As a centrist I believe that every creative business should have a core value proposition (CVP) from which all aspects of the business emanate. If you are a hand-drawn stationer, all of your offerings should relate in some way to the custom, hand-drawn aspect of your work. With the CVP front and center, you can pretty much go anywhere where your CVP will take you. The stationer could sell larger art pieces based on the invitation line. Next, each part of your business needs to reinforce the value of the other. No Edsels please.
The desire to offer all that your competitors do for fear you might lose a client if you don't is compelling. However, if the offering is not right for your business, you will wind up cannibalizing yourself if you don't think it through.
Consider "middle-tier" service — a senior staff photographer as opposed to the name photographer or less senior photographer, month-of planning versus day-of planning or full-service for planners, semi-custom cakes as opposed to pre-designed or fully-custom cakes from a baker. If you offer the middle-tier, your business has to be based on volume (i.e., your lowest priced offering) with the middle-tier as an upsell and the top tier only there for window dressing. But if your business is structured to provide higher ticket, more customized products/services, then a middle-tier offering will likely do the opposite of what you want it to.
You will probably invest nearly as much time, energy and resources in your middle-tier as your top and at a substantial discount. To justify the middle-tier, the low-end will have to be REALLY low end. Of course, your middle tier clients will feel like they got a great value, but your top clients and even your bottom clients? Probably not. No doubt you will eventually resent the middle tier clients because you will have given them more than you should. In the end, for high-end creative businesses, the middle-tier will betray your CVP and ultimately devalue your brand.
Everything your business offers has to be in-line with your CVP and the success of each part of the business should drive the success of the other parts. If this isn't true for you, then time to make a change.
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Sean:
After 15 years of professional wedding planning, I eliminated the “partial level” of service I had been offering. Indeed, it had gotten to the point where I was simply “done” with it….and it wasn’t really doing anything for my true bottom line.
I do not regret that move one bit – by taking that leap of faith, I can now concentrate more on doing what I love and the revenue stream is much better. Plus – it was a great “sanity saver”..that factor is very important to me (and should be to others also!).
Thanks, Sean! Working on this….
Great post!I couldn’t agree more. After running in a circle for a whole year trying to make the middle-tier work in my business, I quit. I only offer full service now, and I may get less quantity of work for not offering it, but the quality and creative time I get to spend working is worth it. It is not a very popular concept where I live. I get a lot of people who want to know why I only offer full service design. In the end though, it works out for the best both for me, and my clients.
It’s interesting, but not surprising to hear you say this & the comments above that the middle tier is the one that gets tinkered with the most to try and make it work and fit but it never quite does.
I 100% agree with this. I decided to add a middle tier awhile back and regretted it after only a month or two, when I decided to nix it. It was a very popular option because a lot of people want what I do but can’t afford it. Unfortunately, it was VERY time consuming–just as you said.