4 Strategies to Effectively Price Services

4 STRATEGIES TO EFFECTIVELY PRICE SERVICES FOR SMALL BUSINESSES

How should I present my services to new clients?

There’s one thing I know for sure—trying to figure out how to price products and services is tough. You need to look at your competition, determine what the market will bear, and find that sweet spot where you can still charge premium prices and feel valued.

I know I’ve wracked my brain on this topic, and so have dozens of my clients! I’ve learned that packaging your services around the value you bring rather than time is directly related to greater profits and revenue.

So, how do you “package your value”?

Here are four effective strategies to help you do just that:

1. Turn Your Services into a Product

This is another way of saying, “Turn intangibles into tangibles.” Make your services “on the shelf” ready to be picked up and purchased just like a product. Too often, service-based businesses fall into the trap of itemizing what they provide. Instead, package your services in a way that makes them tangible and easy to understand.

2. Break Each Stage of Your Service into Deliverables

Give each step a branded name with perceived value. This approach not only clarifies what clients are getting at each stage but also makes it easier for them to understand the benefits and results of your service. By breaking down your service into a series of deliverables, you create a clear path your clients can follow, which builds trust and confidence in your offerings.

3. Start Using Price Anchoring

Price anchoring gives people a frame of reference for valuing your product. Show the full price next to the discounted price, and stack three “versions” of your product side by side (with a value for each and what’s included). This strategy will guide customers to choose the product you want them to choose. Price anchoring helps customers see the relative value of your offerings and makes it easier for them to make a decision.

4. Create Different Price Packages

Value package your products and services for different budgets and offer your clients options. Providing a low-cost version of your product and then ranging to a more comprehensive package will help you avoid giving away your time for free.

A value package allows you to cater to different segments of your market, providing a range of options that suit various budgets and needs. This not only increases your potential customer base but also encourages upselling your services to higher-tier packages.

Final Thoughts

Once you’ve created these packages, remember to showcase them prominently. Display them on your website, include them in emails, and feature them in your offer letters. Consistently highlighting your packages will ensure that potential clients are aware of the value you provide and the options available to them.

By implementing these strategies, you can package your services in a way that highlights their value, making it easier for clients to understand and appreciate what you offer. This, in turn, will help you command premium prices to grow your business.

6 Tips for Boosting Sales

There comes a point in every quarter when businesses face an “oh-boy” moment as they review their sales numbers.

Sometimes, this moment brings a sigh of relief, but more often than not, it induces panic and fear due to underwhelming figures. This is when the marketing and business development teams are tasked with generating additional clients and sales. Having experienced this scenario many times, here are six proven strategies to boost your sales effectively.

1. Offer Seasonal Promotions

Seasonal promotions can be a powerful tool to attract clients during peak times of the year. Whether it’s a holiday sale, a back-to-school discount, or an end-of-financial-year offer, these promotions can significantly boost interest and drive sales without permanently lowering your regular pricing structure. Regardless of your business type, you can tie promotions to specific times of the year and create a sense of urgency by offering a 10-20% discount for new clients.

2. Bundle Your Services

Offering bundled services at a slightly reduced rate can encourage higher sales volumes. Bundling services makes your offerings appear more valuable while providing clients with a comprehensive solution that meets multiple needs. Ensure the bundled price is appealing yet profitable. Promote these bundled services to your best clients as an incentive to try new offerings, including services they haven’t experienced yet.

3. Utilize Tiered Pricing

Tiered pricing allows you to cater to various client segments by offering different levels of service. Clearly outline what each tier includes and the benefits to the client. For example, a “Basic” tier might offer essential services, while a “Premium” tier could include additional support and advanced features. This strategy helps attract new clients at the lower tier and potentially upsell them to higher tiers as they recognize the value of your services.

4. Offer a Money-Back Guarantee

If feasible, consider offering a money-back guarantee to reduce the risk perception for potential clients. This is particularly effective in competitive markets where clients may hesitate to invest without seeing immediate results. A guarantee demonstrates confidence in your services and can improve conversion rates. Specify the guarantee’s applicability, such as limiting it to one of your “Basic” packages or new clients only.

5. Revisit Lost RFPs/Sales from the Past Two Years

Revisiting lost opportunities from the past two years can present an easy way to reengage with relationships that have already been established. Determine if these prospects are content with their current providers. Often, “buyer’s remorse” can lead to opportunities for you to offer better solutions or engage in new projects. Never consider a lost sale as a failure; instead, view it as a future opportunity.

