Module seven
your offerings
Watch the video below to listen to this page’s content, OR scroll to read the content instead:
Imagine how great it feels to finally finish a 2,000+ piece puzzle. The resolution that comes from placing the last piece is unmatched, which is why, in my family, we tend to fight over who gets to do it.
But what if you’re missing the final piece? That empty shape will haunt you for days as you search for it, ultimately deciding to just scrap the entire project and return all the other pieces to the box as an incomplete set. Feelings of dissatisfaction and frustration are sure to abound.
This is exactly how your clients or customers are looking at their own problems within their lives. They can feel the missing component, even if they can’t actually see what the issue is. But that unsettling feeling that things aren’t gelling the way they want them to remains, and it’s actually this discomfort that gives you an “in” and allows you to speak directly to their problem.
Your offerings are simply the missing puzzle pieces your clients are looking for.
Learning how to present what you offer as valuable, legitimate solutions to a problem your audience may not even realize they have is a crucial step in the development of a solid creative business. And once you’ve nailed the delivery of your offering, you can always look for ways to level up and further develop your solution.
Before you begin this module, make sure you take the time to complete the Brainstorm Your Offerings workbook.
MAXIMIZING YOUR CLIENTS
Before we look at improving your offerings, let’s fine-tune exactly what’s going into your products or services.
Your client will consider their entire interaction with your brand, however many years long, as their full client experience, and you want to make sure you’re providing a quality, positive experience on as many fronts as possible.
Consider the potential starting points. Most of your audience will hear about, see, or remember your business and immediately look for more information online. Do you have a website? Or an Instagram or Facebook page? Or maybe you’re selling on an existing platform, like Etsy?
Whatever landing pages you’re using, treat them like the widest part of a funnel. We’ll talk more about sales funnels in future modules, but as you’re crafting a red-carpet experience for your clients, it’s important to remember that the starting point is just as important as the finish line.
Here are a few reminders when it comes to developing a client experience that rocks your audience’s socks off:
Give a lot of time and effort to building out a website or landing page that converts like crazy. Once you’re able to spend less time selling and more time creating is when you’ll see the most growth in your business.
It’s easier to book a repeat customer than a new one. While you should definitely give plenty of attention to new inquiries coming in, always remember to give your existing customers and clients regular attention and look for new ways to level up what you’re providing to them. Keeping them happy will allow you to get repeat bookings with minimal added effort.
Look for ways to get more value out of your existing audience. Have people been requesting a certain service or offering? Even if it’s not directly in your wheelhouse or something you’re passionate about, consider the trade-off of catering to those needs vs. the time spent stepping outside your comfort zone.
Another important reminder is that it’s okay to be selfish. Part of maximizing your clients and learning how to develop a killer client experience is being smart about what you offer and how you offer it. A smart entrepreneur is one who always looks to come off better in the exchange of value.
Position your offerings to solve the correct needs, and your skills that seem second nature and that you might even take for granted might turn out to provide life-changing levels of relief and improvement in the lives of your audience.
As long as you’re not lying, it’s okay to be confident and sell yourself.
Here are some other ideas of ways to maximize your client relationships by getting more value for yourself and your business out of any customer or client transaction with you:
Always ask for testimonials so you have fresh marketing content to share.
Create a portfolio to show off your completed projects. After all that work, you can get more mileage out of it by sharing!
Develop a way to make money off rejects or unfulfilled projects. Maybe you sell the broken parts to someone who can use them for something else. Or maybe you can sell it in your shop or as a template/starting point for a different client.
Incentivize people to come back or share about your work. Provide them with sneak peeks that they’ll be eager to share on social media. Offer discount codes for returning customers.
Create a referral program! Encourage people to share about your business for you by establishing a standing referral program. By having others share in your marketing efforts, you can hopefully increase your inquiries at little monetary cost and very low time investment.
I’m happy to share about my referral program if it can help you get an idea of what to do for yourself.
When I develop a referral program, I look for a way to create value for three parties:
The person doing the sharing,
The person getting shared with, and
Me (of course)
I think the simplest way to do this is to offer a discount to the person getting the information and then send a referral reward gift to the person doing the sharing. As long as I make sure the cost of those discounts and gifts doesn’t cut too far into my profit, I’m receiving the generated value of a new client or customer without any effort on my part to acquire that lead.
