Ask HN: What can we do to attract more potential customers?

[jonnyrockit]

The internet is a strange place. When we (3 of us) started out with our little service business, we had the idea of taking the service model and attempting to productize it by providing a fixed price and benefits. We wanted to make it completely transparent and do our best to provide a safe after sales process.

Our site: http://machinerepublic.com

Unfortunately, it has not worked out that way and we're really hoping to figure out a better, more unique angle to selling custom development services like this. We are not freelancers and don't want to take that approach, we do great work as a small team. Are our prices too high?

I know that search engines require us to be blogging and generating tons of content, but is that really where a small team like ours should be spending its time?

What has not worked for us:

- Social media advertising (Twitter, Facebook) - PPC - Submission to inspirational galleries

Our site gets about 1800 uniques a month, but clearly not from the right kind of people.

What's worked for you? Any help on this topic will be hugely appreciated.

[jeffmould]

1. A blog is simple and having one or two people write one or two articles a week on "hot" topics will go a long way to generating revenue and building traffic. You should never doubt the power of a blog.

2. Seeing the prices is an enormous turn off. I get what you are doing and I can definitely see a benefit to being straightforward with the pricing. However, you are not building a simple 1-3 page website. You are probably getting visits from people looking for pricing comparable to the 1-3 page website, and not a mobile app.

You also say in the first sentence on the site your goal is to build small to medium mobile and web applications without breaking the bank, but then I see the price tag. I am not saying I don't think your prices are fair, it is a matter of perception though. You may want to show the types of projects that can be completed with each package. Even if you are going to stick to the pricing, I would remove it entirely from the site. Put a "Contact Us" button there instead. This forces the customer to reach out to you, at which point you can offer them the package pricing. If they don't seem interested based on the pricing, you are then able to speak directly with them to get an idea of what they are looking for and maybe come up with a price that does work for them. Otherwise you are potentially losing customers coming to the site, seeing the price, and leaving altogether.

3. Your target market is probably not going to be on Facebook. I would go after a LinkedIn crowd honestly for your advertising.

4. Put some case studies together for the site. It looks like you have had some pretty big name clients.

5. I find it difficult to price web/mobile development into a fixed price/benefit model. Every site and every company's requirements are going to be different. This may cause some perspective customers to feel "boxed in" with your model and think that you are not open to doing what they are looking for.

[jonnyrockit]

Thanks for the suggestions Jeff.

We have a few big name clients, but the size of the projects we've done for them don't necessarily reflect that, so the case studies are tough to pull off.

I never thought of the pricing like that, but definitely going to put my thinker on around it.

[jeffmould]

No problem.

The case studies don't have to be in-depth, and you could really limit it to 1 page, just showing off what you did and the result. If possible show a study for each package you have and how get a quote from the client on how much money they saved using your pricing model compared to other quotes they may have received.

Regardless, I still think the best approach is to drive the potential customer to contact you. By just hiding the prices and having them reach out to you, it gives you an opportunity to close the sale personally. Whereas, if they come to your site, see the packages/prices, are confused or think the pricing is to high, they will leave without you ever getting a chance to close the sale.

One last item I thought of on your packages. You and I both know the packages listed are for mobile applications, but I would clarify on that to the website visitor. If they are looking for a 1-3 page website, the price is going to be an immediate turnoff, and the way the site looks now it is not clear those prices are for mobile development, IMO.

[jonnyrockit]

> how much money they saved using your pricing model

Ah, that's a brilliant idea!

> If they are looking for a 1-3 page website, the price is going to be an immediate turnoff

That might actually explain what could be happening at the moment. Potential customers are scanning the content and not noticing the headline explaining that its for mobile services.

Our designer is taking all this feedback and making changes, we'll probably roll it out early next week.

Thanks again for your input, much appreciated!

[davismwfl]

Ads are not likely the best place to be finding clients. I tried this with our consultancy a few times and they never seem to pay off, even when we did it on linkedin. Although at least with linkedin, we did connect to people and it helped expand our network.

