Your product’s worth is a matter of context

I was listening to a podcast with Andrew Wilkinson recently, the founder of Metalab, one of Silicon Valley’s largest design agencies.

In it, he mentioned how in the early days he leveraged the benefit of being in the digital world (where people can’t really see what’s on the back end) to somewhat hide the fact that the “agency” was only him on his parent’s basement.

He figured if his services were good, he might as well behave as a stablished company and charge accordingly.

Considering that, I figured it would be useful for some founders if I listed aspects that can help in setting the context and lift your user’s perception of trust and value of your product/service.

Those tips are largely well known, but the key thing to remember here is that no single aspect can be used alone – look at it in terms of setting a coherent context where each of the elements reinforce each other.

1. Objective high quality: Although people can be influenced by subjective aspects, having something that solves people’s problems is an awesome starting point.

2. Adjacent high quality: Things that are related to your product can be used as a proxy for its quality. Make sure you’re not neglecting the design and copywriting on your website or social media, for example. Great logo and brand identity goes a long way too.

3. Pricing: in the right context, customers tend to perceive high value as high quality.

4. Social Proof: People tend to be influenced by the perception of others. Reviews, Positive Star Ratings, Testimonials and Case studies, Media Publisher Quote, Safe Checkout Badge and Influencer Endorsements are all ways to build a context that invites trust and the perception of value.
   Supreme, for example, combines scarcity and social proof via collaboration with other brands and celebrities to charge $1000 for $10 shirts.

5. Scarcity bias: We unconsciously assume things that are scarce are valuable and things that are abundant are not. Only leverage this if it’s true, putting false 14 minutes countdowns can be seem as scammy.
   A good example is Amazon’s “Order this in 1h to receive by tomorrow” element on its product pages.

Those are the key ones for me.

I don’t like using “hacks” or “psychological triggers”, but I do recognize the power of setting the right context to influence the customer and be able to charge what we are worth!

Hope that’s useful.

Do you have a tip on something that made a huge difference in your ability to price or get more customers? Leave your comment!