6. Leverage Testimonials and Case Studies

Showcasing testimonials and case studies can significantly bolster your sales efforts. Launch a campaign highlighting success stories from satisfied clients, providing tangible evidence of your services’ value. Include specific outcomes and metrics to give potential clients a clear understanding of the benefits they can expect. For example, a case study demonstrating a client’s 30% revenue increase after upgrading to a higher service tier can be incredibly persuasive. This approach validates your pricing, builds trust, and makes it easier for clients to justify their investment.

Final Thoughts

Incorporating these sales strategies can help boost your sales and build a framework for long-term profitability. Effective sales and marketing programs require ongoing adjustments based on market feedback, but with the right approach, you can achieve sustainable business growth.

Starting Social Media for Your Small Business

“I’m stuck. I don’t know where to start with social media for my small business.”

Does that sound familiar? If so, you’re not alone! Today, social media is one of the biggest challenges many small business owners face. Just this week, a client of mine was stuck on this very issue.

My client, a passionate entrepreneur running a small financial advisory firm, was overwhelmed by the sheer number of social media platforms and the constant need to generate engaging content. She confessed that she didn’t know where to start, so she had avoided it altogether.

When I asked her how she was handling social media, she admitted, “I just don’t do it. I don’t know what to post, and I feel paralyzed by the options.”

Strategy and Planning

The reality is that sometimes you know there are things you need to do to grow your business, but indecision and paralysis stop you from getting there. This usually stems from a lack of strategy and planning. Here’s how we tackled her social media challenge:

Step 1: Define Your Goals

The first step is to identify what you want to achieve with your social media presence. Whether it’s increasing brand awareness, driving traffic to your website, or boosting sales, having clear goals will guide the rest of your strategy.

- Brand Awareness: Are you looking to increase your brand’s visibility and attract more followers?

- Customer Engagement: Do you want to engage more with your audience and build a community?

- Lead Generation: Are you aiming to generate more leads and convert them into customers?

Step 2: Know Your Audience

Understanding who your target audience is will help you tailor your content. Create buyer personas to identify their interests, preferences, and behaviors. This makes it easier to create content that specifically speaks to them.

Step 3: Select the Right Platforms

You don’t need to be on every social media platform. Pick the ones that align with your business goals and where your audience spends most of their time. For instance:

Instagram: Great for visual content and engaging younger audiences.

Facebook: Ideal for community building and sharing a variety of content types.

LinkedIn: Perfect for B2B businesses and professional networking.

Twitter: Useful for real-time updates and client interaction.

Step 4: Create a Content Calendar

We immediately got to work and created a content calendar. When tackling the challenge of content creation, you really need a plan that outlines what content to post, when to post it, and on which platforms. This removes the guesswork and ensures consistency.

Content Mix: Balance promotional content with educational and entertaining posts.

Frequency: Determine how often you’ll post on each platform.

Themes: Plan out themes for each week or month to keep your content varied and engaging.

Step 5: Leverage Tools and Automation

Setting up a system for social media management helps automate the process, saving time and reducing stress. Tools like Hootsuite, Buffer, and Canva can help schedule posts, track performance, and create visually appealing content.

Scheduling: Use tools to schedule posts in advance, ensuring a consistent posting schedule.

Analytics: Track your performance to see what’s working and adjust your strategy accordingly.

Design: Use graphic design tools to create professional-quality visuals quickly.

Overcoming Indecision and Just Starting

By setting up a system for managing her social media, my client felt like it was doable. The more you can automate your routine, the faster you’ll achieve your desired results. Now, she never gets caught in the indecision and paralysis trap.

Engage and Evaluate

Once you start posting, engage with your audience. Social media is all about building relationships and communication – so make sure to do that – respond back to their comments on your posts. Regularly evaluate your performance and adjust your strategy based on the insights you gather.

Conclusion

Getting started with social media for your small business doesn’t have to be daunting. With clear goals, a well-defined audience, a solid content plan, and the right tools, you can create a powerful social media presence.

Rethinking Marketing | 2022 Survey of Today’s Marketing Department

This survey offers key insights into how today’s marketing departments are handling the current pressures facing the department, from changes due to the pandemic, and where the marketing budget and strategy currently stand.

