Price Vs Value – What is Important to You?
We’ve been very fortunate over the years to have worked with many great clients from across Canada, the U.S. and from many different industries. We love working with them because as Mad Men’s Don Draper would say, “they get it”.
But to establish a great relationship with a client, it takes some dialogue to determine their needs and wants, and to establish if there is a fit. Many things can come into play for each party. Some clients are purely focused on budget, others on quality. Herein lies the topic of this post.
Hiring an Agency vs Hiring an Independent Contractor
As a Branding and Marketing Agency, we have a broad range of capabilities spanning from graphic design and website development to brand management and marketing. Most initial inquiries from a prospective client start where they ask if we provide a specific service like website development or logo design; generally, the inquiry is purely based on how inexpensively we can complete the project. From our perspective, budget is only one important component of a project. There are other factors that are just as important like quality, delivery time and project scope.
That brings us back to the question of price versus value.
What is Value?
To us, value is not just the end result of delivering a quality project to our client; it’s also about nurturing the relationship. It’s about focusing on short term goals and long term vision. Value is making sure that what we deliver every time we interact with them, fits into an ongoing plan for their business and their brand. Lastly, value means that when we interact with our clients – whether in person, on the phone or via email – we leave them with “jewels of information” about branding, marketing initiatives, technology, business and project management.
This value is something that is often lost in translation when a business owner makes a choice to hire an online independent/freelancer for a specific task like logo design or website development. It’s time consuming to communicate requirements and manage a number of different freelancers as they work on your brand and marketing piecemeal. Would you even know how to effectively provide the proper technical and creative direction to accomplish your vision? It will be up to you, or someone else on your team, to ensure consistency and proper brand management for both your short and long term business goals. In many cases, you are putting your brand AND your business into the hands of a faceless person possibly halfway across the world who may or may not understand your requirements, your marketplace, or your business culture.
How important is your business to you?
What sacrifices are you making when you put budget ahead of value? Do you want to spend your time managing freelancers or do you want to spend it building your business? If the price seems too good to be true, it probably is! Ask what is included in the price; understand what is not included.
Consistent Brand Management
Hiring a reputable branding and marketing agency means that your brand will be managed consistently by an entire team of professionals who are good at what they do. An agency can help you ask tough questions about what will set your brand apart, removing the need for managing various freelancers to move your brand forward. Plus, building a relationship with an agency over time means they become more familiar with your business culture and are more likely to represent your brand in an “authentic” way. It also means they’ll be more nimble to respond to requirements when deadlines surface.
So ask yourself what is more important — price or value? What would it mean for your business if you placed importance on both — kind of like we do. That could mean we’d be a good fit for your project. Give us a call at 778.298.1966 or Toll Free 1.855.298.8650 or complete our online form and let’s find out!
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