For many small businesses, price wars become a dilemma. At the end of the day, business owners often believe that advertising low prices will bring droves of new business through the door. Nonetheless, Russell Ruffino challenges this concept, and has done so with smashing success.

Who Is Russell Ruffino?

Before we get into why price-based advertising simply isn’t the way to go these days, it’s important that you understand just who is behind this idea. Russell Ruffino was your average Joe. Working as a bartender for $500 per week, he was in the midst of the rat race, working paycheck to paycheck at a job that he simply didn’t enjoy anymore.

After several years in the rat race, Ruffino was fed up. He was ready to do something meaningful with his life, and soon, walked away from his job. In doing so, Ruffino founded Clients-on-Demand, which quickly grew to become a multi-million-dollar company. Today, Ruffino enjoys a level of success that most can only dream about, and he has gotten there by challenging the status quo in everything that he has done.

Russell Ruffino Is Onto Something With Price Based Advertising

In following Mr. Ruffino, I’ve learned that there are several problems with allowing your business to get involved in the price war. Among the largest are:

The Types Of Customers That You Will Attract :

When your advertising is centered around the price of your product or service, the people that you are actually targeting are bargain shoppers. Sure, it’s great to make a sale, but are bargain shoppers really the types of customers that you want to tailor to.

Think about it, the bargain shopper may be brought in by a great ad about a great product at a great price. However, when you price your product or service at a bargain, you’re not making very much money with each sale. So, you quickly become reliant on repeat business from those that see your ad.

The problem with that is that most bargain shoppers simply aren’t loyal. If they can save a dollar going to your competitor and buying a product or service of lesser quality, they generally will. So, you find yourself going through a constant revolving door of paid ads, small earnings and a need to produce more paid ads to generate more pennies.

Customer Service Becomes Inadequate :

When running your business based on the price of your service, you may drive quite a few new customers through the door. However, you’re not going to make much money from each customer. So, your business quickly becomes a volume business. That sounds great, but volume isn’t a good thing.

Russell Ruffino explains that by pricing your product or service higher, you will have the opportunity to make more money with each customer. As a result, you will have more time to spend with each customer, giving you the ability to provide the top-quality service that high-end clients expect to see. This ultimately leads to repeat business and referrals of other potential high-end customers.

So, How Do You Find Clients That Are Willing To Pay The Big Bucks?

Believe it or not, this process isn’t quite as difficult as you may think. In fact, finding the high-end clients that can take your business to the next level is as simple as making a few ads on social networks with fine-tuned targeting.

The idea here is not to target the masses. Instead, it’s important to target people that actually need your product or service. For example, if you’re a business consultant, instead of advertising to everyone, go to social media and only advertise to business owners, CEOs and other members of upper management. By tuning your ads to your high-end customer base, you may pay a little more on a pay-per-view basis, but you will have the benefit of knowing that everyone that sees your ad has the potential to be a meaningful customer.

Final Thoughts

If you’re a small business owner that is getting tired of the price war, it’s time to walk away from it. Instead of competing based on prices, it’s time to compete based on quality. Simply provide the best product or service that you can, and when you do, target your marketing efforts to those that are in NEED of this product or service. In doing so, you can escape the price war and start increasing your margins, allowing you to provide better customer service, improve your opportunities to scale, and stop wasting time on customers that simply aren’t going to make you the big bucks.