During the second half of 2020 and throughout 2021, B2B marketing departments across the U.S. had to handle virtual employees, canceled conferences, remote events, and drastically modified business strategies, all under the pressures of limited headcount and severely reduced budgets.

We wanted to better understand where these pressures were coming from and how marketers were successfully handling the added responsibility.

Our survey was sent to marketers at all job levels, and we received 71 completed responses. Our demographics are at the end of the survey results.

Download Full Survey

Our results brought some interesting findings to light.

Marketers are happy.

Marketers are happy when they are doing what they are supposed to do each day. But they are getting overloaded with work and are not feeling they have the resources to achieve the right results.

Marketers have too many core jobs.

Marketers are being asked to do too many core jobs at once, making it difficult to achieve quality consistently. And we found that over 30% were doing roles outside of the marketing department.

What is the solution?

I think one of the marketers said it best – “I want the resources and the time to do my job well, so I can feel proud of what I’ve accomplished for the company.”

We’ve all gone through challenging times; we now need to analyze our marketing departments and make sure we are structuring and supporting them for success – for marketers and the company.

Download the Survey's Executive Summary

Download the Survey’s 8-Key Takeaways in the Executive Summary

Download the Full 2022 Survey

Download the Full Survey of Today’s Marketing Department

About Us

Jennifer and Sara each has over 25 years of marketing leadership experience, specializing in B2B organizations. They met in 2008 in the marketing department of Grant Thornton LLP and discovered a shared passion for quality campaigns that deliver measurable results.

This survey was carefully designed to capture the comments they consistently heard from marketing colleagues and identify marketing department trends.

Jennifer Palmer Farrington
Chief Executive Officer | Founder
YourMarketer LLC

Sara Janjigian Trifiro
President | Founder
SJT Marketing LLC

Marketing Tech and Trends | Accounting & Finance Show Americas 2021

Marketing tech and trends: How to use marketing to create measurable revenue

Accounting & Finance Show Americas 2021 | May 18, 2021

Moderator: Jennifer Palmer Farrington, Founder & CEO, YourMarketer LLC

- Is your technology talking to each other?
- How can you adjust your CRM to fluidly inform your sales team?
- How are you measuring the ROI on your content?
- Standardizing client NPS to create communication and inform changes

Nancy Leibig, Director, Brand and Marketing Strategy, Crowe

Sarah Cirelli, CMO, Grassi

Bruce Ditman, CMO, Marcum

Stephanie Koutsares, Sr. Manager, Baker Tilly

How to Create Killer Content

How To Create Killer Content

Today, there is a never-ending flow of “content” and “thought leadership” available for B2B companies.

Thoughtfully created and properly targeted content can be evergreen and attract new clients to your business. Very often, however, content is created just for content’s sake, without a strategy to engage the right audience or track and measure its success. The result is basically noise.

To cut through all this noise you need to take a few crucial steps that will ensure you are reaching your audience at the right time.

Your first 2 steps

The first two things you need to consider in detail are:

1. Who is your target audience?
2. How are you going to measure the success of the content you produce for your audience?

1. Identifying your audience

The first step in the content marketing process is taking a moment to figure out who your content is going to target.

The answer to that question can be more challenging than expected, especially if your company works with a wide range of clients across multiple industries or provides numerous services in specialised fields.

If this is a piece on a service that crosses multiple industries, start by identifying your best clients. These clients are the ones you are most connected to, the most comfortable with, and the ones most likely to provide you with a referral.

Even if it is a specific topic, picture a client that fits the criteria and write as if you are speaking directly to them.

This is a useful starting point because you are at your most comfortable communicating with this audience. Discussions feel natural when you are talking to someone with whom you are at your most comfortable.

What’s in it for them?

Once you have that specific audience member in mind, consider how your content topic will benefit them and how it will help their company in the long run.

I picture sitting down and talking over dinner, where we are relaxed and chatting excitedly about an interesting service and topic that is going to help their company save money or get to the next level. From there, expand this process out to other companies similar to your ideal client to create your target audience.

Craft the content

Don’t be afraid to use a ghostwriter to craft the initial draft of the piece. Writing isn’t natural for everyone. In the accounting industry and in other professional service firms, writing isn’t always an inherent talent. Using a professional writer who can sit with someone for an hour on the phone to create an initial draft, helping to get an article started, is money well spent to provide original content.

