This is a subject I have to admit I have talked about often, but it has to be talked about over and over and over and over again because it is that important. The price isn’t that important but the subject of the price not being important is important.
So on the Marketing for Owners Podcast, yes, that’s it, me Jon Butt, I’m always telling you just to forget about the price. Well you can’t forget about the price but it is not as important as you think. And I know your industry is different, blah blah blah blah. How many times do you think people like me have heard that before?
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I am sorry to be rude I am just being blunt because perhaps you’ve never had anyone tell you politely to get over it, your business the way you do it, is unique but your industry is not. If you weren’t there, people would survive, it is going to happen.
You are not Uber or something like that or Google, you haven’t just reinvented or invented something completely new, Apple iPhones. So please listen because they are examples I want to explain.
And the first one is, in your industry, so no matter what you do, you are a solicitor, you are a lawyer an accountant you are a doctor, a dentist, you are a landscape gardener, you do nails, you sell fire extinguishers, you are a consultant, you are a marketing person, you have web hosting, there are others that do it.
And at any one time, as of that moment, at the snap of my fingers, one company in your region, in your local region, in your bigger region, in your area, in your country, in the world, one company was the cheapest. And I say “was” because I snapped my fingers a few moments ago.
One company was the cheapest, one company was the most expensive back then, it might have changed since. It doesn’t matter, there are however many in between, the cheapest one has got customers, the most expensive one has got customers and all the ones in between have got customers.
How is that? That must suggest, because they’re not all going for the cheapest one and you’re going to say, “Oh yeah, but in what I do you can’t go for the cheapest because what I do is different.”
Okay so how about the expensive one? How is she getting customers? How is she charging three times your price and still getting customers? You are going to say, oh yeah, but she is fancy, she knows so and so, she only goes to those.
That is the market she picked, you picked the part of it that you want to do. If you want to change and go for the market she is rocking, why not?
And you are going to say, “Oh I can’t change because of my current customers.” Hey, who owes who what? Why not to start another division? Why not start a luxury one?
Let me explain, you drink coffee, you go to Starbucks, Costa, Cafe Nuovo, Blends, whatever, Pikes, fresh out of Pikes Market in Seattle, it doesn’t matter.
You drink a particular type of coffee, but if you go to another coffee shop in another place, their prices are different. You are not going to think, “Hey I am not buying that.”
Or, in fact when you go into Starbucks do you then think well there is a Blends like in Canada, there is a Blends over there and I am going to walk over there and the check out which one is cheapest.
No, you go to the one that you want to go to, don’t you? And if you have never heard of it before, you go because you want a cup of coffee. The price is the price, if it is ridiculous, you would walk out, but if it is reasonable it is not important. Do you follow what I mean?
They are in the coffee industry, they measure the average cost of a latte, of a small latte and they will measure how that rises all the time, there is an inflation rate thing, to measure inflation of coffee. There is an average price which means there are people above average and people below, they have all got customers.
Eugene Schwartz, a fantastic copywriter in his book Breakthrough Advertising, a great book, you can probably find a free download PDF online, one thing he says, because people talk about oh you need to build a better mousetrap.
He says, “Don’t build a better mousetrap, build bigger mice and then instil a fear of mice in your customers.” How about that? Then you will sell as many mousetraps as you want, so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel.
It is the customer, it is the client, you have to make them desire, not want, you have to make them desire your product. So the way you package it up, the way you present it, the way you present yourself, the way you package yourself up.
For instance, I am just in a little fleecy top here; I could be wearing a tailored suit. If I was on video and have a flash studio and I can guarantee that whatever I am selling I would be able to sell it for more. Oh by the way, what am I selling?
Go to theownersclub.co and go see, it’s twenty nine pounds a month, that’s what I am selling. There you go, a little advertising goes a long way.
But if I was the guy in the three piece suit, the tailored suit with all the beautiful coiffed looks and decent haircut and perhaps a face lift and looking a bit more like a James Bondy figure, then I am pretty sure I could say about for two hundred and ninety pounds a month.
It would be the same thing, but it’s the way I package it and I would then aim at people who could afford and who expect to pay two hundred and nimiety pounds a month.
It would be the same thing. And believe me, a load of you out there are doing that on internet marketing stuff, you are going online and you are buying rubbish, you are wasting your time.
You are buying it because the person is selling their dream, you are not buying it because of the price. Of course if it is too much you wouldn’t pay, but until you got there you had no idea what it was going to cost because they don’t tell you until the end until they have done their sales drib on you.
Do you not know this is what is going on? This is a whole sequence, it is a process, there’s books and courses on how to do that. You didn’t know how much it was and then you bought it.
You could have come and joined my Owners Club. You might think, “I have heard Jon, I want to follow him, I want to do it.” And if I say, “Oh, it’s twenty nine pounds per month.” Yay, no problem.
But until that moment you had already decided that you wanted to follow me and do what I tell you to do, because I have created the desire and I have built up your trust to the point that you want what I have. It’s nothing to do with the price, I guarantee it, absolutely.
In sports equipment, when you go to the store and buy sports equipment do you favour Slazenger? Do you favour Adidas or you might prefer Puma which is his brother and they fell out and recently got back together after twenty odd years; or Nike.
So how about shoes? Shoes, ladies of course I cannot tell you about shoes because I am a man but ladies, you prefer shoes price doesn’t matter. Bags, handbags or purses; wow, us guys we faint when we find out what you are paying for that. But you don’t understand why we will pay to watch sports on TV or something like that. Price doesn’t matter.
If you support a football club and they put the prices up, you are not going to go and watch the other team down the road, because you support that club. You’re going to moan about you but you support that club.
When you buy suntan lotion or suntan cream, you have your preferred brand, otherwise, why don’t you just go to the supermarket and buy their own brand? It is cheaper and quite often we know it has got to the same stuff in it. It is not the price.
In the UK we have fantastic competition for products. If you go to a supermarket, Kellogg’s cereals are there, breakfast cereals, every supermarket has their own brand but it looks almost identical.
You have got Kellogg’s fruit and nut cornflakes, or Country fruit and nut; you’ve got Tesco’s own, you have got Kellogg’s raisin bran, you’ve got Tesco’s own, Sainsbury’s own, Asda’s own.
People still buy the more expensive Kellogg’s one because they advertise the heck out of it and they tell you why it’s so good and you believe it.
Do that with your product. It is not about price my friend. Okay, have I done that to death? Fair enough.
Drive Time Podcast
Drive time podcast, it is a Thursday, this is fantastic, it has been around for years, simple as this, Tropical MBA.
It is by Dan Andrews and Ian Schoen, they share the stories of entrepreneurs and if you have ever heard of a thing called the Dynamite Circle it is an international entrepreneurs group well worth looking up; that is the home of the Dynamite Circle, that is the tropical MBA guys.
Thousands of members all around the world, it is fantastic, a great podcast.
Tomorrow a great guest I interviewed recently and loved it, really, really enjoyed this one. Tomorrow is a lady called Lisa Spencer Arnell; you may not have heard of her but she has stuff you need to hear, even I was impressed and I have interviewed quite a lot of people and it’s making me change a few things I do.
That is tomorrow, Friday.
We are all done, see you soon.
