The Great Website Pricing Debate with Taylor De La Fuente

Kevin Dennis (: 00:00

All right, folks, welcome to another episode of Mind Your Wedding Business. I'm here with Taylor Del La Fuente. And I think I said it right. Maybe I didn't. If I didn't, I apologize. But she's the CEO of Big Mouth Copy. And we're here to talk about the great website pricing debate. And I'm really excited to dive into this topic, because I feel like it's a real hot button in our wedding industry. But before we do, Taylor, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and how we got you here today?

Taylor De La Fuente (: 00:26

my gosh, Kevin, I love this topic. I'm so excited to talk about it because it is a hot button issue, but ⁓ I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm Taylor. My business is Big Mouth Copy and I'm a copywriter. So when you hear the words copy or copyright or copywriting, it just means words that sell. And so my specialty ⁓ specifically is website copy because it is your biggest, boldest representation of your brand in the written word. ⁓

Kevin Dennis (: 00:28

Yeah.

Taylor De La Fuente (: 00:54

I've had the business for six years and four of those years I only worked with wedding pros. And now I want to say like 80 % of my clientele are still in the wedding industry because of that wonderful referral machine and just having made a name for myself there. So I'm very, very much familiar with the wedding space and vendors. And as a copywriter, especially a website copywriter, I really get a backstage pass to all of my clients' businesses and seeing the behind the scenes that maybe you wouldn't see otherwise.

Kevin Dennis (: 01:21

Hmm.

Taylor De La Fuente (: 01:24

This whole pricing thing, the psychology of it, the strategy, the tactics, all of it is like one of my favorite things to get into with clients. So I'm really pumped to talk about this today, especially after writing that blog for the Wedding IQ blog. And then now here we are going even deeper.

Kevin Dennis (: 01:37

Yeah, here we are.

I love it. All right. And you left out that you're highly opinionated CEO. we got to...

Taylor De La Fuente (: 01:45

yeah, I have a lot of opinions. I think that

comes through with the big mouth name.

Kevin Dennis (: 01:50

Yeah, I love it.

And very tired mom of two. I think a lot of us can relate to that. So all right, let's start with the big one. Why is the pricing such a hot button topic in the wedding industry?

Taylor De La Fuente (: 01:57

Yes.

gosh, I think, I don't even know, I don't even know really where this came from, but I think there's this myth that your brand is more luxurious somehow if you don't put your pricing online. I think from my own work and talking with clients that I have been able to attach those two together. Like this idea of quote unquote luxury.

Kevin Dennis (: 02:05

I'm gonna sit back and grab my popcorn.

Mmm.

Mm.

Taylor De La Fuente (: 02:31

and pricing are somehow attached. When in reality, your price may be a signal of a luxury experience, but really being a luxury wedding vendor has to do with the experience for the client and the level of service that you're providing. And then, yes, if you're providing a higher level of experience, then you charge more for it. But somehow along the way, I think the water got a little bit muddied there, and now people have just equated this idea of luxury service, wedding service provider

with no price transparency and not talking about money and not talking about pricing. And I think that's hugely ironic because people who have money, I'm talking about money, money, like generational money, people with big money. Yeah. People with big money don't care.

Kevin Dennis (: 03:14

The one percent of the wedding industry, yeah.

Taylor De La Fuente (: 03:21

about money. I mean, they care, obviously. Everybody has a budget, a dollar amount, something they have in mind, but like they're not emotionally attached to money because they've always had it and it comes easily to them. So it's just kind of ironic to me how we feel like, ⁓ we don't talk about money if we're in a luxury space. But in the reality, I think that's like less important for people who actually have money and therefore your customer, like your customer just wants to know how much is it going to be? And then they cut the check. Anyway, I digress.

Kevin Dennis (: 03:48

Yeah.

No, well, no. And it's funny. I love that take because I've always thought that people don't, they just don't want their competition to know how much they're charging. And that's why I have always, yeah, you know, and I've always thought maybe that's why that, you know, it happens. But I could be wrong because I don't, again, I do weddings, not websites. Yeah.

Taylor De La Fuente (: 03:59

That's a piece of it.

Well, that's a good point. So that's a good point, because yeah,

that's a good point. So I hear that a lot. Here's what I hear a lot. One, I don't want my competition to know what I'm charging, because then they're going to undercut me or something, some kind of a competitive issue. ⁓ Another reason is I, well, this other.

Kevin Dennis (: 04:18

Mm-hmm.

Taylor De La Fuente (: 04:33

brand that I look up to and consider to be a competitor, whether they actually are a competitor or not, this other brand that I admire doesn't put their pricing online. So clearly that's the thing that I should do, so I'm not going to do it. So that would be number two. Number three is like my business coach or my mentor or somebody who the business owner relies on told them not to do it for.

for whatever reason. ⁓ then the number four, which is really the big one kind of underneath all of these, honestly, is I'm afraid I'm gonna scare them away. If I tell them how much it is.

Kevin Dennis (: 05:07

⁓ Yeah,

but to that note, don't you want to scare them away? If you're too much or not enough or I don't know. Yeah.

