Marketing is undoubtedly one of the hardest parts of being a business owner and putting your service business out there in the world makes even the best of entrepreneurs uneasy. You only want to focus on the creative side of your service business BUT you know that sales are the bare bones of your business without which there is no business. The idea of selling, showing up, and offering your services to your audience feels plain HARD to most business owners. Are you one of them? If you’re nodding ‘yes’, then this blog post is just for you!
Marketing is a pretty vast and scary topic but it does not have to be so if you break it down into manageable chunks and tackle each one step by step! If you have read other blogs I have written in the past, you would know that I am all about sharing quick + easy tips for service businesses to implement and level up their brands. Here are 4 pre-requisites any service business should have in place before you start marketing your offerings. Without these, your marketing efforts would not really be effective let alone successful. Ready for a strategic look at your marketing? Let’s do this!
DETAILED KNOWLEDGE OF YOUR IDEAL CLIENTS
Who are your services and offerings for? Definitely not everybody! If you said everybody, you need to start thinking deeper. This is one of the first things I work on with my clients when branding for their service business - get deep into finding every possible detail of their ideal clients who will benefit the most from the services offered. These are the people you want to target because they need exactly what you are selling and they are in the best position to pay you (and not just pay but pay more!) for that + your expertise. So not the question is - how do you find out more about these ideal clients? Great question! And here’s how - by asking them! Super simple.
Identify some personality traits of your ideal clients starting with some basic factors like age, gender, lifestyle choices, spending habits, etc (thanks to social media, you can easily identify your ideal people through the things they post! It’s a great starting point at least). Once you have a few people who fit your ideal client profile, simply reach out to them and check if they are okay to answer a few research questions. People are generally ready to help as far as I have seen! The way I ask questions that help me get details about their needs, problems (tip: include questions that would make them talk about their problems!), mindset, and expectations - is through a survey. I love using Typeform to create a quick and easy survey that captures all the information for me in a visually pleasing way. Even for my people, Typeform makes the survey process quite simple and intuitive which helps them complete the task in no time (win-win!). Send this survey to as many people as you can and that’s how you have the first piece of the puzzle sorted in this game of marketing, my friend :)
CAREFULLY CREATED OFFER
Next, if you completed the information gathering step nicely, you should have enough data to work off of. Remember you asked your ideal clients about their problems and pain points? Now’s the time to use that data! Study their answers and find patterns. If you’re studying a similar group of people who fit your ideal client profile, then you WILL find patterns and overlapping problems that your people are facing. This is the GOLD you’re looking for! Now that you know what your people are going through, carefully create or structure your offer/package/service around this so that you’re positioning your service business to solve this exact problem. Feel free to get creative here. You can have one offer/package that solves a group of problems or you can have multiple offers/packages that solve different problems respectively. When you have these nicely structured out, you will get a boost in your confidence when you get into sales calls or in-person meetings because now you have exact solutions to your ideal client’s problem/s. this is the second key piece in marketing your service business successfully.
YOUR UNIQUE MAGIC!
Why should people choose you over anyone else who may be offering the same solutions to their problems? The answer lies in your uniqueness. When branding for creatives, this is a high-priority element that I uncover during the brand strategy phase. No marketing effort is complete without a touch of your unique magic that makes your offer stand out. This uniqueness in your niche can be in the form of your process, your personality, or even the way you make your audience feel - each tiny thing can become the factor that sets you apart. So don’t focus too much on following the footsteps of your competitors. Get creative and do things differently. Your uniqueness will shine through when you market your services, attracting the right fit clients whom you don’t have to chase and sell to!
PRICING YOUR CREATIVE SERVICES
This is where a lot of creatives go wrong so I would advise spending some time pricing your offers respective to your packages and get well versed with them. Having defined offers and prices will reduce the back and forth between you and your ideal clients leading to much quicker conversions. You can always tweak and adjust your pricing and make your packages more custom but setting a base is the way to go. Now, pricing can depend on a number of factors like - your niche, your competition, and your audience type. But since we are talking about high-ticket services, the best way to price your services is ‘value-based pricing’. Here you price your services based on the value your services bring to your client and how much are they going to benefit from your work in the long run. Let me explain with an example: Say you are a copywriter and you’re hired to write the copy for your client’s sales page of their signature program. This one-time service you provide will bring in upward of 6 figures in revenue to this client which makes your sales copy so valuable to them! Now think how much you deserve to make from this project? I’m guessing at least $2K or more, whatever feels right to you. That is the mindset you need to adopt when pricing your creative services. Having said that, pricing can be tricky so know that nothing is set in stone. You can always change up, charge more, and adjust pricing as you go. Everything is allowed in your creative world, after all, you’re the boss for a reason!
How was that for you? If marketing scares you and you don’t really know where to start, this would be a good starting point. Now’s the time to take action and work on these steps till we get to part 2 of this 2 part blog series on marketing your service business! Got questions or stuck somewhere? You’ve got all the help! Comment below or reach out to me at hello@twelveandtwentyeight.com or even better, let’s hang out on Instagram where we can have fun conversations while working through your marketing questions! Talk to you soon, friend :)
