Defining Your Products and Services

This is post three in a series that discusses your year end marketing review to help you get ready for the new year.

In part 1, we reviewed whether we were now focusing on a new and most likely, better ideal client. Next, we reviewed our goals to be sure they aligned with your business vision. Given this information, we will evaluate all of our marketing activities to make sure everything we do will help us reach this ideal client.

Do your products and services appeal to your ideal client?

Pricing and packaging your products and services correctly for your target market is one of the more powerful marketing activities that you can do. If your ideal client has changed, you need to review your business model to be sure your offerings are aligned with their needs.

Compare your ideal client’s challenges with your offerings.

• Are you offering products and services that help your ideal client overcome some critical need?
• Have you created packages that highlight your unique differentiator?
• Do the packages (either products or services) have many benefits included to make the decision to work with you really easy?
• Are they priced to fit within their budget while maximizing your revenue?

The key to pricing and packaging is to understand your client’s needs and then create solutions that are high value and low risk. Be creative with your offerings by putting together services and information products that are value-packed and are easy to buy.

Can you eliminate the risk of working with you?

The best example of matching products and services to your ideal client is what happened in my business. Originally I offered marketing consulting services primarily to high technology companies. Through my networking activities, though, I was meeting small business owners that needed marketing help. I realized that I truly wanted to work with the small business owner to mentor them in marketing, but I was having difficulty explaining what I offered and why it was beneficial to this new ideal client. To them, hiring a marketing consultant seemed high risk and not appropriate to their small business. I continually heard, “I’d love to work with you but I can’t afford your services”. They were assuming that my services were too expensive for their budgets primarily because of the way I had priced and packaged them.

But the reality was that my pricing and packaging were not clearly aligned with their needs. What they needed was advice, education and a mentor to help them with their marketing, packaged in a way that fit into their budgets. So I made a few changes to my business model and my brand:

• Renamed by business from Vista Consulting to Masterful Marketing;
• Changed my title from marketing consultant to marketing coach and mentor;
• Created service packages (8 step program) and information products (teleclinics) with a package price, eliminating the fear that the offerings are too expensive for a small business’s budget.

These changes have resulted in a win-win for both my business and my clients. I get to help more small business owners and they get the marketing advice and services they need within their budget.

How will you adjust your offerings to appeal to your ideal client?