Competing on price is a battle to the bottom. None of us want to be there! But what if you keep hearing from your audience that they want a reasonable price when it comes to your services or products? And what if your key selling point right now is that you’re ‘affordable’? Yet, you’re still not making many sales or booking work? We need to turn this belief of affordability being a selling point around – fast! Tune in to learn how.

One of the discussions in my coaching program just recently was about the notion of being “reasonably priced”.

As part of one of the steps in my training, my students research their ideal customers – also known as ‘customer avatars’. 

And one of my students shared this problem she was facing:

“I’m a family and newborn photographer so naturally I looked into mummy groups but most that are looking for a photographer is very focused on finding someone ‘reasonably priced’.

I get that price would be a challenge for most clients but I don’t want that to be a hang-up for my customer avatar. Or is that going to be the case no matter what? And if so, how do I swing it?”

It’s true that everyone wants something reasonably priced. 

But the important thing to realise here is that a reasonable price is different for everyone.

For instance, I go to the health food store and buy my large jar of organic, Australian manuka honey and I walk out feeling like I have bought something of great value. 

My partner, on the other hand, thinks I’m silly for buying this when I could buy cheap honey for a quarter of the price.

Neither of us is right or wrong.

We value different things.

And so your role as a business owner is to educate your audience on the value of what you have to offer. 

It’s not to market yourself as being affordable, cheap, or reasonably priced. That’s surface level, and dare I say it… lazy marketing!

I actually had a few other students comment on this discussion in my coaching group sharing a similar sentiment: 

“People don’t understand the quality of my service, so I rarely get paid for my time”. 

As a business owner, everything is our fault. 

So if your audience or customers don’t understand the quality of what you offer, and if you’re not turning a profit, that’s your fault, not theirs.

A lot of people will use the term “reasonably priced” or “affordable” when asking for a referral or describing what they are looking for in a product or service. Of course, they do – because the alternative is feeling ‘ripped off’.

But people use this terminology because often they don’t know how else to explain what they want – or they don’t actually know. 

This is your role to dig deeper into what your customers actually need. For instance, someone has come to you looking for an affordable website. Great! Do they need SEO optimization, a shopping cart, a blog feature, booking form integrations, social media feeds, copywriting, brand design…

Educate your audience about what these are, why they matter, the benefits of these, and what impact they will have on their business.

Show the pricing options with and without these. 

I encourage you to outline the steps of your services in your quotes or the different specific inclusions of your products in your product descriptions on your website.

The reality is that while we are all out of some people’s budgets, for many people, they are willing to pay for what we have to offer when they believe that the value aligns.

So your job as a business owner is to scrap marketing yourself as affordable and instead get to the heart of what actually matters more for your customers and focus on educating your audience about the value of your products or services and how they will be better off with them.