Hey!
Hope everyone is doing well. Welcome to the next round of the Sunan Weekly Roundup!
What are we working on
In keeping up with our goal of dropping one valuable blog post a week, this week, we dropped “3 books every marketer should read.” I am really excited about this one because as students of knowledge, we should always be willing to explore and try new things that will help us grow as individuals and as a result bring value to the community we serve.
Our next big thing
As 2019 is coming to a close, this is a great time for us to critically reevaluate who we are and where we are headed in our businesses. What changes, even a small degree, can we make that will realign ourselves and our businesses.
Something to ponder: why is it that despite air turbulence and multiple factors that cause airlines to go off course +90% of the time, most flights still arrive at their correct destination and at the right time? The answer is very simple. Pilots are constantly making course corrections needed despite the odds stacked against them.
The question we have to ask ourselves constantly is what course corrections do we need to make as marketers and entrepreneurs to be able to better serve our customers and communities.
Am I blindly following the goals that I set for my business at the beginning of the year, or am I making the course corrections needed to seize the opportunities that are being presented in addition to my ambitious goals?
So why am I telling you all this? At Sunan, I see an opportunity for us as a business. When we started two years ago, my perspective was very limited. I just wanted to focus on providing graphic design services to clients. But over the past two years, I have had to make course corrections and shift my perspective to becoming more of a full fledged marketing firm that specializes in graphic design AND digital marketing strategies.
To take things to the next level, you are going to see some exciting and major changes coming to Sunan in 2020. The goal of making these changes is to be able to better serve you, our community. At the end of the day, we help businesses and entrepreneurs create and implement modern day marketing strategies so they can earn greater revenue and make a difference.
My biggest takeaway this week– Value triumphs price
So often, many organizations tend to resort to a short-sighted approach of lowering prices as a means to capture more customers. But as history has shown, this is a very dangerous and a commodities approach to selling. Look at the airline price wars of the 90s. “When American Airlines, Northwest Airlines, and other U.S. carriers went toe-to-toe in matching and exceeding one another’s reduced fares, the result was record volumes of air travel—and record losses. Some estimates suggest that the overall losses suffered by the industry that year exceeded the combined profits for the entire industry from its inception” (Rao, Bergen and Davis, 2019). That is scary! So how do we capture customers without lowering prices? Easy, focus on value.
To help drive this point, I’m going to sell you an iPhone for $10,000. Yup, you read that right. And no, it’s not made out of gold and doesn’t have diamonds as its volume up and down button
So how in the world would I do this?! At the end of the day, an iPhone is a commodity. It’s a simple device that is mass produced by the millions every year and essentially is no different from the rest of the iPhones in its class. The way I would approach this is to focus on value. What if I told you this iPhone had a direct line of communication with Tony Robbins, Oprah Winfrey, and Brandon Burchard. And whoever owns this phone, will continue to have a direct line of communication with these giants who will check in with you on a weekly basis and help move you and your business to where it needs to be, on the Fortune 500 list. Oh and I forgot to mention, this iPhone also contains +800 hours of audio recordings from the late Steve Jobs that are not available anywhere. This is a direct audio recording by Steve to help guide you, the young entrepreneur in building your empire and not repeating his mistakes.
…Now let me ask you, how much would you pay for this iPhone? In fact, if I charged you double, you would pay it without any hesitation because you know the value of this iPhone is far greater than the price tag.
We have to ask ourselves, how can we repackage our products and services where we are focusing on value rather than price?
Here is an example for Sunan:
Sunan Designs provides unlimited graphic designs needs for $999/month. In order to increase the value of this service, we can package this service as such:
- Unlimited designs by an Adobe Award winning designer [$5,000/month]
- Dedicated account manager [$2,500/month]
- Premier stock imagery [$500/month]
- Real Time collaboration [$500/month]
- VIP Access to curated guides that impact your bottom line [$300/month]
- Weekly check-in and review by Sunan leadership [$2,500/month]
If you act today, you can secure $11,300 worth of value for just $999 a month. That is a saving of 91% per month that will help drive your business and allow you to better connect with your customer base.
Now it’s your turn! Revisit your products and offerings and see how you can repackage it and increase its value without decreasing its price. Use the iPhone and Sunan as an example. Feel free to email me and I would love to take a look at it!
– Sajjad Husain, Founder & CEO