Taylor De La Fuente (: 05:16

Right, Kevin? Isn't that the point? That

would be my perspective.

Kevin Dennis (: 05:22

So yeah, mean, many years ago, we went to a conference. I couldn't even tell you which one. And I got convinced to put a range on our website. So instead of putting, because what we do, so in my real world, I do lighting, drapery, and decor. So it's very inventory-based. So it could be, do you have five of this item, or do you have one of this item? So the price range is based on that. And we don't have packages and all that kind of stuff. So we put.

Taylor De La Fuente (: 05:30

Mm-hmm.

Kevin Dennis (: 05:49

ranges and we've been able to give client ranges. Do you think that's a good approach for these folks?

Taylor De La Fuente (: 05:55

Absolutely. OK, so yeah, there's the I don't I don't really care how you put your pricing online. My argument is you need to have some level of pricing transparency because there is ⁓ we're in like a trust economy bubble right now and it is bursting actively. There's all of this like

Kevin Dennis (: 06:18

Mm-hmm.

Taylor De La Fuente (: 06:20

especially in the online space, there is a lot of this illusion of I hired so-and-so and they're supposed to be an expert and they're actually not. And that is trickling into other industries. And I think the wedding industry is one of them because there is a lot of this like smoke and mirrors. And again, non-transparency around pricing process, how the money flows, who's hiring whom, whatever, all of these things. And so as a result, couples are online talking about

Here's what this person charged me. Here's how this experience went. They're charging me a wedding tax or like a quote unquote pink tax. All of these things, all of these merriers are online talking on Instagram, on Reddit, on threads, on TikTok, all of this stuff spreading all of this. And it's just making this whole trust crisis worse. And so the solution, the antidote to having a lack of trust is to be transparent because that is what

creates trust is just being honest and upfront about here's how this works or how it costs or who you're hiring or whatever the case may be. In this case, we're talking about money. So I say all that to say you should put some kind of pricing information on your website. And there are a lot of different ways to do that because my clients have a varying level of comfortability with sharing the number online. And to be fair, in the wedding industry, there's a wide variety of businesses, right? So your example is perfect, Kevin, of like

Yeah, if you're going to do lighting, can tell you exactly how much this uplighting costs or the chandelier rental is. How many do you want? OK, X dollars times five chandeliers equals blah, blah, blah dollars. That's an easy one. If you are a caterer, it's like, OK, well, how many courses are we doing? And are we doing top shelf liquor or champagne? And are we doing lobster or chicken? All of those things are highly variable. And so I get it.

Kevin Dennis (: 08:05

Mm-hmm.

Taylor De La Fuente (: 08:17

It's complicated, but I have a bunch of different strategies for you, regardless of what category you're in. And I shared this in the Wedding IQ blog. So I'm sure you're going to link that in the show notes for people to go in and look at it. ⁓ here's the easiest way to do it is just flat out list your price. if you, again, the lighting, draping is a great example. A rental company, if you have, it's a flat fee, like hair and makeup is another good one.

Kevin Dennis (: 08:26

Yep, we will.

Taylor De La Fuente (: 08:46

or a musician or something like that. Just kind of straightforward. It's a flat fee. You just list your price. can say, wedding hair is $500, something like that. The next thing you can do is a starting price, which would be a really good choice for like a photographer, a band, a DJ, where you're saying like packages start at 3000 or something like that. So people just know like if they're...

budget in their head is less than that number, then they're not even in the ballpark and they shouldn't reach out. The next sort of version of that is price range. So you can put, know, this is really good for any wedding service that has different tiered packages. So if you've got like gold, silver, bronze, that kind of thing, or like for a planner, if you do full service planning versus just design or

you know, wedding management or something like that's a good one where you can kind of list the range there. Or as you said, if you've got averages and that's the other thing is when you do arrange, it could be the lowest package versus the highest package. It could be an average of what people spend. And that would be sort of strategy number four is an average investment. So that could be again, a range like you can combine those two. So you could say our

Kevin Dennis (: 09:53

Hmm.

Taylor De La Fuente (: 10:07

average fees range from $6,000 to $4,000, something like that. Or back to the average option, you don't have to do a range. could be this is a good one for caterers or planners, even stationers. Our clients typically spend $200 per head on bar service, something like that. And so putting an average that way.

Kevin Dennis (: 10:31

That's a good party if they spend $200 on a bar service. So all right. One of the questions I was going to ask you, what are the pros and cons of listing prices on your website? I feel like you just went through all the pros. What are some of the cons for listing your prices on your website?

Taylor De La Fuente (: 10:34

I know, right? I want to go to that party.

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, OK, I love that question. I think we all know the cons because that's why everybody's not doing it, right? Like they're letting the cons outweigh the pros here. So the cons are one, yeah, then people know how much it is. So people includes the competition. So there might be another vendor in your category who then knows what you charge and undercuts you. My response to that would be,

Kevin Dennis (: 10:56

Okay.

