How to Charge More For Your Creative Work (Videos, Graphic Design, Photography!)
Today, I want to share with you how to make more money with your creative services. So that could be a video agency, a video production agency, graphic design agency, whatever it may be. You need to be charging more money for what you're doing, but you're probably not sure how exactly to get there.
I'm going to share with you the three reasons why you're not charging enough and how to fix it...
Reason 1: You don't know the actual value of your work
Now, when I say value, you may think to yourself "Yeah, I know that my work is valuable, Matt" obviously, but you actually don't understand what the value is to the people that would buy that work. And that's the problem. So let's say you're trying to sell a video project to an entrepreneur who runs small, medium sized business, whatever it may be. You're going to ask them exactly what they want this video for what the business reason for having this video is it's always going to be, spoiler alert, make more money. They want to make more money with this video. Otherwise they wouldn't be doing it. They may not say that, but that is what they want.
They're going to say, "hey, I want a video."
You're going to say, "what do you want it for?"
They will say they want it for an advertisement or a piece of marketing or to live on their website. And then you're going to ask them specifically how much money they are hoping that this video generates.
So here's the thing. Here's where everybody slips up. And this is what I meant when I say you don't know the value.
If they want to make, say a hundred thousand dollars, even over the course of the next year, because this video lives on their website or it's in a paid advertisement. Is it fair for you to charge $500? No, it's not. Or even $700, $800, $900, $1,000 or whatever it may be. Does that seem equitable to you that you would charge a thousand dollars for them to make a hundred thousand dollars?
And of course, the amount of time and resources that you're putting in to actually creating this content, it doesn't equate. You need to charge based on the value that you are going to provide, which isn't to say that you should charge $20,000 for this video. So they can make five to one on that investment.
But I'm saying, something more like $5,000, that's how much your work is worth. Minimum.
Reason 2: You're conducting sales calls all wrong
Sales calls are not about them telling you what they want. Sales calls are about you finding out what this client or potential client needs, where the problem is, where the pain is, and then you being the solution to that problem.
So what I see is too many creative folks find themselves in a position where you have a client who says, "I want this video" or "I want this piece of graphic design", something like that. And then you say, "I do that and I've helped out with this... and I work with this person... and look how good this was and check it out."
You need to take control right away and tell them "this is how these calls work. I am going to ask you a bunch of questions and go figure out exactly where the problems are in your business that you're facing. And then if I feel like I can help, we'll take the next step."
Sound good? Yes? Good. Awesome. Good to go.
And then you go and find out what's up because they are in contact with you cause of a problem that they have there, whatever it may be. And it usually comes down to money. They're not making enough money because of XYZ reasons. What you need to do is just find out what it is and find out why they care, find out how much it matters to them.
Find out what the stakes are, for example, "what if you don't get this fixed, what happens?" It helps them to start to come to terms with how big of a problem this is. Once you've gone through all of that, they've exhausted themselves talking about how much this sucks and they've spent so much time with it that it's very clear to them that they need to figure out a solution. You clearly have positioned yourself as an expert in this call so that when you do make your offer, it's much more organic and you can charge much higher prices because you position yourself again, as the expert.
Reason 3: Imposter Syndrome
I know that a lot of you out there just don't think or aren't convinced that you're worth $3,000, $5,000 or $10,000 per project. And I'm here to tell you that you are wrong.
This is a problem that I see a lot in competitive marketplaces, you have a lot of people that are offering to make video work. A lot of people that are offering to make graphic design work, design logos, you can always go to Fiverr or Upwork, whatever it may be. So you have imposter syndrome and when you get into these potential client calls, you're automatically putting yourself behind in the race. Which doesn't make any sense.
The best thing to do is pretend that you're the only person in the race, because if you're not the obvious choice, what's the point? You need to position yourself as the obvious choice. This is just how business works. You'll figure it out. Just get out there and start charging high ticket prices, go out there and start asking for what you deserve for your work. You can, and you should. Because if you're out there charging $800 to do a video project that someone is going to make a hundred thousand dollars off of.
You are actually telling the story when you pitch them that you are not valuable. Think about if you're in a store and two things right next to each other, and they do the same thing but one costs $25 and the other one costs $125. So what goes on in your mind when you're trying to decide which of these two things?
As consumer, as the person that's going to purchase the product, you see the lower priced product and you say, "this is likely not as valuable and not as well made." With the higher priced product you say "this is likely valuable well-made and will solve my problem, but it's just more expensive." And this all happens in a split second. It's just psychology because price is a story. So this is the story that you're telling.
And both cases, there's salesmanship that needs to happen on this side of things.
With the lower priced product, you have to make a decision about if this is worth your money, or if it's a cheap piece of crap and you're going to get what you pay for. And so the people that are selling the product are hoping to convince people to buy it based on not price alone, because they're saying, okay it is high quality, even though it's not that expensive.
And on the other side, it's actually the same sales effort, because you have to convince people once again, just like on this side that the decision to buy, this is not based on price alone. You have to also think about how badly I want to solve this problem, how bad the problem is and what needs to happen to get me there.
You have to sell in both of these scenarios, but there's a huge leg up over on the expensive side because your price has told the story right off the bat. Yeah, it seems a little bit expensive, but, it's going to fix it. So do you want to fix it? Or do you want to save money and maybe not fix it? That's what it comes down to.
We go deep into this and the Peak Video Creators program. If you're a videographer, an editor or a marketer who wants to build a video marketing business, we should talk about the program!
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