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Are business owners just cheap?

by wally247
15 replies
I get that some business owners don't have much money to spend on marketing or don't want to spend it, but I seem to be finding them a lot.


Is this normal??


I mean, I had one owner of a night club who wanted more facebook fans to their page, but only wanted to pay about $50 for it. I don't mean Fiverr gigs either...I mean getting them real fans and all that hooey.


Then I had a chiropractor (my actual IRL chiro) want me to run a sweepstakes for her Facebook page and run the monthly engagement (she's too busy) but when I told her it would be $650 to set up the sweepstakes she about shit herself.

The sweepstake isn't the hardest thing ever, but it takes some work and honestly I thought that price was a bargain...but who knows.


And then I had a guy claiming he was making 10K/Month from a part of his local business site where he sold physical products but that income stopped.


I quoted him $350 to do a redesign with heat maps and testing to see what was turning off his visitors....and he scoffed at that.


Are these things normal? I don't want to be a bitch about it, but this cheapness is bumming me out. These are all people who had high interest before the price, so I didn't have to do much "selling" which clearly isn't my strong point anyway.


Anybody else meeting a lot of cheap-o's??
#business #cheap #owners
  • Profile picture of the author PerformanceMan
    The recession has been tough on a lot of business people. People have been burned many times and are cautious with their cash. Plus you're not motivating them enough to make the purchase.
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  • Profile picture of the author maxrezn
    Yep. Ignore them. I speak to at least one every day. And then the next call is a $800 per month SEO deal. It's a grab bag out there when you don't pre qualify. So qualify out. They're not the client you're looking for.
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  • Profile picture of the author Aaron Doud
    Night Club:
    1. How many fans was he wanting?
    2. What did he want you to do?
    3. What did you offer to do?
    4. Hell do you even know why he wanted fans? Maybe fans wasn't even the best solution to what he wanted to do.

    Maybe what you offered or he wanted was only worth $50. Personally beyond consulting I don't get why a business would pay for fans. They can get fans easier than we can get them for them. I can help them know what to do but the people they want as fans should already be in the night club.

    Chiro:
    1. How often would you be posting?
    2. Who would be providing the content?
    3. How many hours a month would you be spending on their page?
    4. How many hours would it take to set up and run the contest?

    This one I get the feeling you were charging $650 for and hour or two of work and that is the issue. You could get $200 for that but $650 isn't going to happen. A lot of these guys barely pay their lawyer $100/hr. They are not gonna pay a guy more to play on facebook.

    $10k Local Business Guy:
    1. Did you ask him about traffic?
    2. Seriously did you ask him about traffic? He was converting well before and now sales have stopped. That says a traffic issue if nothing else was changed.
    3. $350 was a good price for what you offered but it didn't fix his problem. I suspect he knew it.

    I'd say overall your biggest problems are...
    1. Value: You are not building the value for your customers. $650 is value for you but what will they get out of it? If they could make an extra $6k a month they would jump at your $650. So what can you do to build the value?

    2. Finding their motivation/their problem: What do they want? Or what do they need? Once you know that you can sell them on how your services can help them. My goal is to buy a lambo while working 10 or less hours a week. How could your services help me reach that goal? Each prospect has their own goals, motivations, and problems. Your mission is to help them using the products and services you have. And if your products and services can't you need to be honest and tell them as much.
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    • Profile picture of the author wally247
      Originally Posted by Aaron Doud View Post

      Night Club:
      1. How many fans was he wanting?
      2. What did he want you to do?
      3. What did you offer to do?
      4. Hell do you even know why he wanted fans? Maybe fans wasn't even the best solution to what he wanted to do.

      Fans are what they wanted. They were running a facebook page on a personal profile and realized that they didn't have any fans, and wanted to add some.

      I didn't make it far enough to find out what else I could do for them, because at the very very beginning (where I told them I could get them fans) they gave me the whole "we are doing our own marketing but need help" routine.


      They wanted fans. I told them I could deliver fans...that's as far as I got.


      That was 5 months ago. They have the same amount of fans to their page today....63


      When I say *fans* I never ever mean what anyone could do on Fiverr. I always mean "more engaged fans who I can get to care about your business on Facebook".

      To some that's not worth anything...especially me, because I don't really get Facebook, but to many many business owners, having engaged fans is pretty valuable.