Taylor De La Fuente (: 11:18

that's a race to the bottom. And that's a race that I personally don't want to win. I don't want you to win that race to the bottom. And so, yeah, you can't control what other people do. And there might be somebody else out there who that's their strategy is to go and undercut you. But they might win on price, but they're not going to win on service because they're either going to have a lower price and therefore a lower level of service. And they're not providing. It's really not a comparison to what you're providing your clients.

Kevin Dennis (: 11:20

Mmm. I love that. Mm-hmm.

Taylor De La Fuente (: 11:46

It's not the same level of service. Or they are providing that same level of service for a lower cost, AKA they're going to burn themselves out because they're going to run out of money, run out of team. They're going to burn out. And so I would say like neither of those is a problem for you because they're either going to take care of themselves by burning out or they are just not offering the same level of service that you are. So they're not really the competition. So that's.

Issue number one is, yeah, then the competition might know and they might not intercut you. Then on the flip side, the client might know, which we already talked about, I think is a good thing. But there's a lot, I hear this so often, Kevin, where people are like, well, I'm really good on the phone selling people. And I very often can upsell somebody on the phone when we're talking about my packages or my service.

Kevin Dennis (: 12:21

Yeah.

Taylor De La Fuente (: 12:39

And I don't want somebody to not get on the phone with me because of that number and they don't hit that minimum number. So I'd rather just keep it to myself and then we can talk about it in real life.

Kevin Dennis (: 12:51

And I think that business, whoever that is, will be irrelevant in at least two years because the clients that we're dealing with now do not want to be on the phone. Maybe their parents do, but they do not. So, yeah.

Taylor De La Fuente (: 13:00

Yes, absolutely. Absolutely.

Yeah, my feeling is, and this is a good point too for most vendors, a lot of vendors are recommended by a planner. And so I hear that too from clients who are there, let's say it's a wedding photographer and they've got two.

Kevin Dennis (: 13:19

Hmm. Yeah.

Taylor De La Fuente (: 13:24

clients, quote unquote, they have the couple, the marriage, and then they've got the wedding planner who is potentially referring them. And so the couple may or may not, you know, they make their decisions their own way. We could talk about that in a second. But like the planner is familiar with the industry and familiar with the couple and their budget and how they're handling money. And so if a planner sees your minimum price or your starting price and then

So let's say your starting price is $12,000 and their budget only has $10,000 for photography. A planner, a good one, will know, but photography is like a big deal and this couple really loved this style and like $2,000, I can find that somewhere else in the budget. And so we should still keep them in the running and still have this conversation. So to me, that's kind of a moot ⁓ point or like a moot concern. Like you don't need to worry.

Kevin Dennis (: 14:09

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Taylor De La Fuente (: 14:20

about that. And then to your point, yeah, like on the client side, if there's a couple seeing that, couples aren't fooled by this whole like, I'm not putting my prices online. There's too many vendors out there who all have beautiful photos of their work for them to like mess around with.

inquiring and then they get added to your email list and they get a hundred follow ups and they don't want to do a phone call and all of these things. And even some people have like a lead magnet where you insert your email and in exchange you get their pricing guide and somebody may or may not jump through that hoop to get the dollar amount that you're that you're offering. But basically they want to know like how much is this going to cost before they hop on the phone with you. So I'm not saying you'll never get anybody to jump through that hoop and give you a phone call and talk about money.

Kevin Dennis (: 14:53

Mm-hmm.

Taylor De La Fuente (: 15:13

on the phone, but the reality is today's couples really don't function that way. They're busy, they don't like talking on the phone, they have social anxiety, and so they're not interested in waiting two weeks to get on the phone with you and then just sit through an hour-long sales pitch. That's what they're viewing in their head. And I know that because one, I interview them for my clients. That's part of my process. When somebody hires me for copy is I ask them,

Kevin Dennis (: 15:35

Yeah, I love that.

Taylor De La Fuente (: 15:43

Who are two of your favorite clients that you wish every client in the future would be like? Give me their name and number and I will call them and ask them questions about you and the service and whatever. So I hear this directly from the clients themselves, the couples. But then I also read it online in those places like threads, Reddit, TikTok, all of those things.

Kevin Dennis (: 16:03

So do you think, because clients, think, have unrealistic expectation of what things cost. Because they may have looked at not and not says you can for $30,000 average across America get married. Well, I'm in the Bay Area, San Francisco Bay Area. You can't get a venue for $30,000. And so do you think that has anything to do with?

Taylor De La Fuente (: 16:10

Mm hmm. Absolutely.

Kevin Dennis (: 16:32

how some of these vendors react because they're like, know, maybe they like going back to the woman on the phone that wants to get them on the phone. I don't know if it was woman. I apologize. The person on the phone, you know, gets them on the phone and wants to sell them that way because they want to go through it. Do you think the clients having unrealistic expectations of what things cost have anything to do with this?

Taylor De La Fuente (: 16:56

Yeah.

The clients don't know how much things cost, so that's an excellent point to bring up. They don't know, and honestly, that's not their responsibility to know. They don't work in this industry. Like, here's how sales works. If you take a step back from all this, because I feel like sometimes we get so entrenched into running a business that we kind of forget the basics. A person has a problem. In this case, it's two people. They're looking to get married. They have a problem, which is any level of complexity around.

