How to Highlight Your Invisible Work to Charge More

Here’s something so often overlooked, and I keep coming back to it when I train budding entrepreneurs, especially on their critical-for-profit issues.

That is: how to raise the perceived value of their service offering!
And if you know anything about copy… well, this is a job MADE for the, uh, copy aware. 😉

Now, very often a shortcut or even the KEY to increased perceived value is to highlight the INVISIBLE WORK inherent in what you do.

After all, you do KNOW your client only sees a tiny fraction of the work you put in, right? And it can be maddening to see they don’t always appreciate it, to understate somewhat. 🙂

The solution? Make that Invisible Work front & center in your marketing, and make it work for you!

So let’s take an example, a Conversion Optimization service provider, and how they could increase the perceived value of their offering. First, let’s see…

What the Average CRO Client Generally Sees
(And Values the Service Accordingly):

• Parade some simple looking test ideas, choose one and go
• Test page(s) being designed (or not, if not required for the test)
• Tests running on the site for a few days or a few weeks maybe
• After testing, a quick results rundown, maybe some analysis to go with it
• A few recommended simple changes, done.

And that’s about it from the client’s perspective.

Done and dusted. ¯\_(?)_/¯

Looks like simple work that should be compensated with an equally simple, and therefore perhaps pedestrian compensation plan.

Yeah, maybe? Sounds kinda vaguely reasonable so far doesn’t it…

But of course, you as the service provider see things a little differently.

And of course, if the results you provide are great, the client will be happy even with this ‘keyhole view’ into the process. However…

What the Client Does NOT Generally See
(And Therefore Cannot Appreciate):

• How conversion test ideas actually come about, the thought process and years of experience involved in shortening the curve and choosing the ideas most likely to produce a real outcome
• The specific reasons WHY something’s a good test to run (unless it’s the result of a rather large workshop)
• Hypothesis generation – how to come up with the right hypothesis for increases in results
• Calculating and re-calculating test viability, the right duration, etc.
• Choosing the right goals, and then setting them up, including various tools for metrics
• The technical work involved in setting up the test environment (sometimes takes days)
• The ENTIRE invisible work involved in copywriting work that generates the bulk of the results in CRO
• Monitoring tests to see if the numbers actually make sense, how & why they change during the test, when to stop or change tactics during or after tests have run their course
• What to look for in the final results to come up with the desired end results

Does doing ALL that sound easy to you? Or cheap?

To you or to your client?

Well, it shouldn’t! 🙂

So that’s the kind of invisible work, a.k.a. industry geekery you’d do well to first document.

And then take that documentation and fully garb it in suitable marketing verbiage for it to make its way into your client’s sometimes calloused crevices of the brain. ?

In other words:

Don’t just tell them what they get…
tell them how HARD it is to come up with…
then charge accordingly!

Juho Tunkelo Member since May 22, 2007

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Long time marketing strategist, superstar skills in copywriting and conversion optimization. Ring me up on Skype or send me a free-form email and I’ll lend you a keen ear. https://www.juhotunkelo.com

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