I think I just read that Ready Meals have remained approximately £7.50 for the last ten years. But if Ready Meals had gone up at the same rate as ordinary rice they would cost £26 today. The key to this statement is that the poorest pick up the largest chunk of the bill.
This happens for two main reasons as far as I can tell. Firstly, they are the biggest group of people… 50 million paying an extra quid will raise a lot more than 50,000 paying an extra ten quid. The second reason poorer people cannot fight back. It’s a revolution when they do and actually, that happens more frequently than we realise as revolutions happen in various forms these days.
But this brings about our own offerings and how we might ourselves counter the increases in costs that we experience within our own business. How do we raise our prices to pay our own bills… Without it affecting you.
Hosting
Our monthly hosting bills have increased – we sell this on to you and where it is a direct cost per client as with our VPN offering we’ve no choice but to push this onto you our clients.
But other types of Hosting we have to absorb the costs. Besides one new client and we’re kinda paid up.
With that in mind – we’re open for business… One new client referral from any of our clients and we’re covered we won’t have to increase hosting costs this year.
Web Design & Development
Trickier – all our jobs are quoted and priced independently, but you may as well know this is the hardest area for us to operate in, websites are more complicated than ever before and competition is all around, Wix.com, Squarespace.com, Shopify.com all have very competitive offerings nowadays.
I think I can say with confidence we won’t be putting up our prices any time soon. We simply would struggle to get new customers through the door.
Note: We no longer build a website and get paid for it... and I suspect if you look at your own business you have the same issue, namely, to survive we have had to diversify our income streams. A commission here, a government grant there, for us upselling is a big incentive to reduce our initial costs. Basically, we are no longer paid for what we do, we offset some of the costs based on future hopes. It does not really sit well with us, but it is how most business is done today.
Maintenance and Content Updates
Another popular service, although few clients take us up on our monthly subscriptions which might actually make their costs cheaper, in truth all we can do from our end is apply our own rules a bit more stringently.
Currently, we have a £15 minimum charge for a simple update, but what do we do if someone calls up to ask for their email password, or have a problem with registering a new domain name. or they have a question about Instagram. We’re constantly in a dilemma to bill or not to bill.
Our £15 minimum charge is probably cheap by industry standards, but it’s designed to absorb the time it takes to deal with the phone calls, emails, logging into websites or services, hunting down the bit that needs changing. It all just takes a little time.
Our only Inflation Busted option is to apply our own rule a little more strictly.
Marketing – SEO
I’m glad to say that we have this under control – we’re performance-based. SEO is not easier and it’s getting harder. We can only encourage our clients to take it more seriously than ever before. Content remains a big weakness with most clients and we can clearly see a big difference between the clients that do things and those that don’t.
However, due to the way we are paid – if we work at it… our pay goes up – so it’s in everyone’s interest to make it work.
For sites where SEO is not working… there is not all that much we can do… or rather we’re doing what we can.
There is no need for us to push Inflation Busting extras onto our customers. But you might expect us to come up with new products to further your own expansion. We are working right now on one such ‘Product’, namely a feed management service. We connect your website to as many other websites as we can. We do this via Product Feeds and API’s – for example listing your eCommerce products on Instagram for people to buy direct from Instagram.
It’s all about bringing the customer closer to the product in the way they want to see it. SEO is no longer about how many visitors we can get to your website – some of them might bypass the website completely.
Marketing – PPC
I’ve arrived at the one area where I can see we can raise revenues… But not by Inflation.
I just want to encourage you to spend more… potentially a lot more. Google Adwords and other PPC tools work by getting you clicks and the more clicks the more chance of a sale. Thus the more you spend the more you get back.
Except PPC is very clever, as more people join the program, the more the competition hots up and the more you have to spend per click. Inflation.
So really, we are all running to stand still here and we need to change this a little… Increasing your budget should put you back on track and enable us to cover a few more of our costs. Traditionally we’ve had a £100 minimum spend rule… but we’re putting that up to £150… and the idea is to increase budgets for all clients by about 20-30%.
We won’t force this one on clients’ and we’ll look carefully at the business case for it… but if you’re spending £300 per month and getting a good return – there is no reason why spending £400 a month won’t encourage a better return… And we’ll earn just that little bit more from the enterprise as all our fees are based on your spend.
Consultancy
We are for hire… between our team here at NCompass we probably have over 100 years of experience of the Internet in every facet, from the most basic HTML website to the complex logistics system available. From simply registering a domain name to providing advice on the best way to organise a mailing campaign. Our knowledge is our most prized possession and the main reason we feel entitled to bill a little extra here and there.
We are available for a full consultancy on virtually any Internet-related topic. Just ask.
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