Devoted to small businesses and those who run them

Value adding can be a key aspect of your small business marketing strategy. 

What is Value Adding?: In its traditional sense value adding means adding value to an existing product or service.

Example: You can charge more for chocolate coated peanuts or roasted peanuts, than for the raw product. You can usually charge more for a tree's worth of milled lumber than the tree itself. 

Value Added Services: A small business can offer value added services to their basic service.

Example: While a freelance writer's core business may be writing, they can also offer editing as part of their service. When they write your business documents, they may also be able to arrange the printing for you. They are value adding their basic or core service. Value adding may also include a free service.

Value Added Products: When a store gives away a free sample or product with a purchase, or changes an existing product, they are value adding the product.

Example: A gourmet store may get stocks of a new line of homemade jams in basic jars. They add a fancy label, a ribbon, a desert recipe, a silver spoon and package it. They are now selling a value added product for which they can charge a lot  more.

Why Value Add? It is an established business principle that it costs less (time and money) to sell additional services or products to your existing customers, than to attract new ones. Value adding makes good business sense for small businesses.

Upselling: Upselling differs from Value Adding, but there is often a crossover. 

This is part of an ongoing Small Biz Mentor series on Basic Business Terms.