Today we have a very special article from Chelsea Baldwin, a former CMO who gave up that swanky corporate career to get away from 9-hour Saturdays & to help awesome people like you do more good in the world… and get the customers (and cash) you deserve. In this article, Chelsea talks about how to effectively package your offerings to create more value for your customer and earn more money — take it away Chelsea!

I have a typical corporate-to-freelancing story.

Once upon a time, I was absolutely fed up with my job.

So I quit, traveled the world, and on the tail end of my travel, got inspired to set up my own freelance business.

I’d had a go at freelancing before—just after college—and from my experience there I already knew I didn’t want to be one of the freelancers pandering to market rates.

Plus, now I had fancy job titles and lots of experience behind me that inherently made me more valuable.

So I set up my website, pulled some premium pricing numbers out of my ass (yes, that was my exact, scientific process), and started networking my butt off to book clients.

And I got them. All at my asking price.

But after a while, I started to notice something.

Even though my clients wanted to pay for expensive, top-of-the-line website copy and brand messaging, they were still inherently budget-conscious.

They still wanted to make sure they didn’t “waste” a penny and that they didn’t buy more than was absolutely necessary.

Not a single time did I sell the “big up-sell” option on my proposals, no matter how valuable they would have been.

So I decided to try something.

I took the most common combinations of work that people needed, packaged them together, and discounted them heavily.

I put in a few regulations on the deals to make sure they wouldn’t reduce my profitability, but I realized that if all I did was sell 3 of the larger packages (which is 40% off a la carte), I’d easily earn well over six figures per year—my dream come true at the time—and not have to worry about booking 6-10 different small projects per month just to make my minimum income goals.

Plus, because of my process, they’d take me less time to do than any of my other typical projects—meaning that even though they’re “heavily discounted”, I’d still be making more money in less time.

Total win.

And wouldn’t you know, once I published those two new package deals on my website, they were the #1 products people were inquiring about. Because from their side, they were total no-brainers.

Here’s how I did it:

1. Frustration + Inspiration: Coming Up With the Package Deals

Like I mentioned above, I was kind of frustrated when clients—even those ready and willing to spend money on my premium services—were still stuck in their budget, money-saving mindsets to the point that they’d always be trying to make sure they saved some money somewhere.

I’d tried educating a few clients to show them the ROI, but that never really worked as well as I wanted it to, so I knew I needed a new approach.

I couldn’t quite figure it out, when one day, the term “Power Trip” crossed my radar.

Since my business is called Copy Power, this triggered a huge brainstorming session where I scribbled like mad in my notebook until I had two package deals I wanted to experiment with presenting:
• The Mini Power Trip
• The Mega Power Trip

Each of them represented what most of my clients typically needed to be done, with their business messaging, but at a discounted rate.

I discounted it because instead of coming up with a page or ad structure from scratch, I’d just be replacing the text that already existed in its current design.

It’s easier for me and easier for the client—if they don’t want to deal with a brand new re-design, all they’ve got to do is copy and paste the text I send over to them.

Win-win-win.

(Pro tip: Make sure your deals are always a win for you as well.)

I do have to say though, that these deals were only possible because I’d already set pretty high prices on my a la carte items. If you don’t already have high enough a la carte prices, consider raising them.

2. I Made the Deals Easy to Deliver (& Worth My Time)

Like I mentioned above, I wanted to make sure these package deals were somehow easier for me too—so as not to just kiss 40% of my profits away for the sake of giving someone a deal.

If I’d be spending the same amount of time and effort, I knew these packages wouldn’t be sustainable.

Sure, I wanted to do my best work and give my customers what they truly needed for their brand messaging, but at the same time, I didn’t want to actively make myself less profitable per hour in the spirit of idealism.

So I had to find a way to make these deals easier for me to deliver than when someone ordered an a la carte item.

So for both packages, I decided that I’d only offer them as re-writes to pre-written pages and layouts.

I usually give small bits of design input and build in time to talk with the client’s web designer into my projects.

But by only doing re-writes, I don’t even have to think about this.

Plus, most of the time, the pages are a lot shorter than the ones I’d produce.

And for the smaller package deal, I decided to shorten the entry questionnaire exercise I take all of my clients through. Since the smaller packages is a rewrite of only three pages, I knew I could identify just the questions I needed for those three pages and we wouldn’t have to bother with the rest.

I’d still be able to do my best work with that shorter version, so it’s another win-win scenario.

3. I Displayed Them Front & Center

When I published the package deals on my Hire Me page, I put them front and center.

I put them at the top of the page and spelled out the savings. I also put links underneath them to a pseudo-sales page for them so potential clients could click through to read more about them. (And get totally sold on them.)

Underneath, I’ve got my a la carte offerings at their normal, list prices.

So by anchoring my prospects with the idea of buying one of these package deals—especially when they do the math of what they’d pay for the pieces they’d want otherwise—they seem like total no-brainers.

Even if they’re slightly more expensive than what they’d spend otherwise, it’s usually such a good deal in comparison that they can’t say no to it.

In fact, the only reason someone doesn’t book one of those packages now is if they’re starting a business and just don’t have their pages written already… or if they know they need a new sales page from scratch.

I’m booking more and more of these projects and happily bringing in more profits. And my clients are happily saving money on copywriting, saving time/money on their page design, and still getting the incredible, premium messaging they came for.

Everyone wins in so many ways.

Conclusion: Find the Win-Win

Finding the win-win-win scenarios for yourself isn’t always an obvious answer.

The way I did it was to identify what my customers really needed, how I could make that offer irresistible for them, and then asked how I could make it worthwhile for me as the freelancer.

Try that and see what ideas you come up with.

Author Bio

Chelsea Baldwin is the founder of Copy Power, where she teaches writers and marketers to create better one-page copy using reverse-engineered buyer psychology. Her free 3-part email course will have you writing the kind of web copy you’ve always dreamed of and will have your target audience salivating.