The Brown Rice Principle: Why Some Singapore SMEs Charge More for the Same Service
Same service, very different price. One $500, the other $5,000. The gap is not quality. It is positioning. Here is how SMEs can make the shift.
Walk into a hawker centre and you'll pay $4 for a plate of brown rice with vegetables. Walk into a restaurant on Club Street and you'll pay $28 for the same combination, perhaps more artfully arranged, but fundamentally the same ingredients, the same nutrition, the same brown rice.
Seth Godin noticed this. He called it the brown rice principle: the product isn't what you're selling. The signal is.
The same insight explains why two web designers, same portfolio quality, same turnaround time, same software, can charge $800 and $8,000 for the same deliverable. Why one accounting firm gets corporate clients while another fights for $150 tax returns. Why some renovation contractors quote $120,000 for a 4-room HDB and close the deal, while others can't get traction at $60,000.
It's not the product. It's the signal the product sends.
What Customers Are Actually Buying
When someone pays premium prices, they're not purely paying for a better outcome. They're paying for three things.
Confidence. The higher price signals that the provider has enough experience and reputation to justify it. Cheap feels risky. If you're about to hire someone to redesign your company website, a $500 quote doesn't inspire confidence. It raises questions.
Risk reduction. Premium providers tend to attract clients who can't afford to get it wrong. A lawyer charging $600 per hour signals: I've done this before, you won't be my learning experience.
Belonging. Some purchases are identity signals. The marketing agency you hire, the accountant you use, the business coach you work with: these say something about the kind of business owner you are. People pay to belong to the right category.
None of this requires you to fundamentally change what you deliver. It requires you to change what you signal.
The Commodity Trap
Here's how most SMEs accidentally position themselves as commodities.
Their website looks like every other provider in the category: stock photos, generic taglines, no discernible personality. They lead with price in proposals ("competitive rates," "affordable packages"). They generalise the target client ("we work with all types of businesses"). They have no visible client list, case studies, or social proof. They respond to every enquiry regardless of fit.
Each of these sends the same signal: there's nothing differentiated about us, so we compete on price.
Once you compete on price, you attract clients who came for the price. They'll leave for the next cheaper option. You've trained your market to evaluate you on cost alone.
The trap is self-reinforcing. You're too busy servicing low-margin clients to invest in repositioning. The good-fit clients go elsewhere because your positioning doesn't speak to them. The cycle continues.
Four Levers That Shift the Signal
You don't need to change your service to change your positioning. You need to change what your business communicates.
1. Your online presence
Your website is doing more positioning work than any other asset you own. Before a prospect speaks to you, they've already decided where you sit in the market.
Generic template website with stock photos of handshakes? Commodity.
Clean, specific website that names the exact clients you serve, the specific problems you solve, and shows examples of real work? That's a premium signal.
The bar in most industries is low. Most SME websites look identical. If yours looks like it was built in a day using a $50 theme, that's exactly the signal it sends, regardless of how good the underlying service is.
The fix: Invest in one thing first. Not a full rebrand. Just better photography (of real work, real people, real spaces) and a specific positioning statement. "We help Singapore F&B businesses build digital channels that reduce platform dependency" is worth ten times more than "full-service digital marketing agency."
2. Who you say yes to
The clients you take on shape the clients you attract. This sounds obvious, but most SMEs accept any client who can pay. That generalism shows: in the portfolio, in the testimonials, in how you describe what you do.
Every time you take on a client who doesn't fit, you make it harder to attract the ones who do.
Premium businesses are specific about who they serve. Not because they're arrogant, but because specificity signals expertise. A branding agency that says "we only work with Singapore consumer food and beverage brands" is automatically more credible to F&B founders than a generalist agency that says "we work with all businesses."
The fix: Identify the category of client where you've done your best work. Lead all your marketing with that. It feels like narrowing. It actually expands.
3. How you communicate
This one is underestimated. The language in your emails, proposals, and social media is constant positioning work.
Compare two ways of following up after a proposal:
"Hi, just checking if you had a chance to review our quote. Happy to lower the price if needed."
vs.
"Happy to chat through the approach if you'd like to talk it through before deciding. No pressure. Want to make sure the fit is right for both of us."
The first signals desperation and commodity. The second signals confidence and selectivity. Same message, completely different positioning.
Your proposals, your onboarding materials, how you handle scope changes, how you communicate delays: every interaction is either reinforcing the premium signal or eroding it.
The fix: Audit one touchpoint at a time. Start with your proposal template. Read it back as a client. Does it communicate confidence or desperation? Specificity or vagueness?
4. Your social proof
Reviews and case studies do double duty: they provide evidence of results, and they signal the type of client you attract.
A testimonial from "John, Small Business Owner" is worth almost nothing. A testimonial from "Priya Ramasamy, Head of Marketing, [Recognisable Brand]" is worth a lot. The client you choose to feature signals who you work with.
Case studies are even more powerful when they're specific. "We helped a Tanjong Pagar F&B group reduce GrabFood dependency from 60% to 35% of revenue while growing total orders 20%" is dramatically more useful than "we helped a client improve their digital presence."
The fix: Identify your two or three best results. Build a proper case study from each. Put them on your website. Ask your strongest clients for testimonials that include their title and company name.
The Quick Audit
Five questions to assess where you're positioned right now.
- If a prospect Googled your category and landed on your website, would they know in 10 seconds exactly who you serve and what makes you different?
- Does your website show real photos of real work, or stock photography?
- When you send a proposal, do you lead with price or with your approach and rationale?
- Can you name the three types of clients who get the best results from working with you?
- Do you have at least two case studies with specific, measurable outcomes?
If you answered no to three or more, you're sending commodity signals, regardless of what your actual service quality looks like.
Starting the Shift
Repositioning doesn't require a rebrand, a new logo, or a website redesign. It starts with the cheapest lever: how you communicate.
A practical sequence that works for most service businesses:
Month 1: Fix your words. Rewrite your proposal template. Update your LinkedIn headline and About section. Change your email signature to include a specific descriptor (not "Founder" but "Helping F&B brands build owned revenue channels"). These cost nothing except an hour of honest reflection.
Month 2: Fix your proof. Pick your two best client results. Write them up as case studies with specific numbers. "Helped client increase lead volume" is useless. "Helped a Buona Vista tech startup increase qualified inbound leads by 40% in six months" is a premium signal. Put these on your website prominently.
Month 3: Fix your positioning statement. Most SME websites open with something vague like "Your trusted partner for business growth." Write a positioning statement that names who you serve, what you do for them, and what the outcome looks like. Specific beats generic every time.
Month 4 onwards: Raise your rates. Not dramatically, but deliberately. Test what happens when you quote 20% higher. You'll lose some prospects who were only there for the price. That's the point. You'll convert others who were waiting for a signal that you're worth it.
One important note: the repositioning has to be real. If you claim premium positioning but your delivery is inconsistent, your clients will correct the signal for you through bad reviews and poor referrals. The signal has to match the substance.
But for most SMEs reading this, the service quality is already there. The problem isn't what you deliver. It's that you're whispering when you should be speaking clearly.
The brown rice in that Club Street restaurant didn't change. The kitchen didn't get more sophisticated. The chef didn't win any awards. The signal changed: the plates, the lighting, the context, the story. And with it, the price the market was willing to pay.
Your service is probably better than you're charging for it. The question is whether your positioning tells that story.
If you're ready to stop competing on price, Magnified helps SMEs build digital marketing systems that attract the right clients at the right price point. Talk to us about your positioning strategy.