whoever.
So, what do you do to make your product stand out and make it more desirable? Because that’s what you want, you want desire; you want people to need yours.
How to Make Your Products More Desirable
So in toilet rolls, for example if you created only gold edged toilet rolls and made them slightly thicker, like a micron thicker or whatever, I’m not really sure on the thicknesses of toilet rolls, and then marketed it as the world’s most luxurious toilet roll and you made that the thing.
Years ago, British Airways, and I mean years and years and years ago, a marketing company put out a survey asking people who was their favorite airline and British airways won.
This was a very big survey and ever since they have been using the world’s favorite airline, because it was then and people don’t question.
By the way, if you want to travel very very good, British Airways, but it’s not going to be the world’s favorite airline, is going to be one of Emirates or far Eastern ones because they put the effort in to grow.
British Airways are complacent because they are an old-fashioned business.
So try and make your product stand out so that it appears that there aren’t many. So therefore, the supply is limited, but by making it stand out and more desirable, you increase the demand and you lower the supply.
So, for example, we don’t manufacture our fire extinguishers, but if we said we would include printing your personal company name, your business on our products for you and we are the only company that does .
That is included in the price, we suddenly make ours different and we make ours more interesting because we played to people’s egos.
So for instance in the UK there’s a very famous store called Howards. Years and years ago, Chubb Fire, the biggest one, they went to Howard’s and they mocked up an example with Howard’s the name and logo on it.
In actual fact they even printed it in Howard’s green which the bit naughty at the time because it’s supposed to be red, but Howard’s bought them because Howard’s thought why not?
So, as an example, they suddenly were able to sell a more expensive product to someone because they had something that the person wanted.
Find a Difference
So use the power of supply and demand in your business. Find a difference. And you are thinking “But we haven’t got a difference.”
For instance if you are a dentist; you think well what’s the difference? We are a dentist, we… Find something, find something that you can say you do uniquely. Offer an extra service that no one else offers.
I am sorry but you have to work hard and you have to put some effort in to make a difference.
You might have to put yourself out a little, but once you get the traction, others will say “Wow, this dentist is… I have gone to dentists for years, I change them ever so often but this is the only one that does…” X, that gives X for free or for only another… It’s the only one. Think of it, think of…
If for example,you have people come to your surgery for a checkup every six months or once a year and they pay an amount, why not offer them a monthly payment plan?
It guarantees them a lower price. The people may not even turn up for their six monthly or yearly thing but they paid.
But you have given them the advantage of being able to spread the cost because they think it’s going to be expensive.
Tuesday Toolbox Tip
Now today, Tuesday toolbox tip, we’re going to give a shout out for screencastify.com. Now there is free and paid and it is to make screen casts. Screen casts are videos from your computer. Most laptops and things have cameras built in and so if you’re telling someone how to do something, it could be one of your members of staff, it could be an outsourcer, it could be customers, you can record your screen of you doing it. So if you want someone to know how to do something you do, you uniquely do and you think “I don’t know how to explain it.” Do it, do a screen cast of yourself doing it and then send the video to that person. How cool is that? You can do it in Jing, you can do it in other things, but screencastify is designed just to do that which means it’s pretty good. Click here to instantly download our FREE Book “The 71 Ultimate Marketing Tools”
Go take a look, see what you think, I will be back tomorrow with more from the marketingforowners.com podcast. And by the way, if you want to hop on iTunes and give us a rating, if you like it, I would very much appreciate it.
I’ll talk to you soon.