      Maybe what you offered or he wanted was only worth $50. Personally beyond consulting I don't get why a business would pay for fans. They can get fans easier than we can get them for them. I can help them know what to do but the people they want as fans should already be in the night club.
      I don't know...it was what they wanted. The club is not in a great part of town, maybe nobody is in the club, so they thought having fans on a website would help.


      Chiro:
      1. How often would you be posting?
      2. Who would be providing the content?
      3. How many hours a month would you be spending on their page?
      4. How many hours would it take to set up and run the contest?

      This one I get the feeling you were charging $650 for and hour or two of work and that is the issue. You could get $200 for that but $650 isn't going to happen. A lot of these guys barely pay their lawyer $100/hr. They are not gonna pay a guy more to play on facebook.

      I would provide the content and post probably 30 times a month at least. Running a sweepstake is again not the most complicated thing ever, but it does take some effort. It takes my time, and if there is one thing I've seen on WF a billion and one times is that you can't get back your time, so charge for it.


      I wasn't going to charge $650 per month, it was a set up fee. She then mentioned that she pays "almost $1200/YEAR" for her SEO, and that was breaking her.


      Something tells me $200 would've been too much too.




      $10k Local Business Guy:
      1. Did you ask him about traffic?
      2. Seriously did you ask him about traffic? He was converting well before and now sales have stopped. That says a traffic issue if nothing else was changed.
      3. $350 was a good price for what you offered but it didn't fix his problem. I suspect he knew it.

      My honest opinion about this guy is that he wasn't making 10K/month. If he were, and his traffic suddenly dried up I think he would have been more urgent about it.

      He did mention that his current SEO guy (from India, charging about $200/month for 2 sites...one local business site and this site with the affiliate products) told him about "some Google update" when his traffic died down.


      He then said his traffic was back up, but he wasn't paying much attention to the site after it stopped earning.

      Again.....who would do that? Not me.


      I told this guy that my specialty was getting his visitors to take action. For a long time I was in a health niche that is a bit of a tough sell for some products because the people in the niche get burned a lot.


      Because of that, I've learned how to get people to take an action on a website (fill out a form, join a list, click here, do this, do that) and he pretended to be pretty happy about that and stated it was exactly what he needed.

      He has a sign up form on his site. All black site, and the background of the opt-in is black...with black letters, and it's 10 miles below the fold. I explained to him clearly that I could get him people on his list so he could market his products that way.


      If that's not what he wanted/needed, then "the money is in the list" I guess won't be something he will ever believe in...but that was my suggestion.


      He asked me to send him a proposal with exactly how I could help him, which I did with pretty pictures and text, and haven't heard back.



      I'd say overall your biggest problems are...
      1. Value: You are not building the value for your customers. $650 is value for you but what will they get out of it? If they could make an extra $6k a month they would jump at your $650. So what can you do to build the value?

      I don't do the thing where I pay a guy $5 for 1000 fans and I'm out and give me the check. I am the type of guy who loses sleep if I could be doing more for a client.

      That is the value I offer....perhaps it's not enough. Clearly it is not.

      I know I have many many things to learn. I know I'm not the best marketer around. I also know that I would provide more value than a LOT of people out there because I am not in this for a quick buck so I can hit the whorehouses all night.


      I'm 100% sure that I need to let people know that what I offer is valuable and that I'm not out to burn anybody or make a quick buck or cash their $650 check, spend $5 on fans or whatever and say "later suckers"....but should I be proving that for pennies?


      I'll lay awake at night just the same whether I get paid $50 for them to get new buying customers to their business or whether I get paid the $650.


      So why should I worry just the same for the $50....I don't see a reason.
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  • Profile picture of the author desmond11
    Try and specialise on niche where money is regularly being spent on marketing. That way you won't struggle to convince them to pay your market rate.

    I started off by promoting my services to restaurants. Unfortunately, they don't want to spend unless they know there's a guaranteed return.

    I know it's hard, but keep your nerve and don't back down on your pricing. If you do back down, you'll find yourself on a slippery slope with no return. Stick to your guns and it'll pay off in the long term.

    What happens is. Once you get one client under your bely paying the CORRECT market rate, they'll refer and recommend you to other business owners. These referrals are happy to pay the higher price since you already have the "like", "know", "trust" factor already in place.
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  • Profile picture of the author Jonty Howe
    Are business owners just cheap?

