Last week, I covered the Online Marketing Ecosystem. I explained that although I sell web presence, it isn’t really what clients want. Clients are in pain. They want solutions. This week I will explain how packages — services you bundle together at one price point — can provide clients with solutions while boosting your bottom line.
Now that you understand the online marketing ecosystem, you understand that the most important thing you can do is build awareness among potential customers.
The truth is, you don’t want just any old customers. You want customers for whom you have tailored solutions.
Why?
Because those are the customers who become raving fans.
Sounds good, no?
How do you achieve this?
Before you can solve your customers’ problems and create raving fans, there is something you absolutely must know.
{Drumroll, please.}
Understanding Your Audience
You must know who your customer is. The need to know your customer may seem totally obvious, but many people do not.
Here’s how to find out who your customer is:
Analyze at least the last 10 paying customers you have had.
Divide them into like groups.
I have two kinds of customers:
- Educated, professional middle-aged women and
- WordPress developers and designers
I know who my customers are.
Understanding Their Pain Points
The next thing you absolutely must do before creating packages for your customers is to understand their pain points.
There are at least two ways to do this:
- Ask them — via polls or questions on Facebook or
- Spy on them (via social channels such as Facebook and Pinterest)
You know how it is. You’re just as busy as anyone else. Do you run to the chiropractor as soon as you have a little neck pain? No way! You wait until you are in some serious pain before you spend the time and money necessary to resolve your issues.
Of course, my customers, and probably yours, aren’t dealing with neck pain.
My customers’ pain points include these:
- Lack of time
- Lack of money
- Lack of staff
- Lack of technical skills
- Lack of online marketing know-how and
- Feeling “behind the times”
Some of these pain points are practically universal — most of the people I know feel like they don’t have enough time and money. But some of these pain points are specific to my industry and thus require nuanced solutions.
Also, according to the segment, the pain points are different. WordPress developers have technical skills but still want to know about online marketing because their skills are often confined to graphic design and computer programming.
Creating Packages Based On Pain Points
Knowing my potential customers’ pain, I’m ready to create packages enticing enough to encourage the next step, which, if all goes well, is to become a paying client.
When I develop my packages, I think about each segment of my potential customer base and how I can address their pain points.
As I said last week, customers don’t want a web presence.
They don’t even want packages — so you don’t have to tell potential clients you are giving them a package. You can call it anything you like. If you are feeling frisky, do a little market research to determine which term is best for your market.
What people do want is time, money, staff, technical skills, online-marketing know-how, and to feel on top of their games — plus free childcare and spa treatments.
In reality, getting all of that takes time, money, staff, technical skills, and more — which can overwhelm clients (except, of course, for the free childcare and spa treatment parts).
Just what you don’t want — especially if one of the pain points is already overwhelming.
How To Use Packages
The answer is selling bite-sized bits of online marketing strategy and tactics — at least if you are a digital strategist. If you are a veterinarian you’ll be offering dog bite-sized bits of canine wellness, and if you’re a DJ you’ll offer sound bites and, well, you get the idea.
More seriously, packages tailored to meet the specific needs of your customers allow you to do several things:
- Quickly and easily explain your service offerings
- Create efficient, replicable systems (for you and for them)
- Avoid the headaches that come from “reinventing the wheel”
- Upsell
- Down play overall cost and, at times, pass savings on to customers and
- Test whether your offerings are actually addressing your customers’ pain points
I offer a keyword planning package.
Having me create a keyword plan certainly saves clients’ time and and money because they don’t usually know what one is and why it is important for search engine optimization (SEO).
Giving my clients a PDF with a descriptive title that explains exactly what they will get in terms that are simple to understand and which of their pain points will be taken care of saves me time and money because I don’t waste time explaining myself.
And it’s reassuring.
PDFs
PDFs like these satisfy customers who like a lot of explanation as well as those who think they should do due diligence but really can’t be bothered.
Carefully thinking through what you offer — and putting systems in place to support service delivery — also saves you time and money.
You can see what works and doesn’t, iterating yourself towards perfection.
Packages also help you create a kind of plug-and-play, mix-and-match method of upselling.
For most people, just having a keyword plan isn’t enough. They also need coaching, so they know how to use the plan. I can sell them a coaching package.
If you bundle a few things together, you can consider offering a discount — after all, getting clients is more expensive than keeping clients.
Packages can be shared across social media, too, which helps you build brand awareness and drive traffic to your own website.
Key Takeaways
Having packages helps me sell because I don’t have to think on the fly — and I’m never at a loss for words because I can email prospects a PDF explaining the benefits of what I offer.
If I forget to bring up a service I think would be useful, I can send an email with an attachment and say I thought of something else that might be helpful. I let them know I’ll be calling next week to answer any questions they may have.
Remember, because everyone is so busy, you may have to “touch” prospects several times before you make a sale. Emails and follow-up calls are great ways to do this if you don’t get too spammy.
After a client and I complete a package, I can refer to the document and point out exactly what we did and ask for feedback pertaining to their original pain points. How they feel is an excellent measure of success — and whether they will buy from me again.
These are ways that creating bundles of services for clients saves you time and money, forces you to think through your offerings, helps you systematize, ensures you’re addressing your clients’ pain points, allows you to offer savings to clients, and overall helps the sales process.
Hey — wait a minute. I just thought of something else. Selling isn’t my strongest skill.
Do you offer a package that can help?
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