3 Red Flags in Pricing Your Services
She started crying. It was in the middle of everything. She tried explaining in her Instagram story why she did this but it wasn’t confident. You could hear it in her tone: she knew she was wrong. Her fans, over a quarter-million on Instagram, were furious at the price she was charging for a meetup. Now she was desperately back-peddling and trying to justify the egregious price. The real problem is that she was still tone deaf to the biggest red flag in pricing your services— your customer’s response.
I don’t want to name the influencer I’m referring to so we’ll just call her Sandra. Her lifestyle brand is for young women trying to better themselves. Sandra offers life hacks, fitness routines, diet recommendations, style choices, etc. It’s easy to see why her brand has gained such a following, it’s an honest, approachable, and affordable brand. Which is a relief given the number of unattainable lifestyle personalities that proliferated social media.
Sandra said she wanted to do an in-person meetup with her fans. She was offering tea and healthy snacks for a morning event. She’s not a trained nutritionist, published author, certified health professional, just a cool girl doing her thing. Which means it’ll be more of an entertainment event than an educational event. (I have friends that are raving fans of hers who wanted to go, until they saw the price.) For this morning of tea and snacks, the ticket price was $500. When I saw the event page and what was offered I thought it was a mistake. To make things worse, she deactivated the comments on the social posts about the event.
After that, it all spiraled. Which lead to the Instagram story.
This was an interesting case study in pricing. I believe in prospering so long as it’s earned fairly and that both parties benefit. Clearly, Sandra’s fans didn’t see the value in what she was offering. Yet she maintained the prices (there were even higher options) and pushed on anyway. I’m not saying it’s wrong, there’s always going to be a percentage of clients, fans, readers, that’ll pay the premium, but the ones left out may leave forever.
3 Things To Remember When Pricing
- Listen to your audience. If they cry foul or don’t buy, there might be a problem.
- Look at your competitors on all sides. You don’t have to price your products the same, but it must be on the same plane of reality.
- Don’t be afraid to charge more later. Prices aren’t set in stone. Limited time discounts work quite well.
Don’t be like Sandra. Price is subjective. But the value must be there.
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