Reach Your Audience

Once your content is created, you need it to reach your target audience.

Timing: When to publish

Firstly – and I can’t stress this enough – timing is everything. To reach your audience with content they care about, you need to be strategic in selecting the most optimal time for its release.

An clear example for my industry is providing our year-end tax tips in December, not in May. That same content−no matter how well made will not perform as well if it’s pushed out at the wrong time of year.

Channels: Where and how to distribute

Displaying your content in the right places is just as important. To create the optimal mix, think about where your audience receives their information. Some possibilities to consider include:

- Associations: If your content is specific to a trade or industry, pushing it with that association is a great way to get it distributed. Associations have a critical mass of large, specialised memberships. Fostering a strong relationship with these groups is extremely helpful. They can push your content to their membership and provide you with speaking opportunities.
- Website SEO: If you are posting your content to a blog or on your website as an article, you need to use the right keywords to drive traffic to your content. This can get sophisticated with proper coding for increased SEO, but it is well worth the extra time it takes.There are many plug-ins for WordPress and other sites that can assist with SEO and keywords, ensuring you are getting the most out of your content and making it easy for people to find it.
  And everything, please, for the sake of all the time you’ve invested on writing your content, needs a call-to-action, such as a way for visitors to contact you or vice versa. What is the next step that you want them to take? Make it clear what action you want your audience to do or take after consuming your content.
- Social Media: If you are planning to promote your content through a paid ad strategy, social media can be a great option. Most platforms allow for highly targeted ads at extremely cost-effective pricing levels. Targeting can be broken down based on industry, title, and location, giving your ads a laser focus to reach that food manufacturing business owner in Pennsylvania, for example.
- External Publications: Marketing and PR departments should look to publish content both internally and externally. You need to get as much amplification for your content as possible, otherwise you are speaking into a vacuum.
- Public Speaking Opportunities: Look into turning your article into a presentation for a trade or industry association event. Speaking opportunities are incredibly helpful for sharing content. Public speaking opportunities allow you to meet prospects face-to-face. While smaller in scale than a national media campaign, these personal interactions create the strongest relationships, especially for B2B partnerships which are built on trust.
- Repurposing: If the core criteria of creating meaningful, evergreen content with a purpose and a specific audience is met as outlined above, the content can be reused to have a longer shelf-life. Transcribe a video to create an article. Repost a piece of thought leadership to your blog or website a year later with a new intro paragraph. Convert a case study into an infographic. Good content is good content.
- Webcasts: Your presentations can also be repurposed as a webcast. Unlike the more personal interactions provided by a public speaking engagement, webcasts offer a larger, national audience. The numbers are also greater, especially if the webcasts are offered on-demand. Offering CPE or CLE professional credits can draw in a bigger audience while remaining targeted to an industry or title.
- Infographics for Social Media: All audiences want easy digestible and visually appealing content. Infographics accompanying a longer form article or webcast help attract more viewers, increase engagement, and draw leads in the door and are easy to post on social media.
- Sponsored Content: Earned media gives you a broader reach, and those links can be shared on social channels and your website. Using content for an op-ed before it goes on your website provides a much wider audience and the halo effect of being recognised by a media outlet. If you can’t get your content published for free, sponsored content in a key publication for your audience is a great tool as well.

2. Measurement

Measuring and tracking success is important to understand whether your content campaign should be ramped up, wound down, or repeated in the future.

Simply put, if you’re not tracking performance, you are missing an opportunity to learn your current efforts and improve your next campaign.

If your primary goal is to get new visitors to your website, make sure you are leveraging technology to aid tracking. Be sure to review your website analytics and have your web pages fully integrated with your CRM capabilities.

You should know how many people are clicking across your webpages, which calls-to-action are most successful, how you are acquiring visitors what your top performing webpages are, typical amount of time visitors are on your website, and more.

While closely monitoring on a weekly basis is important to handle any unforeseen issues, the real measurement of a campaign should come after two months and be repeated every month for at least six months in total. Knowing what topics are “hot” to your audience based on hard metrics can guide your content development for the future.

B2BMarketing IgniteUSA 2020 Conference
May 27, 2020 | 5:15 EST

Jennifer Palmer Farrington | Founder and Chief Executive Officer, YourMarketer LLC

PRESENTATION DOCUMENTS:

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