What's up brand builders! Stephen Houraghan here of BrandMasterAcademy.com and in
this video you're gonna learn how to price branding using a scientific
technique called the contrast principal so you can differentiate your value from
your competitors and more importantly charge more for your work.
now if you are new to the channel and you want actionable brand strategy tips and
techniques well then make sure you hit that subscribe button and the
notification bell as well and you will be well on your way now I first came
across the contrast principal in a book called Influence: The Psychology Of Persuasion
by Robert Cialdini and in that book he covers a number of principals
that he calls compliance principals and by the end of this video you're gonna
have three steps that you can take into your own business to leverage these
principals to increase your rates and to get more clients so first up what is the
contrast principal well it's the way we perceive two different things if they're
placed side by side or one after the other so an example of this would be
when you're inside in a beautifully air-conditioned room and then you go
outside to sweltering heat and it seems really really hot but it actually seems
hotter than it really is because you've been inside an air-conditioned room so
that's the contrast principal in action it's how we perceive one thing from the
next because they are so different than they seem so extreme and that difference
seems even more extreme because we have come from one to the other so how does
this apply to your branding business when it comes to pricing your services
well let's take a prospect for example who comes to you looking for a logo or
looking for a brand identity design and they've come from an environment
let's say they've been to Upwork or Fivver and they have this idea in their
mind that branding services are actually quite cheap and they come to you and you
have a much more comprehensive service and you put your prices in front of them
well then your prices to them won't seem so much higher because the contrast
principal is in play there they've come from this environment where their belief
is that these services are really really cheap and they come to you looking for
your services and your prices seem so much higher and
it's also relevant in how you price your work so if you give them a single price
and you don't give them to contrast that to if you don't give them anything to
compare that to well then they're going to be comparing you directly to all of
those cheaper logo designers so firstly with your prospects coming to you from
an environment of these low cost designers and secondly if you don't give
them something to compare your prices to well then they will be comparing you
over here so that's how it's relevant to you in your business and I'm gonna show
you how you can navigate that now there are multiple benefits to using the
contrast principal within your pricing strategy for your branding business and
the first one here is differentiation so again going back to those cheaper logo
designers and their experience with those cheaper logo designers by putting a high
ticket offer in front of them you automatically in their mind distance
yourself from all of those other designers psychologically they've put
you way up here and there's a quality differentiation there as well a
perception of quality differentiation just by price alone so once you put that
high ticket price in front of them of course at first it might seem to them
that you're out of their reach but it will definitely differentiate you from
those competitors in terms of perceived quality now another benefit to this
principal is in the framing so as people we are controlled by our reptilian brain
so our reptilian brain is what makes all of our decisions and as a general rule
of thumb if something is running towards us we tend to run away from it if
something is running away from us we tend to run towards and that's a
survival mechanism that's built in now if we price ourselves way above where we
actually expect our clients to be ready to play ball well then we will position
ourselves in a way that will seem to our client that we are out of reach for them
we are running away from them and their mechanism their survival mechanism will
be to run towards us that desire will increase for our services and for them
to have us on our team and that will play a part later on in their
decision-making so let's look at three steps you can use to integrate the
contrast principal into your pricing strategy number one develop a value
ladder so what is a value ladder well a value ladder is used
by companies and businesses to price their products or services so
essentially they'll have different levels of prices and different levels of
value to what they offer their customers so for example they'll have a low level
price a medium level price and a high level price and obviously different
levels of quality within each of those now the benefit here within marketing
certainly is that you're able to acquire clients at a low price to them so with a
low commitment they're able to engage your services and then essentially the
theory here is that you ascend them of the value ladder to your higher ticket
items so think first about what service you really want your client to take you
up on now this is your core offer and this is essentially the middle step in
the value ladder so think about a lower priced offer for your client what can
you offer them at a lower price and lower commitment and obviously lower
value but then more importantly when it comes to the contrast principal what can
you offer at a higher level because here what you're trying to do is you're
trying to create a level of value that's much higher and this will help with
your differentiation strategy as well from all those other logo designers and
it will help in framing what it is that you actually want them to take you up on
number to lead with your high ticket offer now essentially what you're
doing here is you're creating an anchor in the mind of your prospect now if the
core offer that you want them to take you up on is actually brand strategy
well then your high ticket offer could include some more services like ongoing
consulting or face-to-face meetings something that you don't necessarily
think that they're going to take you up on but allows you to create the anchor
in their mind that you have much higher ticket prices now the real contrast that
you're trying to create here is in the perception of price now your prospect
might feel that what you're offering them is quite expensive but that's okay
because at the moment you're not really expecting them to take you up on that
higher price offer what you're really doing is you're giving them an anchor to
work with later on and number three contrast with your core offer so this is where
you put the offer in front of them that you really want them to take you up on
now if they've come from a low price environment where they believe branding
services cost a couple of hundred dollars then what you've done now with
your high ticket price is you've really skewed that idea and you've really
opened up their mind to what branding services really cost now of course they
will obviously think that this is going to be expensive but what you've done now
is you've created an environment of perceptual value where they can see that
okay this low price down here well maybe that's not what real branding is
and maybe that's not what real branding costs now if you think about you just
presenting your core offer with them coming from this low price environment
and this low price perception well then your core offer is going to seem very
very expensive to them because of the contrast principal but as I said what
you've done now with this high ticket offer is you've created a balance between
the two and your core offer now seems like much higher value and it is framed
that in a way that they will see a lot more value and they'll be more prepared
to take you up on that core offer now the perception of costs of branding
services in the marketplace is a real problem for brand specialists and brand
strategists because so many of your prospects come to you with this idea
that branding costs a couple of hundred dollars and that's what they're
expecting to pay and some of them are horrified when you put your prices in
front of them some of them even get offended I can't tell you how many times
somebody has come to me and said you know how much for a logo expecting me to
say $50 and then being offended when I tell them that I'm 10 20 times that
price so it is a real problem in the marketplace but the contrast principal
is a real tool it's a really strategic tool when it comes to pricing to really
frame the conversation that you can have with your prospect about what real
branding is about the cost of real branding and about setting in place the
value of what you offer by using that contrast principal but I'd love to hear
from you about your pricing strategies and how you go about navigating this
problem that's in the marketplace I know that when I catch up with my designer
friends one of the favorite things that we like to talk about are our stories of
dealing with these types of clients who just have this expectation and have no
real idea about what branding is and that is part of the
challenge that we as branding specialists have and I would really love
to hear about your stories when it comes to those types of clients your stories
when it comes to your pricing strategies if you've got any questions at all let
me know in the comments below if you like this video please give it a thumbs
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to answer all of those until next time brand like a master and I will see you
in the next video!