Now that we’ve got a strong grasp on what we’re looking for in our offerings and their delivery within our client experience, let’s talk about how we can position those offerings for maximum appeal.
CREATING VALUE WITHIN YOUR OFFERINGS
If you want a customer or client to rave about your business, you’ve got to treat them like a celebrity. It makes sense that if your business is a cinematic production, your clients are the critics. Give them a red carpet experience, and they’ll be spreading their five-star reviews without batting an eye.
All that said, you can’t control what people think about or do with your business. You can only control what you offer and the way you make sure it appeals to your audience. You can do this by adding value, something we talked about in the Pricing section of the money module.
Let’s recap my tried-and-true pricing method:
COST + PERCEIVED VALUE = FINAL PRICE
We’ve touched on expenses and determining your cost of doing business, but now it’s time to work on that variable perceived value piece of the formula.
If you want to make more money in your business but you can’t take on more work, then you have two options: decrease the cost while leaving the final price the same (allowing more profit), or increase the value of your products and services, allowing you to manageably increase the rate without losing appeal.
It might feel like a long shot, but you’ll actually be amazed at the hidden value that already exists within your business. Simply by taking a look at what you’re offering and finding new ways to enhance your customer’s experience with your business, you’ll be able to transform your offerings into more value-packed productions that don’t require extra time and effort on your end.
Let’s walk through several easy ways you can simply and realistically add value to your products or services immediately, with actionable checklists to support each:
1 — Improve your sales skills. You don’t need to change anything about the offering or what is included if you can simply hone your sales skills and find a way to better communicate the value of your business.
Action tasks:
✓ Study up on your sales strategies and start implementing them immediately.
✓ Refine your portfolio or IG feed to only the best of your work.
✓ Start asking for testimonials in a post-project wrap-up email and then use them!
2 — Simplify your offerings. A confused customer does not buy. If you can identify the most popular offerings in your line-up or the most valuable aspects of a service, consider changing up what you provide with the purchase to just the parts that are most intriguing to your audience. This simple tweak might allow you to spend less time on delivery, meaning you can charge less or take on more clients, providing you with that increase in capacity and revenue without inhibiting the value your clients are sure to feel. In fact, they’ll likely be grateful for a bit of a savings!
Action tasks:
✓ Review every stage of your offerings and your client’s journey to see what scope you can remove without taking away too much value. Basically, you should only do as little as possible for the highest amount you can charge without exceeding your customers’ perceived value of your offerings.
✓ Evaluate whether each offering needs to be included in your presentation. Maybe segment your line-up differently or remove some of the more advanced offerings to share later, decreasing the chance that someone gets confused about what they’re getting for what price.
3 — Find ways to cheaply add greater value. Whether you advertise the inclusions or not, including more than your audience is expecting to receive can be a really simple way to wow them from the start without adding to your costs. The goal is to be smart about what you’re including as “extra” in the service and shoot for something that your customer values more than you.
Action tasks:
✓ Consider whether paying for expedited shipping is worth it for the extra treat it provides to your clients.
✓ Off-load inventory that isn’t selling well as a “free upgrade” to customers who ordered similar items.
✓ Invest in more premium packaging that might double as storage or function in another beneficial way for the end user.
✓ Share a digital offering as a “gift” — you’ve already spent the time creating it, so each additional use doesn’t cost you any extra.
4 — Replicate higher value through quality branding and imagery. Visuals can tell a much better story than words alone. Customers make choices all the time based on perceived quality, and a significant part of that perception is how your branding and photos come across. What emotions do they evoke within your target audience?
Take time to be careful in your presentation of your brand, and spend time revamping every touchpoint your audience might come in contact with.
Action tasks:
✓ Invest (or trade) for quality product photography. Or, level up your existing product photography by doing your best to style your items in a clean space that suits the aesthetic of your brand.
✓ Make sure all materials are cohesive and consistent to match your brand design.
5 — Revisit your pricing tiers. Did you know that, when faced with more than two pricing tiers, most customers instinctively flock to the middle-priced tier, regardless of the price points? They don’t want to feel "cheap," but they also don’t want to be the “big spender," so they avoid the bottom and top tiers and head right for the middle.