Almost all of our clients come from networking and meeting people. You have to put yourself out there. Then from there you will also get referrals etc. Getting sales is still personal, especially if you are asking for $10k+, people want to feel they know you a little or know someone that knows you.

As for your pricing, if it were me, I'd likely put it as "starting at" and pick a reasonable number (gives you flexibility too). Or give general guidelines, like "typical 3 page website developed in approximately 2-3 weeks $xxxxx." Or whatever the real facts you feel are. But that way it is less a rigid structure and more a guide for people that are interested. Giving examples like this I think doesn't scare people, but when they see 1-3 pages $25k for a mobile app, they aren't sure what that means but it seems expensive. Remember, the first thing someone does is take whatever numeric metric you put on your price and divide it into your price, so in this case they would say each screen is costing them $8,333, which will scare them. This is just human nature.

For example, we price per week (or per day for small things), and the first thing everyone does is divide our rate into 40 hours or 8 hours for the day. But for us our weekly hours commitment is 30hrs per developer to a client so that the developers have time to accomplish all those other tasks that come up and meetings etc. So it isn't X/40, its really X/30, but it doesn't even matter to us because we will never bill that way, but it is still the thing every client does in their head and I still wind up answering from time to time.

My only point about pricing then is to be careful putting numeric metrics near a price where it might make your price seem high, when in reality there are 100 other things that go into making that price. Hopefully that makes sense. Additionally, I see the starting at pricing usually lets people feel like they can negotiate and get a custom deal versus having to pay a fixed price and maybe not get what they truly want.

[jonnyrockit]

Wow! Thanks for taking the time to provide so much valuable insight - I really appreciate it. I'm going to give it some more thought (especially around the psychological aspect of positioning and how we convey the message and price).

[LukeFitzpatrick]

Pricing - offer starts at (lowest price possible) OR have an 'Inquire' button, use the service called tawk.to to do live sales chats. I was once working at a software startup, all of the cheap pricing, we almost never had people ask questions, but for the higher plans, nobody purchased without chatting to us on live chat first. The web app i mentioned is free.

What it's missing - testimonials OR working for a big brand. Need to install 'trust' into your brand. I'm a bootstrapped startup, so I don't think startups are your best target market.

What I'd suggest: running tests with pricing & the live chat service. Likewise, I'd do the same with the web copy (USP). Chart it all and analyze it.

Another way to market your service, find out something your customers really need & build that as a free service. Then, grow your brand & sales from their.

Paid advertising, I wouldn't worry about it. Just focus on trying to get engagement from social media & growing your followers.

Craigslist, you can promote your service there. You could set up a bot that automatically posts to Craigslist for you OR a bot to automatically email out prospective clients daily.

[JSeymourATL]

> Search engines require us to be blogging and generating tons of content, but is that really where a small team like ours should be spending its time?

No, may I suggest a better investment of time-- learn to prospect and pitch targeted individuals. Do you have a clear idea of the true Economic Buyer for your services?

The challenge then is to engage that person in a dialogue, see if you can help them, and make a proposal. In a global market place, this can be done via phone, better still on Skype video.

You can definitely hack your way through this process. Here's an excellent read on prospecting and pitching business> http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15863998-new-sales-simpli...

[jonnyrockit]

Thanks for the suggestion. I bought the book you suggested and will give it a read this weekend.

We think we have a clear idea of who the buyer is, but it's been tough trying to actually get our message/brand in front of them as the conventional ways I mentioned previously only get us attention from other people like us.

[DavidGN]

I suggest you have a visit to Kilometer.io (Blog and Community). They have an analytics tool which will only launch in a few months but are doing great job on reaching to potential costumers.

See their shared Marketing Hacks - http://kilometer.io/community/forum/thread-category/marketin...

And this post http://www.kilometer.io/blog/talk-to-your-future-users-befor... Talk to your future users before building a product

[jonnyrockit]

Thanks for the link! Will definitely check that out