I wanna get married, I want my day to be special, I wanna have a good time and invite all my favorite people to celebrate with me. And this, you know, in order to do that, I need X. That's the problem. And then there's the solution on the other side, which is you offer X that is going to result in them having this incredible party and making these memories, having a special moment with their friends and family. You have to like introduce the problem, like tell somebody that you recognize their problem, you understand it, and you have the solution.

and in exchange for solving their problem, they pay you money. That's how transactions work. It is not a shock to anyone that there is going to be money exchanged here. Like, it's not a surprise. But sometimes I feel this conversation, it almost kind of goes that direction where people are like, I can't talk about the money. It's like, well, but it's not a surprise that at some point there's gonna be a money conversation. So why don't we just bring it up at the beginning because

Kevin Dennis (: 18:06

Hehehehehe

Yeah.

Taylor De La Fuente (: 18:24

people are looking for that detail among all the other details. When is, like, how does this work? When do you show up? What's included? All of these questions that when you as a buyer go out there and you try and buy something, you want to know the answers to those questions. So don't know sometimes why this industry feels like it should be gate kept. But anyway, back to your question of, yeah, people don't know. And it's our responsibility.

to educate them on here's what something like this could cost you. And so that's another kind of like secret way to display your prices. Let's say you're listening to this and you really just, every bone in your body is like, I cannot do it, Taylor. I can't list my prices online. Here's a great hack that I do for clients sometimes who are really nervous is we put it in the FAQ on the services page. So if you list your service,

Kevin Dennis (: 19:01

You

Hmm.

Taylor De La Fuente (: 19:11

closer to the top of the page where it belongs and you don't put a dollar amount with it lower on the page towards the bottom where there's an FAQ with a couple of questions on that page. I always recommend one of those questions being about pricing. Any version of what is the price to explain how your pricing works. That's a really good one if you're doing percentage based. So if you're like a planner who does percentage based pricing, that's a good one. Do you offer payment plans, anything around money? One of those questions should be about money. But yeah, if you're not gonna include your pricing above,

You could hide it in FAQ of like, much does this cost? And you could put that information there. And so that way, if you're nervous about putting it up higher, but you still want the information out there, somebody who's really looking for it, a client who's really paying attention is going to find it kind of hidden in the FAQ.

Kevin Dennis (: 19:59

It's kind of interesting. I just thought of something when you were saying all that is that I have a lot of clients now, like I've seen a trend where they come in with a budget and some of them are like even telling me ahead of time, hey, I have $5,000 to spend on lighting and decor. You know, like what can we do to come close to this photo? Or even they'll come in and say, I only have $1,500 to spend, but they're showing me these photos that are five, seven, $10,000 and.

Taylor De La Fuente (: 20:07

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Kevin Dennis (: 20:25

And so it kind of changed the conversation quickly because I can go, hey, you don't have the money for this. So let's stop looking at that. Let's look at this unless you want to spend more and then starting giving them realistic expectations when they come. Yeah. No, but it's just I've seen a trend. It's such a I don't know if you know. And like, let's maybe jump into Reddit because I'm wondering if they're because they're getting pricing information off of Reddit, whether

Taylor De La Fuente (: 20:40

I love that idea. That's such a hack.

Kevin Dennis (: 20:55

you think your prices are secret or not, your prices are probably out there on Reddit because the clients are sharing your pricing out there. And that's a big trend out there, especially for the people that I think that hide their pricing. like you should probably start searching yourself on Reddit more regularly and looking at what you find. But what do you think Reddit has to do with all this debate?

Taylor De La Fuente (: 21:03

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Well, so I think most people know what Reddit is, but in case you don't, it's just a user-generated content platform where people post a question and other people post an answer. So it's not necessarily an expert writing an article. It's like a random person saying, I'm getting married in Dallas. That's where I live. And I'm looking for a planner. Does anybody have recommendations?

Kevin Dennis (: 21:40

Mm-hmm.

Taylor De La Fuente (: 21:40

those kinds of things. And then other random people chime in and say, here's who we hired, they're great, or don't hire these people, they were terrible, or whatever. And so, yeah, people are looking, we live in an information age. People are looking for information and if you're not gonna provide it, then they're gonna go find it elsewhere because information is readily available, it's easy to find, and it's free. And I also think our particular flavor of information age these days ⁓ enjoys the drama.

And so there's also this like, let me expose blah, blah, blah controversy or bad person or bad actor or whatever it is. And so people like to also sort of pull the curtain back on things for that salacious headline or that hot take or whatever that's gonna make them go viral, whatever it is.

Kevin Dennis (: 22:14

Yeah.

Yeah, that's why I'm a big believer you don't get in an argument with people about reviews or about social media, you know, like try to preach to them. There's vendors in my market that do a lot of preaching instead of educating. And so I feel like it backfires for them. So yeah.

Taylor De La Fuente (: 22:45

Totally. Well, and

that's a whole other, I love that you brought that up. That's a whole other thing that I notice people do on their website all the time is they try and sell people on their industry instead of selling them on themselves. And like, no, we're not out here to convince somebody that they want up lighting for their wedding. Like they should have already made that decision. And then they're just coming to you to say, why would I hire Kevin instead of the next lighting, draping, rentals company?

