Small Budget Solutions
Does it feel like all the leads you're getting are people looking for low-cost websites? When you offer other services like a marketing plan or even just a maintenance and support plan, they don't sign up. Here are three ways to make more money even with “cheap” clients.
Flip The Offer
It is quite possible that the business owners aren't cheap. They just don't want to overpay. In other words, they might be thinking, “Why would I pay $5,000 for a website when I see other people offering websites for $500?”
When I get referrals, it is extremely common for the conversation to start out with the client asking about price and saying they have a budget of $1,500 or less. When I hear that, I want to know if they're talking about their website budget or their marketing budget.
So, I'll ask a question like:
If we built the perfect website for you, how would you know it's perfect?
Almost every single time, people will say things like:
- We'd be at the top of Google
- We'd be getting a ton of traffic
- We'd be getting leads/clients calling
- Our calendar would be full of appointments
- etc.
Occasionally, I'll get answers like:
- My business partners would love it.
- We would have it live before our board of directors meeting.
- We'd come in under budget
- etc.
If I get an answer that has something to do with a business outcome like landing more clients, I'll ask another question like:
Would you be opposed to us helping you land more clients? Or are you only interested in the website?
Now I pause and let them process what I just said. Seriously, wait a few seconds in silence because the client needs a minute to rewire their thinking. They probably haven't thought about the difference between getting clients and just getting a website. So, give them a little time to pull apart those two different concepts.
I normally get a reply like, “What do you mean?” Or something like, “How do you help us get clients?”
Then you get to share the customer journey story about how your help them get traffic, pull leads, and land clients.
Then you say, in order to get this customer journey to work, we'll also need to make some updates to your website.
This puts your marketing plan ahead of you web development package. That's how you flip the offer so that everyone buys the website and the monthly marketing plan.
Flipping the offer is a great way to convert clients who initially have a low budget into high-ticket, recurring revenue clients.
Change The Solution
The times when the client honestly has a restricted budget, or they say that the “perfect” website is one that comes in on time and under budget (they don't have any business goals in mind), I'll change the solution I offer them.
Instead of building them a website for $500, I'll think about what else I could do for $500 that would get them the same result so they are happy, but would still have decent margins for me as well.
For example, we used to offer a package where we would spend five hours helping the client get their domain name, set up their email, and do a live tutorial showing them how to build their own website on Wix.
The client is happy because we saved them a ton of time navigating all the things that tend to snag people, like DNS issues and getting their email set up on their new domain. Plus, we dramatically speed up the learning curve by doing live one-on-one training on the actual website they'll be using.
So, instead of a development and marketing offer, we shifted the solution to a training product while still making $100/hour.
Change Your Funnel
The third option is one that you can do in addition to the other two ideas we just talked about. If you find that your leads aren't qualified, that's a sign that you need to change your funnel.
By “funnel” I don't mean anything technical like ClickFunnels. I use WordPress for everything, but the tech stack doesn't really matter that much. What I am talking about is the system you're using for attracting leads. If you're not happy with the leads currently attracted to your business, change what you're using to attract leads.
It's easy for web designers to get known as the “website person.” That means you get referrals and attract leads looking for websites. But that also means those leads probably have low-budget expectations.
The solution is to change your funnel. Get known for something different. Get known for the results you create, not just the services you offer. People don't want services, they want results. Obviously, you use your skills and services to create the results. But, put the emphasis on the results and set your prices based on the value of those results.
When shopping for services, since people generally don't understand the technical details, they evaluate the options primarily based on price. They want the price to be as low as possible.
When talking about results, the emphasis is on value. People want the value to be as high as possible.
The idea is to shift from WHAT to WHY.
Take a look at this new training to discover all the details behind making the shift from what to why.
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