Cheap vs. Affordable: How Positioning Impacts Customer Perception of Your Brand

At first glance, the words cheap and affordable seem to mean the same thing – low price. But in your customer’s mind, cheap can also translate to low quality. Messaging is just as important as selling your products and services. So, considering how word choice or “positioning” affect customer perception is critical to gaining buy-in and cultivating brand loyalty.

For example, naming the initiative to produce a vaccine to combat COVID-19 Operation Warp Speed only adds to the skepticism surrounding the vaccine’s safety, despite its efficacy, instead of instilling trust in the campaign.

That’s why positioning and messaging are essential to the success of your sales strategy. Although growing competition can make it tempting to acquiesce to a price war, balancing your offerings with incentives will prevent you from devaluing your brand and jeopardizing your place in the market.

So, positioning your business as affordable peels back the veil of price and communicates value. This is a critical distinction that can mean the difference between a one-time purchase and creating a customer for life.

Read on to learn how brand positioning can strengthen customer relationships and increase profitability in the long run.

What is Brand Positioning?

Much like it sounds, brand positioning is the act of purposefully positioning your business in your customers’ minds in memorable and specific ways. 

The goal is to create unique impressions that link your brand with something desirable when customers are considering where to spend their dollars. These impressions can look like customer service, loyalty programs, product promotion, packaging, and even store layout.

While price is a strong consideration for most customers, it shouldn’t be your end game strategy. Relying on being “cheap” can backfire and attract the wrong types of customers who will quickly switch to a competitor when their prices drop below yours.

Supplementing price with other unique offerings, on the other hand, is key to growing and maintaining your customer base. For example, when you think of a brand like IKEA, you not only think of low prices, but you also think about their unique store layout and the experience of assembling their furniture.

Thus, positioning yourself as affordable instead of cheap elevates your business as an empathetic partner rather than an impersonal transaction. It also makes room for defining the characteristics that make your business uniquely qualified to solve your customers’ problems.

How to Strengthen Your Brand Positioning Strategy

Successfully positioning your brand will ultimately determine how much “mental real estate” you have when your customers are searching for solutions to their problems.

To get that prime mental real estate, consider these two factors:

1. Assess your business value proposition

Effective brand positioning requires a deeper understanding of your value proposition. Value proposition, or the unique set of promises and deliverables your business offers, are the bread and butter of your brand identity. These values help you determine how you differ from your competitors and shape your communication strategy.

If you strive to offer lower prices, for example, ask yourself why. Incorporate these answers into your marketing strategy. Perhaps you developed a more efficient way of doing things than your competitors. Or maybe you streamlined your supply chain to pass along savings to customers.

Understanding what makes you different and communicating it clearly and consistently reinforces your brand messaging and recall.

2. Focus on your customers’ core needs and values

Doing a deep dive into your audience dynamics and mapping their behavior is essential to developing a brand positioning strategy that works for your business.

People like to do business with companies they feel embody their attitudes and values. Thus, having a deeper understanding of your customers’ pain points and motivations can help you position your brand to offer more effective solutions on the channels most relevant to them.

Key Takeaways

Brand positioning is a key aspect of fostering long-term relationships with your customers. Identifying how you differ from competitors and understanding your customers’ needs are essential to creating lasting impressions that drive retention.

Relying on price alone as a competitive advantage is unsustainable. Supplementing price with unique offerings elevates your business, leading to more robust customer engagement and increased profitability.