Kevin Dennis (: 23:01

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Taylor De La Fuente (: 23:12

So we shouldn't even get into the preaching category of like, here's why draping is important.

Kevin Dennis (: 23:19

Yeah. So say I'm a business, ⁓ I'm like put my foot in the, you know, feet in the sand. I don't want to list my pricing. You know, what do you think they need to do to make sure potential clients feel confident about reaching out to them? Is there anything like they could do with their ad copy or is, are they just, it's, it, they're going to get the increase from a thousand to 20,000. You know, you know I'm saying?

Taylor De La Fuente (: 23:44

Yeah. it's a lever putting the price transparency and putting out on your website is a lever that you can pull to increase or decrease the quantity of leads and then therefore increase or decrease the quality of leads. So if you are getting a ton of leads, a ton of people are inquiring through your website and not a lot of them are booking and then you ask them why they aren't booking and they're citing pricing. Maybe that's true. Maybe it's not. There could be something else.

Kevin Dennis (: 23:57

Mm.

Taylor De La Fuente (: 24:14

If you take it at face value, they are not booking with you because they didn't know how much it costs. Now you told them and now they're not prepared to spend that. so essentially you are wasting their time and your own time by not sharing the pricing out there. So if you're getting a ton of leads, they're not booking because of price.

and you are frustrated by the ghosting and you want the ghosting to stop, then I would say this is a lever you could experiment with pulling is putting a little bit more pricing information out there. So again, that kind of sneaky, like hide it in the contact form or hide it in the FAQ to just start trickling that information out there and seeing if that improves your quality of leads. I can tell you right now, if you don't have any pricing online and then you put your pricing online, you are going to get fewer leads moving forward. You are.

Kevin Dennis (: 24:43

Mm-hmm. ⁓

Yep, you will. Yeah.

Taylor De La Fuente (: 25:06

But the quality of those leads is going to be a lot higher because now when you have a conversation with those people, they are not going to be asking you how much does this cost. And they're not going to be saying, actually, I can't afford that, and then not talking to you anymore. They already know how much it costs. And have already kind of decided like, yeah, this is in the ballpark. And so I want to learn more about them. And you can almost avoid having that hard conversation about money. And you can just go into it assuming that you're going to get the sale because pricing isn't.

isn't an issue because you already brought it up.

Kevin Dennis (: 25:38

Yeah, almost, I want to say about maybe eight, nine, maybe even 10 years ago, we went with the pricing ranges on our website. our increase, our leads did go down, but our conversion rate went up. that was the biggest thing that I recommend. You got it. You got to put it out there. You got to give them something. especially starting at or something, just to give them

Taylor De La Fuente (: 25:46

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Kevin Dennis (: 26:08

something to go off of, so.

Taylor De La Fuente (: 26:10

Well, and I love what you said before, and I think that's such a hack too about somebody coming to you with a photo or a video or like they found something on your Instagram and they send it to you and they're like, I want this. That is an awesome tool that you could, again, kind of hiding that information. You could put it in your case studies or on your blog or again, post it on Instagram and say this picture right here, this video, this is the dollar amount attached to that. If that makes sense for your.

Kevin Dennis (: 26:35

Mm-hmm.

Taylor De La Fuente (: 26:38

Contracts and the non-disclosure and all the protections that you might have for your clients I think that's a great idea because again people don't know and they are attached to visuals and so if you can be like here's this thing here's how much it costs then it kind of level sets people to go ⁓ that's what I can expect I had a client recently who is ⁓ they own a band a party band and they have a demo reel and

Of course, people reach out and go, my God, I love your demo reel. I want that, but here's my budget. And so like the client has to level set with them and say in that first email, you don't even have to wait for a phone call. When they reach out and they say, I love your demo. That's what we want. And be like, cool, just so you know, you said your budget was X. That demo, if you wanted that exact thing, it would cost Y. Hearing that, how does that?

Kevin Dennis (: 27:06

You

Taylor De La Fuente (: 27:27

Feel for you. Do you feel like your budget is flexible to get that level of experience or should we pull the experience back to match your budget?

Kevin Dennis (: 27:34

Yeah. And that's great. Now they have choices and decisions to make.

Taylor De La Fuente (: 27:41

Absolutely. And you learn so

much more about the client and what's important to them and how to then serve them better. Because then you know, is the experience more important to them? Is the budget more important to them? I think that's one of the biggest problems here is that people just attach a lot of their own feelings and opinions about money to their business. Because inherently, there's a financial component to it, duh. But you know, the...

Kevin Dennis (: 28:04

Yeah.

Taylor De La Fuente (: 28:06

your feelings about money may not be the same as everybody else's. And so that's the biggest thing is you have to talk about it like it's the weather or something. You're just like, yep, my service is $20,000. Would you like to pay in three installments or one? Like it's, you know, can be that detached.

Kevin Dennis (: 28:24

No, yeah, and that's a good way because the people get nervous when they say their price and then you got to learn to sit there and not say a word because then you start trying to defend your price or talk it down. Yeah, it just you got to sit there and let it be silent. So that's it's a heart.

