This post was originally published on DeckersMarketing.com (now defunct) on March 22, 2009.
What color are your eggs?
If you’re like most people, they’re white. But if you’re like those people who buy organic, all-natural anything, you probably buy brown eggs.
I’ll tell you a dirty little secret about those eggs: There’s no difference between brown eggs and white eggs. Eggs is eggs. There’s just one way to figure out what color of egg you’re going to get.
You get white eggs from white chickens, brown eggs from brown chickens. In fact, Ithaca College has a great chart that shows the world’s different poultry breeds and the color eggs they lay. You’ll see that the color of the chicken results in the same color egg.
There’s nothing special about brown eggs. They’re not healthier, they don’t have lower cholesterol, they aren’t organic. I worked in the international poultry industry for 10 years, and I can tell you that there is absolutely no difference in eggs or egg color. They come from brown friggin’ chickens, and if you’re paying more them than white eggs, you’re paying too much.
So what do brown eggs teach us about niche marketing? One very important lesson.
It’s how your customers perceive your value that makes you valuable. You may be just like all the other businesses out there, but if that’s how you distinguish yourself, then you’re going to become just another price-based commodity in the market. But if you create a niche and increase your perceived value, you can specialize in an industry, gain valuable experience, and thus, charge more.
In other words, be the brown egg. People buy brown eggs, because they think there’s something special about them, as if they’re somehow better than the white eggs, even though they’re not. They still make omelettes, they still make fried egg sandwiches, and neither is bad for your cholesterol (that myth was busted a couple years after it started).
But the specialty grocery stores and brown chicken farmers have created a special niche especially for people who are willing to spend more. They don’t sell them to the general public. Instead, brown chickens are rarer than white chickens (at least around here), so they sell brown eggs in specialty stores and to value-driven consumers. Hence the higher prices.
If I were a general copywriter – a white egg, as it were – I could charge between $50 – $75 per hour in my local market. And that’s what a generalist usually gets. But as a specialist — the brown egg — I could charge anywhere from $100 – $125 per hour.
Now there is a difference between the generalist and the specialist. While the specialist has a couple of industries they know better than anyone else, they can still do general assignments. But while the generalist can do general assignments, they can’t do the special ones as well as someone who lives and breathes that industry.
I have created my niche to be in the blogging and social media industries (and yeah, I can write about poultry products), because that’s where my passion lies. As a result, I’m more passionate about the products and technologies, more knowledgeable about the industries, and can create better results than someone barely acquainted with it. It means I charge higher rates than the general copywriter who says, “yeah, I can write about any area.” (Frankly, I can write about any area too, but by focusing on those specialty areas, I have created my special niche.)
In other words, I’m the brown egg. And as any organically-inclined specialty food shopper can tell you, I cost twice as much as the regular old eggs everyone else gets.
What color egg are you?
About Erik Deckers
Ok, white eggs DO NOT always come from white color chickens as you said above. And brown eggs don’t always come from brown chickens either, How someone can determine if a chicken lays brown eggs or white eggs is by looking at it’s ears(the fleshy appendage behind its eyes)if it is reddish like the comb and wattles, then it will lay a colored egg, if it is white, it will lay a white egg. Commercial egg laying chickens are called leghorns, there are many types of leghorns some are whie, some are brown, white leghorns AND brown leghorns both lay white eggs, Also white colored cornish cross chickens bred for meat will lay brown or light brown eggs because its “ears” are reddish just like the comb and wattles. So according to what you said, a white one will lay white eggs, a brown one will lay brown eggs, that’s just not true, you have to look at the ears to determine what color of eggs it will lay!
Putting on my backyard chicken owner hat…
I have Rhode Island Red and Black Star hens in my back yard. Both are brown egg laying birds. My daughter is the hen expert. What she has been taught is that brown eggs cost more because they are generally birds that are bigger or eat more, so there is a higher cost of feed per egg ratio. I’ve never raised a white egg breed to know if this is true or not.
I have found average #’s of eggs per hen by breed:
Leghorn (white eggs) – 280
Rhode Island Reds (brown eggs) – 260
Black Stars (brown eggs) – 300
Our Black Stars are new this year. We will most likely choose them over Rhode Islands in years to come.
What I’ve read is the nutritional content is impacted by what the chickens are fed more than the color of the egg. I don’t know if that is true or not. I’ve heard that freshness of the egg also impacts nutritional content.
My daughter based our purchasing choice of breeds on which birds she thought were prettiest.
So Erik, you deliver a quality product instead of a mass produced white egg and should be paid accordingly. If it is timely instead of a few weeks old, it should also cost more.
.-= Mary Biever´s last blog ..Along Came a Spider – Real Time Problem Solving =-.
You’re right about companies charging more because people don’t know any better. Why else do brown eggs cost 25 – 50% MORE than the regular white eggs? They’re just eggs. But how many people buy them because they think they’re somehow better?
Why are companies so hung up on hiring people who specialize in their industry, even though they only need a generalist? Hospitals that need someone who specializes in IT for healthcare. Manufacturers who want accountants who have a background in manufacturing? Because hospital computers are SO much different from the rest of the world’s computers, and manufacturers somehow use a different, more magical set of numbers than other businesses?
The one thing I didn’t mention in the post is that this idea assumes that the companies in general have an acceptable level of competence. This does not include the people who bought Photoshop last month and hung out their graphic designer shingle this month. This assumes that, say, two writers have an equal amount of skill and competence.
In this case, the one that distinguishes themselves as the brown egg — the one that says, “I specialize in writing about nonprofits and green energy alternatives” — is going to be perceived as being worth more than the one who doesn’t specialize in anything.
This means that the writer who distinguishes himself or herself has basically earned the right to charge more.
Good one Robby! LOL
“You just charge more, because people don’t know any better. :-)”
Awesome READ!
“It’s how your customers perceive your value that makes you valuable.”
People then to pay more on something, if they “think” there getting more out of it.
.-= Chriss´s last blog ..BlackBerry Curve Data on WiFi – No Data Plan Required =-.
So wait—you’re a brown egg?
By your own logic, you cost twice as much when in reality “there’s no difference between brown eggs and white eggs.”
You’re the brown egg because “people buy brown eggs, because they think there’s something special about them, as if they’re somehow better than the white eggs, even though they’re not.” So in other words, you’re not better than your cheaper counterparts. You just charge more, because people don’t know any better. :-)
.-= Robby Slaughter´s last blog ..IBJ: Killing the Operations Manual =-.