3 Simple Ways to Add Value for Clients and Boost Your Profits

by Ruben 3 Minutes

You’re great at delivering exactly what you promise, when you promise. Your web marketing or consulting clients are always impressed with what you have to offer. But you want to go the extra mile. It’s time to start adding extras to your services.

Extras are resources, add ons and other bonuses that you can include with your projects. They are useful to your clients, but are low cost on your end. They show your clients that you’re willing to give just a little more.

Not only are “extras” impressive, they will boost your long term profits. When you offer a bonus or extra that enhances your work, you’re more likely to keep that client. They’ll remember you the next time they have a need, refer you to others or, in some cases, make an instant repeat order. Keeping your existing clients happy is far less expensive than getting new ones.

So what do extras look like? Here are some ideas to consider:

Implementation guides – The work that you do for clients is just a small part of reaching their overall business goals. For example, if you’ve designed a new website for your client, it’s not just going to sit there. They’ll need to drive traffic to the site, start using social media or fill it with great web copy in order to get the full benefit of their great looking website.

Here are some more ideas to run with:

  • A tax prep checklist for CPAs and Accountants (to make your job for next tax season even easier).
  • A backlink building guide for content marketing firms (to get more traffic to the new content and help clients see the value)
  • A Twitter reminder list for social media management consultants (to ensure that clients can move forward with your advice and actually start using the platform)

You get the picture, right?

Your goal is to make it nice to work with you – and people love free stuff no matter what business you’re in. With an implementation guide, your clients will get more out of the experience of working with you and, in turn, they’ll appreciate your work more and more.

Related products – Offering small, related products as extras to your services is a smart way to make an impact. A related product is anything that doesn’t take much time for you but has a high perceived value for the client. It’s something that you might not even consider to be of value until you think about it from your customer’s point of view.

For many small business owners, graphics and design are well outside of their skill set. While it may take less than 20 minutes for you to create a 125 X 125 ad based on a header that you have created for them, the perceived value is much, much higher.

Think about your services and offerings. Is there anything small and reasonably easy that you could do to add on to bigger projects? Is there something that you could throw in on large projects for free that is “pain free” on your end?

For example:

  • Designers can create a custom button to match a branded header so clients can have a uniform look on their website.
  • Copywriters can create tweets to relate to a blog article or landing page so their offers can be marketed on the social web.
  • Marketing firms can record a 30 minute guide to analytics so clients can follow through with monitoring their results.

Adding on a related product that isn’t a pain for you to create, but has a high “wow” factor for clients can be the cherry on top of their sundae.

Discount the next step – Although this isn’t technically an “add on” to your services or products, it’s a great way to keep your clients engaged and turn them from a onetime sale to a long term client. Think about the next natural step that your clients take, and then offer a discount on that step.

  • If you offer a one day seminar on productivity in the workplace, give attendees a discount on your personal coaching programs.
  • If you just created a new e-commerce site for a client, add on social media branding for a discounted rate so they can have a uniform look.
  • If you launched a successful marketing campaign for a client’s new product, offer a discount on their next campaign – or suggest an additional step to the current campaign to boost their results.

What’s the next logical step that your clients take with you? Use the close of your project as an opportunity to give a “bonus” of a discount on that very next step.

Giving extras like these takes a little bit of forethought – but the results can give such a boost to your bottom like that they’re well worth it. Take some time right now to brainstorm the extras for your business and then put them to work for you.

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by Ruben
Ruben originally founded proposal software, Bidsketch as a one-person company while working as a software developer for a billion dollar payroll company. Since its early days as a “company of one,” Bidsketch has grown to help over 2,000 paying customers win billions of dollars in new business and save thousands of hours in the process.