3 Tips for Increasing Customer Value

Make more money on each client project by increasing customer value.

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When we think about growing our business, we often think about booking more clients.

But that’s not the only way to grow your business.

Another important strategy for growing your business is increasing your current customers’ value. In other words, maximizing the amount of money you’re making on existing customers.

One of the biggest mistakes small business owners make is working really hard to acquire new customers, but not continuing to retain existing customers.

Here are two important concepts for any entrepreneur:

• It costs more money to acquire a new customer than it does to retain a customer.
• Someone who has purchased from you is statistically more likely to purchase from you again.

With those two concepts in mind, why wouldn’t you continue selling to past clients or customers?

There might be products or services out there that are truly “one-off.” Maybe you sell something that people only have to buy once in their life, and there are no additional, supplemental or complementary products or services that you can also sell.

Sounds unprofitable. But if that’s you, no need to read any further.

For most of us, however, there are probably additional products or services to sell existing clients that are related to what we do.

A photographer might sell prints and products to clients after their wedding, or an event planner might also sell floral design for clients who book their event planning collections.

Is it worth it?

You might be thinking that you “make enough” on your current collections, or that selling something in addition to your collections sounds like hard work.

While it definitely requires additional systems and intentionality, it’s also worth it.

In a recent episode of Brands that Book, I interviewed Makayla Jade of The Harris Company. She made about $180,000 last year on print and product sales alone after shooting about 30-ish weddings.

That’s an extra $6,000 per client on average.

While you might not be making an extra $6K per client when you first get started, it can add up quickly!

3 Simple Tips for Increasing Customer Value

There are all sorts of ways to increase customer value. These are three easy ways to get started…

Review your current pricing strategy.

Create collections or tiered packages if you haven’t already. We recommend creating three collections (no more than five).

The first collection should be a basic collection that only includes the “must-haves.”

The second collection should be more expensive than the first and include more value. But the price difference between the first two collections shouldn’t be vast. Make it close enough in price that “upgrading” to the second collection is a no-brainer.

The third collection should be significantly more expensive than the first two, and it should include nearly everything. This is for people who want the complete experience.

People will most likely book your middle collection, but this pricing structure allows you to eliminate consumer surplus among other benefits. In other words, the clients who are willing to pay more, pay more.

For more on pricing, check out this post: The Super Simple Guide to Pricing Your Services

Offer complementary services.

There are few ways you can make complementary services work for you.

One way is to use it to sell your core service.

There’s an eye center around us that offers free exams. Basically you go in and they tell you about your vision. Why would they do that?

Probably because they can sell most of those free exams on glasses or other eye care.

Dentists sometimes do something similar with free first cleanings. During the cleaning the dentist might find a cavity or something else that would require paid dental work. At the very least, they’ll schedule your next cleaning on the way out (and that next one won’t be free!).

Could you do something similar with your services?

Maybe you own a studio and offer a free or inexpensive sitting fee for new headshots knowing that most people will buy prints or the digital files.

Another way is to use it as an upsell.

An upsell for photographers could be prints and products like albums.

Photographers should check out this post about selling albums. It’s written specifically for the holidays, but the same principles can be applied throughout the year.

Or let’s say you’re an event planner, and you’ve booked an event. You could offer floral design to design to that client as an upsell. Since they’ll be looking for florals anyways and they trust you in one area, there’s a good chance they’ll hire you for that, too.

This might require a little more preparation, but you probably won’t have to spend any more time at the event. Speaking of time…

Understand your costs and make the most of your time.

Understanding your costs and making the most of your time it is key in strategizing ways to optimize customer value.

Let’s take another look at the example where the event designer upsells floral design services.

The event planner likely spent money and time acquiring their customer whether that be by posting on social media, advertising in a magazine, or running Facebook ads. That’s okay because whatever it cost to acquire the customer is built into the pricing of their event planning services.

As soon as the planner books the client, she doesn’t have to pay that acquisition cost again. Now the planner can offer deals to the client on additional services.

A lawn care company recently tried to sell us lawn management services. They gave us quotes for two services: lawn management and pest control. Let’s say each service was around $500.

But if I bought the lawn management, the pest control would be nearly half off.

That makes sense, right? They save money because they’ll already be at the house—they save money on the travel and labor costs built into the pest control service. The same person can knock out both jobs on one trip.

And as consumers, we feel like we’re getting added value for a great deal.

How to figure out what to offer (and a word of warning)

What to offer to increase customer value might be right in front of you. Take note of instances where clients says, “Do you also offer…?” If you hear the same thing repeatedly, that might be something to explore.

Other possibilities might be overlooked because you don’t think they’ll be worth it such as selling prints if you’re a photographer. Why would people buy prints if you give them the digital files? Won’t they print the photos on their own?

Maybe, but many people don’t. And you could give people an easy, high-quality way to get printed photos of important life events.

If that’s you, put aside your assumptions and explore it a little bit.

Look over your services and try to come up with a list of other services that complement what you’re already providing. The best ideas are usually the ones that don’t require a ton of extra resources.

A word of warning: Just because you can offer an additional service doesn’t mean that you should. In most cases, the service should be a complement to what you currently do. If you’re a wedding photographer, offering wedding floral design is probably not the additional service you would provide. Instead, it might be setting up a photobooth that your second photographer could run while you work the reception.

We have a few great interviews with creatives who successfully increased the value of their customers by offering additional services. Makayla’s interview is a great place to start.