How To Create Services & Products Aligned With Your Values

Next up in the Building a Brand Foundation series, we’re talking about how to build out products & services that are aligned with your values & audience. 

If you’re an entrepreneur, you likely already have an idea of the products or services that fuel you to serve your audience. It’s the big reason you got into business in the first place.

But just like you, your brand will pivot & change.

What can happen after months or years building up your business is you’ll realize you’re ready to shift, uplevel, or pivot your offerings into something completely different. 

Unfortunately, if you haven’t built a brand aligned around your values, this could be a sticking point with the people who liked your products & services before you made a change.

What’s a business to do? The secret is this: Start by building up your values first then work out your audience profiles. Read on for more on how to build up products & services that puts them first.

Look beyond your offer.

Services need to be high-quality & valuable to get clients coming back, but it’s a mistake to put too much value or worth onto whatever you’re offering. Because it's not necessarily the product or the service that people want to buy! It's working with you. 

You may be feeling like you’re so great at what you do already. People should be knocking down your door to work with you… right? But you need to be fully in the head of your audience and completely confident in your values, before you get too in the weeds about what you’re offering. 

At the end of the day, you could be the most incredible at what you do. But there are others who might step ahead of you because they understand the audience and communicate it more effectively. Don’t miss out on your dream clients because you’re not bringing your values into your business.

If you’re focusing solely on your product or service it’s easy to burn out and lose confidence in what you’re doing. When you have these foundations set, you’ll build services & products that are aligned with your values so radically changing what you offer won’t sink your business. 

When you create with your values baked in and your audience accounted for, you won’t lose the people who fell in love with your brand in the first place.

Define the overall umbrella of what you do and filter down your offerings.

Before you get into the details of what you offer, start by defining the larger category your business lives under. Gather somewhat specific terms of what exactly you do. 

If you’re a wedding photographer, you won’t necessarily list out all of your products and services anywhere except for your website. When your prices are at the higher side of the spectrum, you may tell people you’re higher end to make sure you’re attracting someone who’s willing to invest top dollar in your services. A word like this tells people what they can expect going in so you can attract people in a specific way but still avoid boxing yourself in. 

If you get too specific, you can sometimes limit yourself. Leave some open space so you can define your services but retain the same brand foundation.

Market & package your services by putting yourself in the shoes of your audience.

Start by asking yourself, what does my audience actually want? Then package that up in services & products that are laser-focused on that person. 

You can start with generalizations if it’s easier. When you’re a wedding photographer, it’s a safe bet your audience is couples who are getting married, and they’re looking for photography services for their wedding. 

From there, you have enough to step into the shoes of this person. If you’re a classical wedding photographer, you likely love to work with people who are family-oriented and having larger weddings. If you’re family-focused, you might offer a big family photoshoot and church wedding packages, assuming they’re more religious couples. That means you won’t necessarily attract adventure elopements or even small weddings, which eliminates an entire audience.

To price your services effectively, you’ll need to understand their overall wedding budget, how much money they make, and how much they’re willing to spend on this investment. 

Once you’ve got these foundations, bring your values into how you talk about the service by peppering key words and phrases into your service descriptions. Your dream clients will not only fully understand what they’re getting but also be truly excited about working with you.

To create truly incredible products & services, make sure your offerings are something your audience is truly interested in and think about your own values. Make sure what you do is something that resonates with you, not just an offer you’ll get burned out on in the years & months to come.