Are you charging enough money?

One of my main functions as a marketing consultant is helping my clients to increase their income. On a catch-up call yesterday, one told me she has signed five new clients in the past few weeks at new pricing, none of whom batted an eyelid.

The additional income is nice, but the impact is more profound than that - to charge more money requires a stronger appreciation of the value that you provide, which improves confidence in what you do.

It can help stop you looking at what you do as a transactional service, and see it more as a value-add that brings tangible results for your clients.

Here are a few ways you can do this in your business, too:

Stand out.

We see it here everyday, don’t we? “I build websites. I do SEO. I run Facebook ads.”

But if a hundred people all offer the same thing, what separates you? Very quickly you find yourself competing on price and in a race to the bottom against your competitors.

Worst of all, though, is the fact that talking about the tactics requires a level of marketing knowledge in your prospective clients. They may not know they need SEO, or that Facebook ads can reach hyper-specific people who desperately need their service. Watch people’s eyes gloss-over when you mention “responsive website”.

Imagine a doctor advertising that “We have Aspirin!”

Or a shoe shop “We have multi-textile uppers with air-cushioned soles.”

Big whoop. Very few people would be enticed by that, because frankly, no one gives a shit about the ‘how’.

They want the result.

“We can solve your aches and pains”

And

“Run faster without shin pain”

Now you’ve got a tangible solution to a problem people want solved.

So put that into a business scenario. “Get more visitors and boost revenue without relying on advertising. Beautiful websites that look incredible on every device. Reach the exact people who need you, at a fraction of the cost of traditional advertising.”

People don’t want marketing; they want customers and revenue.

Recognize that you are taking them from pain to pleasure.

2. Change your name

Continuing from the above, have a service that suggests only you do what you do.

It’s not difficult to find someone who will do your SEO or PPC or website or email marketing, or whatever.

Or an Automated Revenue Booster that fills up a pipeline with high-quality leads, without a requirement for the client to do anything?

Or a Website Optimization Service that brings people to the website, moves them through a buying funnel and converts them into buyers?

Now you’ve got my attention. Better yet, looking that up on Google won’t reveal a million competitors - because they’re still fighting it out over SEO and PPC, when really the prospects just want the results of those tactics.

3. Recognize the cost of cheap

This applies in multiple ways. First, it’s well known that people don’t value free or cheap things as much as more expensive things.

You may think that building a website for ￡250 makes it a no-brainer for the client to say yes. But do you think a serious business owner will believe that’s going to be a high quality website? You would be - by far - their cheapest employee, yet promising to improve their business. They pay someone more than that every week to clean the office.

I recently saw a guide someone put together on improving sleep. The sales page was actually pretty good, and I was tempted to buy it - until I saw the price. $7. I immediately lost all faith, because I didn’t have the confidence that $7 would have revolutionary content. I reached out to the author and told him, and to my surprise he came back with a thank you and decided to improve it so he could charge more for it. Just the notion of increasing the price made him want to make it even better.

There are always people who will buy cheap, and if that’s intentionally your market then I’m not trying to persuade you otherwise. Those people need options, too.

But if you don’t want clients who don’t value what you do, and you want to have more revenue without taking on more and more clients, it’s possible.

Which brings me to the second way that ‘cheap’ has a cost: type of client.

Many businesses acknowledge that their most difficult clients are the ones who want everything cheap or free. These clients often want extras, haggle over every detail, expect access to you at all hours, and generally increase your stress levels.

If you think people won’t pay more, let me assure you of this: you’re wrong.

Too often we work on a foundation of fear. “I can’t charge more, someone else does it cheaper.”

Yep, and it will always be that way. I tell my clients not to charge based on what others charge, but on the value you bring.

Sure, you may struggle to charge double the price of Tony down the street if you both just offer SEO. But when your service is bringing a steady stream of highly relevant visitors to the site to increase revenue without relying on paid advertising, suddenly your value is higher and your fee can reflect that.

This is 99% of the time a mindset problem. An easy fix is to find just one person or company charging more than you. That’s all it takes to recognise that it’s possible.

People buy their food at Billy's! Do you think they don’t realise Aldi exists?

People pay hundreds of pounds for a haircut, with full knowledge that cheaper hairdressers are close by.

People pay more for different car brands, shampoo, milk, clothes.

Why? Because of the perceived value.

Focus on value over cost, and bear in mind that while not everyone will be able or willing to pay more, you will by default require fewer clients anyway.

4. Be good

This should go without saying, but it would be remiss of me to not mention it:

To charge more money, you have to deliver what you promise.

If you promise to bring in a stream of relevant quality to the website and their traffic goes down and bounce rate goes up, they’ll be upset.

If you promise a beautiful website that works on every device, and it looks like shit on a phone, you’ve got a problem.

Understand that what I’m talking about is not a unilateral price increase. It’s to revisit your value proposition and bring your prices in line with the value that you provide.

Credits: Rich White ( C/o U.K Business Owners)