Lesson #5 How to Make Information Valuable
Welcome to lesson 5 of Profitable Knowledge.
Let’s go back to the list you made in lesson 1. By now you should have some clarity about who you’re selling to and what business model to implement. So, we’re ready to move on. Now you are going to learn how to increase the value of your product. We want people to pay a high price for what you offer.
Take a moment to think about what you sell…..what if I told you that your product is not your actual product? That’s right. It doesn’t matter so much what you actually sell. Your true product is an idea. Ideas are the things that are valuable to people who are looking for them.
Do you know why people pay a lot of money for art and for antiques? It is because of the value attached to the idea of the objects historical or aesthetic significance. To understand why people will pay so much money for these things—especially if you wouldn’t ordinarily care about them yourself—you need to understand the ideas that people associate with them.
In your case, we are packaging information in a way that people associate value with it, and locate it in a niche where people will look for it.
The point? Packaging great information, great training, and great knowledge in just the right way is marketing. |
What this means is that your “high quality content”—your articles, seminars, or videos—can get you high search engine rankings, drive lots of traffic to your website, attract people to your list, bring the right join venture partners in to promote your product, and create new opportunities for your business!
The formula for success is simple: You can control the value of what you’re selling if you know how to translate your idea into terms that people will recognize in their own value language. It’s all about what is commonly called “perceived value.”
What is value?
There are two ways to look at value:
• First, you can interpret it from your own perspective.
• Second, you can interpret it from someone else’s perspective.
Simple, right? Not exactly. The way you view the world, and what you value, may not be the same as someone else. What you think they believe is not always the same as what they actually believe. And vice versa! So in order to get people to pay well for you products you need to figure out how value really works.
Remember in lesson 4, we discussed the importance of discovering what people want, what people need, and how to bring those two things together? Well, that’s just the first step.
To help people discover your product, your business, and what you do, you have to begin with what your customer values.
Customers don’t value products; they value results. You need to know what results they want. |
When you have figured out what your customer values, you can apply that knowledge to package your product (your idea!) in a way that it speaks to them so it sells itself. You are looking for that “one thing” that your customer really values or wants. That’s the basic concept of “information marketing.”
Information marketing requires you to practice talking to your customers and asking them the right questions—just like in lesson 4.
Let’s return to the idea of a weight loss niche. Let’s imagine a conversation between Me and a prospect; we’ll call him Freddy. I ask Freddy, “What is your biggest frustration with weight loss?”
Freddy (laughs a little): My biggest frustration trying to lose weight is that I can’t stop eating, and I hate going to the gym.
Eric: What problems does that cause you?
Freddy (sadly): It causes me to feel guilty. I get angry at myself and I want to give up.
You: What do you think you need to do to lose weight?
Freddy: I don’t know; I just want the fat to be gone! (sighs) I guess I need to be on a diet program where I am managed by someone else.
This is actually from a real conversation. In this case, the “one thing” is a magic formula to get rid of fat instantly, or to have someone help them learn discipline. Notice how each of my questions encouraged Freddy to go a little deeper into the problem? This is not the kind of thing that someone like Freddy could just come out and say at the start of a conversation. He may not know precisely what he wants, let alone realize what he needs. The result or solution someone is seeking may be abstract or poorly defined. In that case what they value centers on a feeling or an image in their heads.
The process needs facilitation. You have to get people to focus and hone in on what is valuable to them and why.
Once you discover what your customer values, then you can focus on providing that value to them. An important factor in building your business is the art of adding value. When you think about providing value, don’t just focus on what you will eventually provide when someone buys from you. Think about the value they’ll get just from speaking to you. Eventually, you will be selling your company, your offering, and yourself. To start, sell the idea that the prospect’s time will be well spent if they elect to speak with you.
To learn more about adding value in the digital age, you should read this post: What Is Adding Value And How It Applies To Social Networking.
3 Ways to translate value
Information is great in the abstract, but nobody wants to spend their time sifting through it to find the parts that will be useful to them. Consequently, systems are perceived to have higher value than undistilled information.