Taylor De La Fuente (: 28:37

probably.

That's a sales strategy too. It's

called the presumptive sale, where anytime you have a conversation with somebody who inquires or whether it's via email or on a sales call or whatever, you presume that they're going to say yes and move forward. So it's less of like, does that work for you? Or let me explain why. And more of just, here's the price. When would you like to get started? I'm next available on these three days or whatever it is. And then it's on them to come back and say, actually that doesn't work.

Kevin Dennis (: 28:44

Mm-hmm.

Taylor De La Fuente (: 29:09

work for me, and then you can figure out why it doesn't work for them. ⁓ is it because that payment amount is too high for each payment? Is it because the overall price is too high? Is it because they're not still seeing the value? Like, whatever it is. And then you can kind of work through the issue and then potentially solve it or not. And if you don't, that's OK, too, because then you're leaving by saying no to that client, you're leaving the door open to a yes for another client who has no problem with your pricing.

Kevin Dennis (: 29:37

Yeah. All right. So say I'm drinking the Kool-Aid, I'm putting my pricing out there on my website, and what mistakes do people, you think, make when they do put their pricing online?

Taylor De La Fuente (: 29:51

Ooh, that's a good one.

One of the, it's not necessarily a mistake, but a really great simple switch that you can make that a lot of people don't know this. There's something in sales psychology. Notice that I'm talking about psychology a lot. It's because all of these things are like in our own heads and we bring that. Absolutely, yes. But so there's a sales psychology principle called price anchoring, which is this idea and they've done studies on this and whatever, but there's this idea of whatever.

Kevin Dennis (: 30:12

But it goes hand in hand, I really feel like. Yeah.

Taylor De La Fuente (: 30:26

dollar amount you put out there first people get attached to. And so everything else you say after that is relative to the first thing that you said. So for example, let's say that you're a stationer and your prices are in tiers and so on the lower end it could be $500 and on the higher end it could be $2,000. If you say my pricing is 500 to 2,000, the first word out of your mouth or the first word on the page that they read left or right,

o then when they hear or read: 2000

Kevin Dennis (: 31:05

Mm.

Yeah.

Taylor De La Fuente (: 31:25

to the 2000. And so you're setting yourself up for a little bit of an easier conversation and a little bit more success if you do it that way. So if you are listing your prices on your website and you do a range like that, start with the larger number first and the lower one second. And that goes true as well if you've got multiple packages. So if you've got full planning, partial planning, wedding coordination, as another example.

Kevin Dennis (: 31:27

Yeah.

I like that.

Taylor De La Fuente (: 31:51

put full planning, the one you want to sell the most, the most expensive one first, because they're going to see that $20,000 price tag. And then when they see partial at 10, and then when they see wedding coordination at two, two feels a lot more doable than 20. If you go the other way, if they start with two and then they get to 20, they're like, damn, these people are expensive. I don't know if I can handle that. that's a really good tip. So it's not like you're doing it wrong if you have it the other way. It's just,

Kevin Dennis (: 32:13

Hehehehehe

Taylor De La Fuente (: 32:20

It's a small switch that will make your life a lot easier.

Kevin Dennis (: 32:24

I love that, good advice. All right, so how can wedding vendors use copywriting to set expectation before the inquiry stage, especially around price?

Taylor De La Fuente (: 32:25

Mm-hmm.

Totally. So again, copy is just words that sell. So if you have good copy, which could be written by you, could be written by a professional, doesn't matter, but whoever wrote it, please don't have AI write it. That's a different conversation. if you, we can, yes, absolutely. We could go down that rabbit hole if you want, but whoever wrote it, like as long as it's strategic, then it should be presenting again, that problem.

Kevin Dennis (: 32:48

⁓ I can say probably a whole podcast episode about that.

Taylor De La Fuente (: 33:02

that somebody is having where you're saying, hey, I recognize that you have this problem. And darn, isn't that problem just, it sucks, right? Like, who wants to be there? I totally get it. My clients have been there, or I've been there, whatever. And I have the solution for you on the other side. Here's how I solve that problem. And isn't it so wonderful when that problem is solved? Here's these wonderful things that will happen to you or these feelings you'll feel, this experience that you'll have when we solve that problem.

do a good job of painting that picture of here's the negative and here's the positive, then it makes it a lot easier for you to put the dollar amount out there because they're attaching the value to those feelings or that experience or resolving that pain point. And then the dollar amount, the money is just like the path of how do I get from the problem to the solution. And it's less of a transactional like.

Kevin Dennis (: 33:42

Hmm.

Taylor De La Fuente (: 33:59

pay me 20 grand and I give you a killer party band to, ⁓ you know, you want to throw like the party of the century that people are talking about and a band is the way to do it. It's like a private concert for all of your favorite people. And isn't that so amazing? All your best memories are concerts with your favorite people. So wouldn't it be cool if you hosted one and now you've got pictures and videos and every Christmas and every Thanksgiving, that's all anybody talks about. Wouldn't that be so cool?

