First off – Prime your audience!
Before upping your prices you need to prime your audience for the increase first. Start educating your clients and audience via posts, blogs and newsletters. Explain how much work is involved with your service, and the value of that work to your clients. Let them know your knowledge – list your client’s problems with bite size information, and how you provide solutions to their problems. Show them how clever you are!
How are you perceived?
Before upping your prices ensure that your own business looks experienced, professional and consistent across all platforms (social media / website / business cards etc). Ensure your brand communicates clearly the value of your services. Designerbloom can assist you with your visual branding presence.
Have an online presence
Social media is important these days to help your business grow and flourish - and so is a website. Make sure your website homepage includes your name, what you offer, your experience, and who you work with.
Explain your specialty and what makes you different. Detail why you charge what you do (what's included), why you’re worth the investment, and how many clients have improved from your services. Testimonials are a great way to emphasise this; make sure you’re showing off those testimonials in your emails, social media, as well as your website.
In your About section be sure to be personable – people buy from people – the more they feel they 'know' you the more likely they’ll spend their hard-earned cash investing in your services.
Designerbloom can assist you with your online presence.
SET ALL YOUR PRICES!
When someone enquires about your prices send them a set-template list (this can be jpeg or pdf which you email out, or set up as a section on your website). This ensures you’re not tempted to offer discounts and devalue your service!
Now you're ready!
Once you’ve ensured your own business is looking professional and consistent, put your message out that changes are coming, and proven your value with quality blogs and posts, then you’re ready to inform existing and potential clients of your price rise!
If you’d like to follow a template for wording your message I’ve added a kind and personable example below, inspired by a fellow creative:
New prices – when and why?
If you’ve followed along with my little business for a while, you’ll know I like to be completely honest and transparent about my life, business process, and systems. I'd like to update you on when my new prices are coming into effect, and why I am changing them.
The biggest reason for the change is that I have really honed in on my [insert skill/s] processes in the last year, spending countless hours revisiting the systems as well as gaining experience and skill with every project. With this, I strive to provide you guys with the very best packages for your money, and my original pricing does not cover the level of hours and features that are now built in. I have also been adding a lot of additional features [examples] as my knowledge grows, but have never on-charged them while I was still in the ‘learning’ phase. My new pricing will reflect the [skills], decisions, and thoughtful steps now taken when you book in for a [Service], and also the new features that will really level up these packages, such as [list extras].
I believe that when updating prices they should never be for the sake of doing it. I want to add more value to every package and service, so you aren’t just getting the same thing but with a bigger price tag. Each price update will be thoughtful and made with care, because at the end of the day you guys are the most important people out there and I want to provide you with the best services while also charging what I am worth, and I know it will in turn help us both work with our ideal match, [profession] and dream client.
[Insert the date you price rise comes in to effect].
Be confident. Know your value. Good luck!
