Self-Marketing Part 5 - Price

This is going to be the last post for this series on Self-Marketing. And we will talk about the last P.

Price.

Price is an important factor in Marketing. Price of products will determines the amount of money that returns on your investment. If you have spent $50 to develop a product, you will want to mark-up the price to, let say $100. You will earn a profit of $50. You will hardly want to put the price below $50.

Price is the only P that money comes to you. Product, Place, Promotion require you to invest money into them to get them done. Hence, if Price is not correctly, amount of profits you receive on your investment will be affected too.

One reason why companies are not able to get their products sold and increase profits, is because is due to PRICE. Why Price?

If the Price of the product is too high, there are only people who are able to afford. And if your price is high, the quality of the product must match its price too! If customers feels that the money they pay for your product is much higher that what they receive from it, then your company will risk losing this customer. And unhappy comments spread too!

However, if Price is too low, it's a problem too! So, don't think that low prices will attract more buyers! Imagine going into a shopping mall, and you saw a LV bag on the shelf. You love it, and you are going to buy it. You opened the bag, check its quality, and you saw the price tag too. $50!! $50 for a Louis Vuitton Bag. What comes to your mind now?

Fake LV.

You may say that there are a lot of people carry fake LVs on streets too. But there are also a lot of people who don't want to associate themselves with fakes.

Wait! The LV bag can be a genuine one. But to a customer, a $50 LV bag, even though it's made of genuine material, it's fake!

You can't do it the other way round, selling a fake LV at $1000 to let people think that it is a genuine one. You may get to sell a few fake LVs at real price, but that's cheating. Not business. And buyers, especially LV bag lovers, they will know how to identify geniune bags. So, you may get exposed even before 1 bag is sold.

In this last P-Price, we see that it plays a very important role in your business. Your business can go bust, or bloom with price of your product. Set the right price!


Let's go into Self-Marketing. Price.

Since we are the product, we must set a price for the product(we) too.

How much do you want to be?

A $10,000(ten thousand)/year person, or $10,000,000(ten million)/ year person?

There are many people with many outstanding personal traits, but they are not fully utilizing them. They may worth $10 million/year, but they are doing work that are just worth $10,000/year.

They have very good personal traits. They are leaders in the society, they are winners in sport games, they can learn fast and adapt fast to any environment. They did all these during their school years. But when they graduate, they get behind-the-scene jobs. They are trapped in low-positions for years.

Sometimes, it is not their choice to be given these kind of jobs. They may be in a position they liked so much, meeting clients, travelling around..etc But there are unforseen circumstances such as Company Layoff, Retrenchment, Closing down of departments. Or worse, Merger and Acquisition.

When your company is 'eaten up' by the other one, there are way to many people competiting for positions in the company. So you're either kicked out of company, or kicked to other departments you don't like.

However, there are clever ones who will want to make good use of their talents, to do work that greatly benefits them and others too.

The 'not-so-clever' ones will persuade themselves that 'it's okay. Maybe I don't have the talent for it. It's right for company to put me in that position". Companies just like this people. Because they don't have to spend time persuading these people, as these people will persuade themselves. These 'not-so-clever' people, just lacked Self-Belief. They never belief they can do it.
When they wanted to do something, and one person tells them, "its impossible for you". And sure enough, they gave up. They talk themselves to it, "He's correct. It's impossible for me"

People with Self-Belief, and high Self-Esteem, will do the Impossible. Invent a Plane, Invent the Light Bulb, Invent the Telephone...etc

So, the Price-tag you want to carry. Is it determined by your boss? or by your friends? or by Yourself??

Set a price for youself, for your work, for your services. And it should not be determined by others. Not by your boss, not by your teachers, not by your friends, and not by me also!

I said you are worth $10 million/year, but why take the price i set? You can set it higher at 100 million/year!

Set your price, and take actions to prove that you're worth that price. Go and learn skills and input knowledge that will increase your Self-Worth.


Guys, we have come to the end of the Self-Marketing Series. We talked about the 4Ps of businesses, and our businesses (our lives!) too. Think about them, and put them to good use.
Hope you benefit from it, and leave your comments on Twitter/Chatbox/Comments...etc.

See you soon!