    A lot of them yes, and there are a lot of people who genuinely don't have a great deal to spend, and there are even more who don't understand the value of what they are buying.

    That said there are a lot of marketers who don't understand what it is they are selling. The value a client gets from the work you deliver isn't always equal to the amount of work you put in. The night club owner might not get much more than $50 dollars value from 100 new facebook fans. If you think you are giving them more value then it is your job to explain why.

    If the amount you get paid isn't worth the amount of time you put in then turn the client down. You don't have to take every project that comes your way.
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  • Profile picture of the author vndnbrgj
    Are you marketing to people that are already advertising?

    I have had that. Someone didn't have the $5k to pay me.
    So, I offered to help in return for a percentage of the profits.
    This would have generated a ton of business for this client.
    And, utimately, the $5k to pay me..... didn't pan out.
    He would have brought in an extra $300k in less than 6 months. He currently does $500k a year.
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  • Profile picture of the author operationoffers
    wow there are lots of deep answers here. I think the simple truth is that many business owners are becioming more cautious with their money like every person out there. I dont think it really matter how much you have, when the economy suffers, then your actions will shift. IMO
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  • Profile picture of the author AndrewCavanagh
    It's really more about the process you go through to get a client to hire you.

    If a business owner has 5 employees then every month he's probably paying
    out over $10,000 just in wages.

    So he doesn't have a problem paying you $1,000+ for something that's likely
    to make him over $2,000 in profits.

    The key is establishing the potential dollar value of your service to him
    before you talk about price.

    Put another way if a business owner truly believes that the project you're
    going to do for him will bring him in more than $5,0000 in profits in 4 months
    or less then he'd be crazy not to pay you $1,000 to do it.

    What you need to do is take the time to get him to believe that.


    Having said all that there are some business owners who really are
    just cheap and not that smart in investing their money wisely.

    With them you just see them as a potential source of referrals.

    Kindest regards,
    Andrew Cavanagh
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  • Profile picture of the author seoexperttools
    When you are the owner of a business, you will be pressured by a lot of issues such as sales, product production, wages for employees, etc. And the economy is not making thing easier for the business owners so sometimes they have to think about what they need right now.
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  • Profile picture of the author SJJPFTW
    Just a thought but maybe you are focusing too much on the end result and not the problem.

    In the case of the night club owner did he just want fans for the sake of it or did he have a reason for wanting them? Did you talk to him about the value to his business those fans could ad? How he could continue to engage them after after they where acquired?

    Same with the chiro. I find most business owners resist until you put something in front of them that is clearly an asset to their business rather than nice to have. Bear in mind alot of people out of the IM niche see Facebook pages not as an asset that can engage their customers but rather as a nice to have add on.

    As for the website owner, if he isn't willing to spend $350 to revamp a $10k a month site he is either a) an idiot or b) lying about how much he was actually making.

    Some people can not be turned around, but for the rest if you can demonstrate that was you are giving them is ROI positive they can usually be hooked in over a couple of visits.
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  • Profile picture of the author Mwind076
    In a word, YES.

    Does that mean someone won't purchase your services...no. You just have to find those that have and will spend.
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    • Profile picture of the author stan22
      You have to pre-qualify them, to find out which ones are.

      How? make an educated guess if the business looks like a prosperous one, and only then offer them a free monthly/weekly trial of your services AND measure the response/effects.
      Then, demostrate to them what benefits they have reaped by your action.
      Finally, ask for the advance payment and a contract...
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  • Profile picture of the author Eddie Spangler
    One other thing to consider is that many are "cheap" because they keep buying stuff that doesnt work so after a while they get jaded.

    They cant see the value because they have no point of success reference to compare it to, especially when you come in with the new media stuff.
    Also many cant comprehend the idea of paying someone to do stuff on FB or twitter because its "free".

    You just have to do a combo of improving your sales skills,qualifying quicker, pitching better prospects.
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  • Profile picture of the author Marvin Johnston
    I haven't seen a situation where "Cheap" applies.

    But I have seen a lot of situations where the business owner is not convinced of the value in what is being offered. Some will use the *excuse* they are cheap to avoid buying, but I think the reality is whoever is doing the selling hasn't done their job ... or homework to qualify the business owner in the first place.

    Marvin
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