You’ve heard it from all of the gurus.
You need to provide value if you want to make money.
And it sounds right. That’s why the gurus say it.
But what does value mean?
Is value the price of something? For example, the FREE Pocket Course has a lot of amazing information, but does that make it valuable?
Would it be more valuable if I packed it up into a book, put a price on it, and then gave it away for free?
The truth is that value doesn’t have a solid definition when it comes to business, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. To figure this out let’s think about the last thing you bought that made you happy or mad.
The Emotional Experience
People buy by emotions.
What does that mean? It means that our emotions dictate our buying purchases which should also mean that our emotions dictate whether we see something as valuable or not.
If something makes us feel good then we can see the value in it. If something doesn’t make us feel good it’s hard to see the value.
If I buy an apple for $0.25 it’s easy to say that’s amazing value and it is until I bite it and it tastes like shit. Then I no longer think that the $0.25 was great value.
Free wouldn’t even be good value in that case.
A couple of years ago, my wife and I went out to dinner for our anniversary. She picked a nice little spot where we got the Chef’s Choice dinner. If you don’t know what that is it’s when the Chef chooses what you eat.
You have no say.
The price of this was $150. If you were to just know the price then it’s easy for many to say that it’s not worth its value.
But remember, value is dictated by the feelings we get from it and let me tell you, it’s the only meal that we’ve eaten that my wife brings up every single year.
We had a blast, the food was delicious, and it was a memorable experience.
We received more than enough value to the point where the price was forgotten.
So I guess the question is what makes someone feel a positive response to the thing they paid for?
Value Is Getting What You Want
This one is tricky because if I plan to go out to eat then spending $150 on food doesn’t make sense if what I believe I want is just food.
When you’re hungry you don’t go looking for the $80 steak. You look for something convenient and that’s why we don’t mind eating fast food.
It’s rarely delicious, but it gives us what we want. The removal of hunger.
However, that’s not always what we really want. For example, going out to dinner with my wife, yes I want good food, that’s usually the minimum.
But what I really crave is a night of great discussion and memories. Those make me feel a lot better than just good food and so that’s what I really want, but I don’t always know or think about that.
We understand the functional (I am hunger) but rarely consider the emotional (I want to laugh and have a good time).
Emotional always trumps functional but functional has to be in place for everything to work out.
It’s hard to have a great time out with my wife if the food never arrives and I’m starving.
Putting Value Into Your Offers
Many business owners mistake more things for value.
Think about the thought process behind creating a book. More pages means more value, right?
Only if each of those pages brings about a positive emotional response. But usually what happens?
The reader gets 40% through the book and wonders why it wasn’t a blog post instead. The value of the book diminishes because the emotional response to it stops being positive.
It doesn’t matter how little you paid for the book, it doesn’t feel like it provides value.