Kevin Dennis (: 34:02

Mm-hmm

Taylor De La Fuente (: 34:29

And by the way, to get that experience, I just need $15,000. Like, I'm not going to pretend that that isn't a lot of money or some person reading that might go like, whoa, that's way too much. But for the right person, and if you're doing it well, it is a lot easier pill to swallow when you kind of set it up with the value of here's this thing that I'm giving you.

Kevin Dennis (: 34:51

It's funny you use that analogy, but it's happened to me. I had Jordan Khan ⁓ perform at my wife's ⁓ 40th birthday, and all my family members still talk about it. mean, she's now 43 or 42. She's older now, 43. ⁓ But ⁓ literally, for the last three years, that's all people have been talking about is her party and the band. so it's that, yeah. So it's the experience that you want these folks to give.

Taylor De La Fuente (: 34:58

Mm-hmm.

Hmm?

Absolutely.

Kevin Dennis (: 35:19

and how does that all go together.

Taylor De La Fuente (: 35:19

Yeah.

Yeah. And that's why it's so important to know your audience. That's a huge piece of copywriting successfully. Again, whether you write it yourself or somebody else does it for you, that's why when I write for clients, I call their past clients. I read every single review I can find online, even if there's 500, because all of that is valuable intel from those people. They will literally tell you, here's what was important to me. Here's what I was worried about. Here's what I valued the most.

And then all you have to do is reverse engineer that and sell it back to them and say, if this is the thing that you want, then I offer that. Or if this is the experience or whatever it is that they're dreaming of, you just turn that around and say, yep, we provide that. And here's how much it costs.

Kevin Dennis (: 36:03

Well, and that's probably to your point of hiring someone like yourself to help you with that because we're so in the weeds that we don't think, you know, we know what we, we know it, so we don't, you know, but our clients don't know it. And I think that's where someone like you comes in and melds what we know into explaining it to people that don't know. So.

Taylor De La Fuente (: 36:23

Yeah, it's a nice Venn diagram of on one side it's what do you want to be known for, or what do you view as important about your service and your brand. On the other side is what does the client want, or what do they value, what problem are they solving? And then there's that little overlap in the middle where those two things match. And so as a copywriter, that's my job is to find that overlap in the Venn diagram and figure out what do you want to say, what do they need to hear, and then how do we merge those two. So that way everybody's getting what they want.

Kevin Dennis (: 36:47

Mm.

Taylor De La Fuente (: 36:52

Like sales doesn't have to be sleazy. It's about serving or service industry. Again, they've got a problem. You've got a solution. Let's help people solve their problems. Like that's a good thing. You don't have to feel icky or bad about it.

Kevin Dennis (: 36:54

I love that.

No, sales does not have to be sleazy. love that. All right. So in the wedding industry, we are not one size fits all or we're not all apples. We're all kinds of different fruit. how do you think listing your pricing on your website pertains to certain different vendor categories like planners, photographers, venues, rental? Is it one size fits all or is this a different topic for different categories?

Taylor De La Fuente (: 37:12

Mm-hmm.

I think it's one size fits all, which is price transparency. How you go about the price transparency definitely differs from vendor category to vendor category. That's why I sort of had that list, like four different ways you could put it online. yeah, like you can't, if I'm a caterer, I can't give you a flat price for how much it's going to cost. I need all these details. I need to know how many people, how many courses, what are we serving? Is food and beverage like,

Kevin Dennis (: 37:38

Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Taylor De La Fuente (: 38:01

beverage part of food and beverage, or is that a separate thing? All of this stuff that's very different from a venue just saying, oh, you want a Saturday night? It's $4,000 for our venue for Saturday night. And they just have a flat fee. So that part of it is absolutely dependent on the type of vendor that you are. But the rest of it, like, should you have them or not? I think you should. And a great example of that, too, is not the service industry, but the product-based industry, e-commerce.

Kevin Dennis (: 38:10

Mm-hmm.

Taylor De La Fuente (: 38:30

If you are trying to buy a car, even a luxury car, like, it's not that hard to find the price for a luxury car. then typically a luxury car is going to ask you for some variables. Do you want a leather interior? Is it genuine leather or is it vegan leather? Do you want a sunroof or not? Like, you know, is it a convertible? Is it not? But in general, like, if you want to go buy a Lexus, there's a price attached to that. And there's also a price attached to a Benz and there's also a price attached to a Honda.

Kevin Dennis (: 38:31

Hmm.

Taylor De La Fuente (: 39:00

And there's people out there who drive Lexus, and there's people out there who drive Honda. And one isn't better than the other. So I digress. Yeah.

Kevin Dennis (: 39:06

So it'll get you to the same place. No, but

it's kind of funny. It'll still get you to the same place. But it just, how do you want to feel when you drive your car? And it's probably the same goes into it. So one's not right, one's not wrong. And I think the same is in the wedding industry. There's room for everyone in our industry. The sooner I think we all get around that wrapped in our head, the better as.

Taylor De La Fuente (: 39:12

Exactly.

Yeah, it's the kind of experience.