You can use this to your advantage by pricing your middle tier as your most profitable or best-performing. Guide people to this middle tier by paring down to almost nothing in the lowest tier and adding extra that they don’t need to the top tier.
Another pricing model you might employ is the baseline + “nice to have” two-tier pricing option. List all the inclusions a client might need in the baseline offer, and then include several available upgrades for not that much more in the higher tier.
An example of this might be offering a family photo session for $450 or a family photo session + outfit inspiration guide for $475, where the outfit inspiration guide is normally $60 in the shop. The customer perceives $60 of extra value for just an extra $25. In reality, the photographer doesn’t have to do any more work for that upgraded offer but gets the extra money anyway.
Action tasks:
✓ Take your existing offerings and play around with pricing tiers. Choose a pricing model to test out and see how it feels combined with various inclusions or exclusions. Or, if you sell products, consider offering gift sets or bundles for a small increase, or selling in bulk.
✓ Offer a “micro” version of your most popular service for significantly less, but with less time commitment on your part (like a photographer offering “mini sessions”).
✓ Consider offering really high-value upgrades ONLY as an add-on for existing or past customers, so it feels exclusive and more valuable to book now with something else.
There are a lot of ways you can improve the value of your products or services without even doing much to alter your existing offerings. I hope this sparked some ideas, but remember to start where you can with what you have!
MAINTAINING A PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
We talked in an early module about operating your business professionally to legitimize your brand. Now, let’s talk about the aspects of your client experience specifically where a little extra professionalism can create raving, loyal fans.
Professionalism is a crucial element of entrepreneurship that a lot of creative mamas or women who operate their businesses while full-time pursuing something else (like a career, another full-time effort, etc.) skip over because they’re more “casual” about their business.
For example, posting Instagram updates on the fly is one way that creatives treat their business as a casual, passive thing, which doesn’t promote enthusiasm and energy surrounding your brand. One of the ways that big brands are able to get such loyal followers is through professionalism and organization — consistently posting high-quality content to their feeds. Their followers can count on it.
Below, I’m sharing a few ways you can behave more like a big brand and garner that level of support and respect from your clients and customers, as a way to further cement your connection during their experience with your brand.
1 — Always respond to messages from current clients or customers first.
Whether you’re communicating via email, a direct message on Instagram, or through public comments on any platform, you should respect the schedule and priorities of the person on the other end. You certainly don’t need to drop everything you’re doing to cater to their every whim, but if it’s within your power to even just update them or shoot off a quick “I’ll get to that tonight!” just to give them the assurance their needs are being met, it will go a long way in improving the quality and professionalism of the service you offer.
2 — Maintain quality in your communications to match your offerings.
Be clear and concise so there is no confusion, and ALWAYS spell check or proofread. This will help communicate the quality of your service through your attention to detail and avoid potential trouble down the road, like mistakenly quoting someone the wrong price or timeline. It will also save you time down the road when you might have to come back and fix your mistakes or work harder to gain the client’s trust back.
3 — Treat all clients and customers equally, with the utmost respect.
Obviously, this is just a good life tip in general. But as a business owner, specifically, you are the one communicating with others on behalf of your business. The way you treat others will remain much more attached to your business than your current mood or situation. Regardless of where the communication is happening, in person or in private, remember to treat others with kindness, even if you feel that they’re taking advantage of your offerings. Do your best to salvage the situation and learn.
ALWAYS LOOK FOR WAYS TO IMPROVE
My last major recommendation as you’re crafting a client experience that lives rent-free in the minds of your brand’s audience is to continually look for areas of improvement.
Some easy ways you can do that are by utilizing feedback forms (either at the end or during the full experience), requesting reviews on Google or testimonials to share on your website, offering a trade in exchange for honest feedback when you implement a new service or product, and even joining a mastermind group or finding friends who will let you bounce ideas off of them.
Ultimately, always make your decisions with your target customer in mind. Cater everything about your client experience, your business structure, and the delivery of your goods and services to your target audience, and soon you’ll have raving fans.
As we move onto more administrative endeavors behind the scenes of your business and wrap up this section on the full client experience or production, remember: this isn’t a race. Some of the best films were years in the making, and there aren’t any awards for being the first one there if you can’t deliver on your promises. Your timeline is less important than your consistent habits of showing up for yourself, your business, and your audience!