It’s the start of a new year and it’s common for business owners to raise their prices.
Nothing unusual about that, right?
However, there isn’t usually a discussion about why the prices are increasing–especially not with current or potential customers.
In fact, sometimes it feels like businesses increase their prices just…because. Because it’s a new year and that’s what you do.
But we think it’s good to understand why a company raises their prices.
Why?
Well, if you’re a customer and you’ve had your eye on a product or service and suddenly the price increases, you’re likely to think, ‘what the hell, why would you do that to me!’ Offering an explanation, or even a head’s up, before the price increases is, quite simply, good customer service.
So. Why are we raising the cost of our membership? When is it happening and why the hell is it increasing by so much? You’ll find out below…
When Does the Price Increase?
The cost of the membership will increase on Monday 11 January 2021.
How Much Is It Increasing By?
It will increase from $39.00+VAT per month to $59.00+VAT per month.
Or if you pay annually, it will increase from $390.00+VAT per year, to $590.00+VAT per year.
*Depending on where you on in the world, you may or may not have to pay VAT.
For those who don’t know, what is the membership all about?
The Make Your Mark Online membership helps business owners get more leads and sales from their websites.
It has one-click-install website templates (designed by us), 15+ courses, a content marketing challenge, content marketing learning area, and weekly Q&A calls.
There’s a lot that goes into a successful website, but if you can crack it, then you really will continuously generate sales from it without you having to spend hours on it every day (we’re looking at you, social media).
Ultimately, we help business owners improve the 6 key things that make a successful website (see below).
These 6 key elements lead to continuous rankings, traffic, leads and sales.
Why Are You Increasing the Cost of Your Membership, You Big Meanies?
We started the membership in October 2018, and like any business, it’s evolved in the past two years. Below are the things we’ve added and the key reasons why the price is increasing.
The 90 Day Content Marketing Challenge
This was something we introduced in 2019. We run three, 90-day challenges each year. And over the course of 90 days, you…
- Submit one piece of content per week (and we hold you accountable!)
- We give you personalised feedback on this content via our weekly call
- You improve your content week-on-week
- You increase your rankings, traffic, leads and sales
We’ve run four of these challenges now, and they are HUGELY popular.
BUT, even though we absolutely love it, they take up a lot of our time. Reviewing content and giving personalised feedback takes a lot of time and energy.
Plus, our members have seen incredible results from doing this, so we know it’s worth way more than the cost.
You can learn more about the 90 Day Challenge here.
2. One-Click-Install Templates
When we first started our membership, we taught people how to find a website template (separate to the membership) and customize it.
What we discovered was a lot of website templates can be hit and miss! It was difficult to find templates that looked beautiful but also delivered excellent user-experience.
It was also a steep learning curve for members who had to understand how to edit a brand new template with (usually) little support from the template provider.
So, we created our own. Fully customizable, one-click-install templates. And we created these templates based on our 10+ years experience as web designers. We wanted to balance attractive design with user-experience.
You can see an example of our template in action here, on Denise Cowle’s website.
3. Sales Pages/Landing Pages/Thank You Pages Templates
It was clear that, as well as web page templates, our members needed sales pages, landing pages and thank-you pages. All that stuff that takes forever when you’re making it from scratch or figuring it out how to it yourself!
Since we launched the membership, we’ve also created one-click-install page designs, such as…
- Two sales pages
- Three landing pages
- Three thank you pages
These take a long time to develop, but our members absolutely love them! They’re fully customizable and ideal if you need to get your product/service or lead magnet out there quickly. If you want to see an example of a sales page using our templates, check out Jo Francis’ here.
4. Our members tell us to increase our prices
It’s always a good sign to increase your prices when your customers tell you that you should increase your prices!
We aim to get our members a healthy ROI from the membership, and quite a few of them have advised us that we really should raise our prices. Take Janine Coombes for example, who said the following…
“I’ve got several high paying clients as a direct result of the blogs I’ve created in your challenge, which if I’d created outside your challenge, they would have been rubbish and wouldn’t have turned into the clients. I’ve no doubt about that. So I’d say it’s a complete, no brainer, it’s extremely good value. I think you should put your prices up…”
5. The amount of time we spend in the membership has increased
Since we launched the membership, the amount of time we spend interacting with members has increased significantly. And that’s not just because we have more members! It’s because we’re providing support for our templates (answering queries about any tech niggles) or giving feedback on the content from the 90-day challenge.
6. Investment in community forum software
We originally started out with an online forum as the hub of our community. But then we invested in Slack – which is fantastic software that allows you to communicate with big groups of people easily.
The problem we (and our members) have with Facebook groups is that it’s difficult to find what you’re looking for. And sometimes, when you post something, it often gets missed. With Slack, you are able to group topics into ‘threads’ so we have a thread for ‘tech help’ and a thread for ‘content’ for example. Making it easy-peasy for you to find stuff.
This software does cost us a lot more, but it’s so worth it for the user experience. Plus, it’s also has a fantastic app, so it’s easy to ask questions on the go.
Are You Ready to Get More Leads and Sales From Your Website?
There you have it. The six reasons we’re increasing the cost of our membership.
Remember, you still have until Monday 11 January to get in at the current price before it goes up.
Why Have You Published This Article?
We get that some people might find it strange why we’d publish a blog post about us increasing our prices, but actually, we think EVERY business should do this. If you’ve read our book, Content Fortress, you’ll know that this kind of content can help inform your customers about the benefits of working you. It’s a way of communicating your value. And that’s always a good thing, right?
Leave a Reply