Deciding how to price your services is one of the most difficult decisions to make when starting a business. Too low, and people will believe you may be providing low-quality goods or services; too expensive, and you risk losing all customers.
The first step is determining how to price your services in the appropriate market segment. The second and more challenging step is to figure out how much you need to charge in order to run a profitable business. This can be done by calculating the cost of providing that product or service to you and then adding a profit margin to represent the effort you are putting in.
Calculate your expenses
You should start by figuring out the flexibility you have within your budget. To do this you must first figure out which costs are fixed and which are variable. This is straightforward and thoroughly explained in our blog; ‘how to actually deal with inconsistent income for freelancers.’
Variable costs are any expenses that vary according to how much a firm produces and sells. This indicates that variable costs grow as output increases and decline as production decreases. Labor, utility bills, commissions, and raw materials are some of the most typical categories of variable costs.
Fixed costs, on the other hand, are expenses that stay constant regardless of how much a business generates. These expenses are typically unrelated to a company’s core business activity and include items such as rent, property tax, insurance, and depreciation.
Now that you’ve recorded all of your spending and revenue, total up each column. Make sure your expenditure never exceeds 90% of your take-home pay.
Conduct some market research
You must now assess what the market’s competitive pricing is. You want to find a pricing point that is low enough that clients would part with their money, yet high enough that your profit level can grow your business. It also assists you in avoiding low-cost prices that, while viable for you, may cause the client to question the product’s quality.
First, you’ll need to figure out who your competitors are. Determine which companies offer a similar range of items and who does so at a comparable price bracket to you. Next, determine what it is your competitors are offering. By this, we mean both in the product sense and in the value sense. Look at what they’re offering your common customer and decide what that means for your level of competition.
Consider different pricing strategies
- Value-based pricing– When businesses set the pricing of their products or services according to what the client is prepared to pay. Even if it has the ability to charge a higher price for a product, the corporation chose to set its rates depending on client interest and statistics.
- Competitive pricing– You base your pricing on what your competitors are charging. This can be an excellent approach in the correct conditions, such as a new firm, but it doesn’t allow many possibilities for expansion.
- Price skimming– When a company charges the highest possible price for a new product and then gradually lowers the price as the product gets less and less popular.
- Cost-plus pricing– Concentrates only on the cost of manufacturing your product or service.
- Penetration pricing– When corporations want to push new items, they offer prices that are significantly cheaper than the competitors. In the long term, penetration pricing is unsustainable.
- Economy pricing- The idea is to price a product lower than the competitors and recoup the difference through increasing sales.
- Dynamic pricing– It is a pricing approach where prices differ depending on the market and consumer demand.
Put your strategies into action
After conducting all of your research, you should have a solid understanding of the minimum you should charge, what consumers are willing to spend, and how you can best offer services appealing to the target audience. This will assist you in creating a developmental pricing structure to generate business, as well as setting a minimum fee that results in a profit.