Price is what you pay.
Value is what you get.

I love this quote from Warren Buffett because it truly describes what sales and marketing is all about.

If your clients or customers are complaining about the price of the services or goods you are offering, they probably don’t understand the value of what they are buying. And this is where you need to beef up your marketing efforts.

We’ve all heard how we must feature the benefits of an item, not its features when selling. This concept takes that credo to a new level. People will pay — and pay handsomely — for something they value.

Within the past few months I had the opportunity to work with a start-up company in creating its brand and new website. We went round and round with the pricing for copywriting on their new site. If it weren’t for the fact that I was referred to them by someone they respected, I’m not sure they would have hired a copywriter at all. They simply didn’t see the value in good writing or the need to pay for it. But in the end, they ended up hiring me for the job and accepted the completed copy for their new site.

I Didn’t Realize Your Value

I recently received an email from this client whose very words were, “We have gotten such great feedback on our new website. I didn’t realize the value that a professional copywriter could bring.”

Since then, I have run into this client at a networking event and in their introduction of me to one of their alliances, they bragged that they had hired me and what a difference I made. Not only did I provide excellent website copy that was already getting them leads, they told this new company that I saved them from what had been hours and hours of labor trying to come up with the copy themselves. This I had not known when I first met them. Multiply the lost revenues of the hours an executive can spend agonizing over the rights words vs. the comparatively small cost of hiring a professional and you’ll see the value too.

You Just Can’t Write About Yourself

One of the most difficult things you can do is write about yourself. You’re too close to it. Even I have difficulty writing about myself although I write about others all day long. Part of the value a professional copywriter brings is the ability to stand outside your company and look at what a potential customer might need and want from you and translate that into copy that sells. In fact, by looking at a client’s website from outside eyes, with a consumer mindset, I most often see obvious things that the client missed if they wrote the copy themselves. This is a truly valuable insight that some business owners neglect.

Through our interview process, analysis and research, along with a plain old consumer attitude, we can create value not only for our customers but for their potential clients and customers as well through the right words, delivering the right message at the right time.

Be Prepared to Talk About Value

The next time someone counters your price or complains about your fee, be ready to counter with value. Have concrete examples of how you provide that value in terms they can understand–often the bottom line. If they see and understand the value, they will have no problem accepting the cost.

If you need to have your website copy written or reviewed by a professional copywriter, contact All the Buzz. We’ll be glad to bring value to your organization.