What to charge for your products and services

Today I want to talk about pricing in your business. This can be something that's really scary for new business owners or business owners who are trying to price new products or services.

The bad news is that you're always going to have people telling you you're too expensive — No matter what your price point is you will always hear that. So you really can't let that feedback affect how you think about your prices. The key to pricing appropriately is really market research and mindset.

I know in the online business space, it's very trendy to say “charge what you're worth”. But I actually really take issue with that, because your self worth shouldn't be tied to your business in any way! Your business is a business, your worth as a person, as a business owner is completely separate from what you're charging for your products and services. I also have an issue with that saying because as soon as you get more than one person telling you that your prices are too high, you're going to immediately believe them and think you need to lower your prices because you just pulled a number out of your a**, instead of actually figuring out and thinking about what is the market willing to pay for this price. What is my target customer willing to pay for this product or service? Unless you know that you will never have enough confidence in your pricing.

If you're just charging “your worth”, you're never going to feel confident in your pricing, and you're not going to be able to stand up to people, you're always going to be second guessing yourself.

So how do we figure out what we should charge?

Market research.

So many of you are starting your businesses and trying to sell your products or services, without ever doing market research! And when I say market research, I mean yes look at your competitors, look at what other people are doing in the space — A lot of people don't do that. I'm also saying yes pay attention to what people are saying inside your network. And of course, get on a few calls. I don't know why people are so reluctant to do this. But if you can get on even a couple of market research calls, that information is going to be so valuable for you.

If you are able to do some market research you can really look at other people in the space that are offering the same thing that you want to offer, and what they’re charging for it. So say you're a social media manager and you're just starting out, and you know you're good, you're learning, we got Canva you know we're writing content, we know about hashtags, but you're definitely not at the same level of so as someone who's been doing social media for many many years and has a lot of experience. Look for competitors who are at your level, look for other people who are offering services at or around your level and then get a general idea of what are the price points around that.

Ask around

You can ask people, ""oh I know you hired a social media manager, are you happy with them, if you don't mind me asking, what are you paying for that?”. Nine times out of 10, they're either gonna be like, “oh yeah, I actually pay this it's been really great”, or they're just gonna be like “I don't want to share that information”. People aren't going to yell at you about it so don't get scared about it - if you're really coming at them with just like I'm just trying to learn I'm trying to find out trying to make sure my pricing is correct!

Get on some market research calls

I would really suggest reaching out to your network, trying to connect with other people who are offering similar services and try and get on market research calls with these people - whether they're at your same level or higher than your level because everybody started somewhere so even if they're further along now, they might have once been where you're at.

Also get on calls with your ideal customers. Reach out and ask people to help from a standpoint of simply wanting to learn, to make sure you’re doing this correctly right and people will want to help! I always like to suggest to give them something for their time. So, for the people who are maybe your peers who are offering similar products or services - a lot of times they just say can I buy you a virtual coffee and I just send them like a $10 Starbucks gift card. And you're going to keep these market research calls super tight they're going to be like 20 minutes max, because you really want to be respectful of those people's time.

In terms of your ideal customers, you can offer them a social media audit for free in exchange for getting on a market research call, or something that they would find valuable that you can give them for free, either your time or a product or service, that you can give them for free in exchange for this 15 to 20 minute call, or you can just buy them that virtual coffee $10 amazon gift card. This is just showing that you really value their time and it's going to help you to get people on that call.

When you're on the call, prepare some questions ahead of time.

So on your market research call with your ideal customers, you're really wanting to get familiar with what their pain points are, what they are struggling with, what is the solution to their problem that they're really looking for and what would they pay for something like that. Ask the pricing question on these calls but ask them what their needs are first. The key is going to be really either recording that call or taking very very diligent notes during that call. I just usually ask them if I can record it, because you're going to want to use their own verbiage in your marketing content later. And now, between your competitive analysis that you analysis that you did on your own, asking other people in your network, talking to your peers or people who are further along in the process and talking to your ideal customers, you're going to start to see a little bit of a pattern in that pricing and that is going to be your jumping off point for your pricing right there.

So I hope this was really really helpful for you. If you have questions around how you can use this strategy to figure out your pricing in your business, reach out to me on instagram @sam.dinicola. If you really just want to jump in and start getting help figuring this out, definitely check out my digital strategy intensives. They are a 90 minute call where we can answer all these questions for you so you really walk away confident in your pricing structure and your packages.