If you want to charge more, start investing in your brand
What if you could get paid more for less work?
Yeahhhh sounds too good to be true!
But seriously, there is a strategy where you can start charging what your services are really worth while working with your ideal clients.
It’s pretty obvious really, but there are a few parts to this strategy that needs to be done right.
But hold your horses, this strategy is only viable for a select set of business owners…
How to position yourself as an industry expert
- Do you offer services with expertise behind them?
- Are you providing a better service or higher level of knowledge than your competitors?
- Are you already receiving regular leads and enquiries?
For a business where the product you are selling is knowledge, I always recommend the “go-to expert” strategy.
Here are some examples:
- Dog trainers
- Business consultants
- Accountants
- Interior designers
- Marketing experts
This strategy aims to target the customers who provide the most money for the least amount of effort.
“Go-to Expert” strategy goals:
- reduce timewasters and tyre kickers
- charge more for your services
- Introduce or increase “one to many” passive income streams.
This strategy is extremely powerful when there are lots of people who do what you do, but not many who do it well.
How branding yourself as an expert will let you charge more
If a 1 star hotel charges £60/night, and a 5 star hotel charges £150/night, which one do you want to be?
If you want to start charging more for your products and services, then you have to build a 5 star brand.
That’s why investing in your Brand adds value faster than it costs
When your customers trust your brand, they will see the value you offer and allow you to start charging what your services are really worth!
How to avoid competing on price
Are you working in a niche with many “happy amateurs“, or competitors who don’t offer the same level of quality as you do?
If so then you’ll find you are often competing on price.
This means you get lots of calls that end with…
“My aunt marge’s cousin’s mate from the pub says he can do it for half of what you’re charging!”.
Reducing your prices is the worst possible thing you could do.
The reason they want a cheaper price is because they believe the value your business is offering is equal to Marge’s cousin’s mate from the pub. If they don’t believe in the value you are offering then they will second guess your expertise, and undercut the value your business can offer.
You have to help them understand that your prices may be higher but you offer better value for money.
That means establishing yourself as the expert; when people see you as the go-to authority in your niche, you’re no longer competing with Marge’s cousin’s mate from the pub. You are the expert, you are in demand and price expectation adjusts accordingly. In short, this means you can charge much more for your services!
If at this point they still prioritize the cheapest price possible, then these people customers you should be targeting, or even want. If they don’t value it enough to pay for it then so be it, there are plenty of others who will.
Now, you are already an expert in your field and you are providing a high-value service, Now you have to communicate the higher value of your service to the world at large. This can be tricky as your trying to convince people who don’t know you that your expertise is more valuable than Marge’s cousin’s mate from the pub. The first part is building trust with your audience and establishing yourself as the expert in your niche. Here’s the breakdown of the strategy.
Branding Strategy
Brands are more than just a logo. For me, a brand is the story people hear about your business. Nike and Adidas trainers are basically the same, they cost the same, same quality, same function. But people choose to buy one or other because of the story the brand tells them. They buy because they want to project a story about their personality, values or lifestyle. The first part of the strategy is design and build a powerful brand that tells everyone your the “go to” guy for dog training. This needs to be communicated at every opportunity. In your logo, in your vehicle livery, your website, email signature, your social posts, anywhere you can think of. Branding is basically positive behavioural conditioning for your business 😂
You need to come up with brand guidelines that communicate your business message across every medium (print, web, social etc).
Website Strategy
The goals for the website won’t be about gathering more leads. You’ve told me you already have leads, and are in the fortunate position of being able to choose your customers with more prejudice. But at the moment you are probably missing out on a lot of “high ticket” leads because your website isn’t communicating the value of your service. In my experience the quality of leads from social is much lower than website traffic because they have only had one touchpoint with your brand.
People coming from websites have typically already found you on social but have taken the time to do more research and are looking for quality of service over price. They have multiple touchpoints with your brand and have had time to build trust in your authority. This is a customer who’s ready to spend time researching, and will spend more money for a better result.
I would recommend building a new website to…
- introduce people to your brand
- grease the wheels for a higher price
- build more trust in prime for the introduction call
- answer FAQs to weed out time wasters.
- Provide an online “knowledge hub” for dog training which gathers your online content (videos, blog posts, guides, how to’s etc).
- Provide a focal point for your marketing. Your social posts, email marketing, videos etc all build trust in you as the authority. But at the end, they should all be pointing at your website. Your website is the end of your sales funnel which leads to a call.
Digital Marketing
It also looks to me like you already understand at least some of this as you are already doing part of the “Go-to Expert” strategy already on Instagram and Youtube etc..
✅ Establish a social following
✅ Establish your expert status by giving away free value to establish trust and recognition.
✅ Paygate your high value content using Patreon, website membership or private groups etc.
✅ Package your services into bundles. Your standard service at the moment should become your “bronze” package.
✅ Then build on whatever extra value you can give ie (just an example)
Bronze- one-to-one training session
Silver- one-to-one training session + 2 follow up zoom consultations
Gold- one-to-one training session + 2 follow up zoom consultations + remote collar
Sales Strategy
One to One
There is a cap on how much you can earn from providing one-to-one services.
There is only so many hours in the day. Or you have to train and pay people to do one to ones for you.
But you can increase the amount you make by increasing how much you charge.
Once your brand as the go-to expert grows and your website builds more trust in your sales funnel you can start to charge more.
If you find your calendar is consistently full, start creeping your prices up 10-20% until people start to balk. Keep repeating this over time.
Some of my clients have found they can charge 200%-300% more than they thought they could.
One to many
You can earn consistent passive income in a lot of different ways.
Your product is knowledge about dog training.
There are many opportunities to create passive income streams for knowledge businesses.
You could paygate premium videos which can only be accessed by Patreon members for a small monthly fee.
You could create and sell “learn yourself” courses with text and video content. once you’ve done the work to create these you can continue to sell forever.
You could sell products which you buy wholesale.
You could earn affiliate commission by recommending products, services or partners such as dog walkers, dog grooming products, dog diet products which you endorse etc.
Summary
Remember at the beginning I talked about giving away value for free to build trust and establish yourself as the expert in your niche?
Well that’s exactly what I’ve just been doing with you. This is some free advice and ideas for your business. Some will be new, some you will already have known.
Obviously telling someone a broad strategy is different from putting it all into action, and that’s where there are opportunities for us to work together.
I’ve officially packed it in for the Xmas break now but if you’d like to chat over any of the above or work together to implement your strategy we can set up a meet after the New Year, just give me a ring!