So if you want to maximize the perceived value of what you’re selling, you need to have system tailored to your average busy person who doesn’t want to invest a lot of time or effort in finding the solution he or she needs.
Simply put, people want a magic formula with simple action steps that delivers the result they want predictably and consistently with as little risk and hassle as possible. |
The simplest and easiest way to communicate “perceived value” is to break it down for your customer in three ways:
Time Value
Ever wonder why experts such as teachers like to tell people how much experience they have in doing something?
“I’m a certified public accountant with 20 years of experience.”
“I have a Ph.D. and I’ve been studying psychology for 30 years.”
Think about it for a second….which doctor would you choose to operate on you, one with twenty years of experience, or one with five?
One of the ways that we measure value is the amount of time that has been invested in getting or achieving something. It could be how long it took someone to get a certification or degree, how long you have worked in your current position, how many years you spent in the field. Time value creates an immediate impact for most of us.
Of course, in a few specific fields the opposite can be true, especially when youth or newness is highly valued. Consider fashion modeling, sports, or transportation.
Labor Value
This works best with customers who understand and appreciate the amount of labor invested in a product. It can relate to a product or service that is very labor intensive, to what motivates someone to pay more for something “hand made,” “limited edition,” or tailored specifically to them. These things can make your customer feel special. Luxury brands like Bentley and Rolex focus on communicating the craft that goes into manufacturing their products.
It can also relate to a savings of time and labor. For example, a book may promise to teach the reader “how to create a meal in ten minutes” to help busy people save six hours in food preparation a week. Or, online job training may promise “certification needed to land a $100,000 job in as little as four weeks.” In both scenarios, the information promises significant time savings in achieving a result that usually takes a lot longer.
The second approach especially appeals to people who value efficiency and sustainability. These are the people who seek out a hybrid car for the gasoline savings, or purchase a longer lasting eco-friendly light bulb.
Money value
This is probably the easiest perceived value metric you can use. It often includes time and labor values mixed in the assessment. We all have the experience of earning our own money, and we all have strong feelings about where and how we are willing to spend it. It’s safe to say that we all know the value of cold, hard cash.
Put simply, our “perceived value” system grows out of how much we know (and what we believe) about any given product or service. This is the foundation for creating value for your business. Anything with a price tag, from clothing to food to medicine, also has marketing copy that attempts to convince you of how much these things are worth. The problem is that most human beings are not very good at assessing value.
You must speak in terms that you prospects and customers understand, or you will simply be ignored.
If you want something to become valuable, you must convince someone of its time, labor, or money value. |
As you have already learned here at Profitable Knowledge, people tend to be motivated more by fear than desire. As strange as it may seem, they are more motivated not to lose a perceived advantage than to gain a new advantage. Think about it:
• Would you trade your ability to walk for $1 million?
• Would you exchange ten years of your life for the promise of being disease and illness free the whole time?
Whether or not you would consider these offers depends on what you value, and what you most fear losing.
Profitable Knowledge Exercise: Create Value by Transforming Suggestions into Solutions
What your customers value relates to what your customers want. That is where you should start the process of creating value. You want to end by shaping your solution into a magic formula. This will maximize its perceived value, and people will pay a higher price.
I am going to show you a basic three-step framework that connects what you do with what your customer values.
Examples:
“This rapid fat loss system will help you lose 20 lbs. in 90 days with my 7 step raw food diet that still allows you to eat what you want.”
“We can cut your debt in half in 12 weeks with our proven credit repair program. A+ Repair will stop all those annoying calls within 24 hours.”
Want to learn more about the most effective ways to communicate so your customer gets it? Read this Article: How to Get Inside the Minds of Your Customers
In the next lesson you’ll learn to package your expertise for maximum appeal to your prospects, and the secret to creating an instant connection.
All the best.
Oh, by the way…
If you found this page via a link on the Internet, or a friend forwarded it to you, this is lesson #5 to a free online course delivered via email on how to use solid Internet marketing strategies to build a business doing what you love and make a living.
You can learn more about it HERE