Kevin Dennis (: 39:32

as an industry, will grow it and it'll become stronger. all right. So, I'm on, we're going to wrap up here, but I'm on the fence and I've listened to us now go on for almost 40 minutes about putting pricing on the website and I still don't know what to do. Taylor, can you leave the audience with that one thing or some kind of advice to help them understand this is something that they need to do?

Taylor De La Fuente (: 40:02

Yeah. Two things. One is what I actually want you to hear and take away from this, which is to be brave. You have to be brave. This is my entire brand. You have to be a big mouth. You have to have an opinion. You have to open your mouth. That is a thing. If you want sales to be easier for you, if you want to have more clients, make more money, do more aligned work with the clients who you're dreaming of serving,

Kevin Dennis (: 40:06

Ooh, I love it.

Yeah.

Taylor De La Fuente (: 40:29

then we've got to be brave. We have to put an opinion out there and in this case, put a price out there and do it. And so I know that being vulnerable, putting that out there is scary. It's a tender moment. You might have feelings about it and you have to push through those because it's not about you, it's about your client and your client has a problem. And you're being selfish by not offering them the solution to that problem and solving it in such an amazing, complete way that they absolutely deserve.

and you're doing something as simple as not putting a dollar amount online and taking that opportunity away from them, like that's selfish. That's not fair. So you have to push through, be a little bit brave to get there. That being said, my second point is your website is not a book. It's not printed or written in stone. so you can change it. All of marketing is an experiment. So worst case scenario, if you're really nervous, give it a try. Dip your toe in the water. Hide it in the FAQ.

write some case studies that have dollar amounts attached to photos or videos, things like that, to try and sprinkle that out there, and then see what the response is. And maybe that will give you a little bit of confidence to do it more. I never want to push people to do something that makes them uncomfortable or that goes against their values, but also at the same time, I am going to push you here because I don't think it really has anything to do with comfort or values. And it has to.

it goes beyond that. So this is one of those areas where I'd say like isn't kind of relevant to that argument.

Kevin Dennis (: 42:03

Well, and I think to your point, I also think that our clients now, this is what they're demanding. Maybe all our hiding our pricing probably worked 20 years ago, but that doesn't work anymore with the clients that are getting married today.

Taylor De La Fuente (: 42:20

I love that. And you have a client facing role in your business. mean, what has your experience been as you get inquiries from clients and as you have conversations with them? Do they already know your pricing? Are they asking about it? What is your experience been?

Kevin Dennis (: 42:37

Yeah, and so a lot of them now, since we put it out there, they have a good range and a lot of them come educated with photos and they want to get ideas on pricing before they even get on a Zoom call. And all of a sudden we have an uptick now in in-person consultations. So before they even want to spend the time to get in the car and drive over to our office, they want to know, they want to have an understanding of roughly what everything costs. And then from there,

They're going to see pretty pictures and I'm go that cost more and they're like, okay, put it on the quote. I think they're more educated than ever before.

Taylor De La Fuente (: 43:16

Yeah, again, information age. The information is out there, to your point, Kevin, like whether you're putting it out there or somebody inquired you gave the pricing privately and now they published it on Reddit or in one of those viral TikToks, like I'm sure you saw that one out of Chicago where it was like 50 different photographers, their pricing all got shared and it's complicated.

Kevin Dennis (: 43:36

Yeah, I think it was through Reddit, right?

It was through Reddit, was it? Okay.

Taylor De La Fuente (: 43:40

I think it was on both, honestly. think it might've started

on Reddit and then went on TikTok as like a video, like somebody uploaded it. But in any case, the point, there's so many examples. It's not on one platform anymore. It's honestly infiltrating all of them. It's just social media in general.

Kevin Dennis (: 43:49

Yeah. Yeah.

I've even got to the point with my competitors. I'm like, if you want to know what we charge us ask, I'll send it all over to you. It's not, I have nothing to hide because it's, it's like, if you ask me, I've been doing this a long time, but if you like, I was so guarded, but now it's like, no, cause you're buying me, you're buying the service, what we provide and that kind of stuff. And I can't do every wedding, but also if you want to copy me, emulate me, it's, it's, I don't think it's going to work for you, but you go because I think, yeah.

Taylor De La Fuente (: 44:22

You're never going to be me.

Kevin Dennis (: 44:24

Yeah. Yeah.

Taylor De La Fuente (: 44:25

So you're never you're always going to be second, second fiddle in that competition, because you're never going be able to come up with like if you're going to copy me, OK, I'll just go come up with my next great idea. And like you'll be 10 steps behind me on that one. So I don't know. I did a reel recently on Instagram where I was just like, your pricing isn't the problem. It's not because, again, as a copywriter, I have a backstage pass to.

Kevin Dennis (: 44:29

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Taylor De La Fuente (: 44:51

all of my clients' businesses, I see clients in the same city offering the same service, completely different price points, and the one that's charging higher amount is booked out, and the one that's charging lower is not. So it has nothing to do with price. It has everything to do with positioning or product market fit. Like, are you selling the right thing to the right people? Is it you're the right thing to the right people, but the wrong message? Like, there's other things. And again, like that.

Trust is really at the root of this price conversation is, are you building trust with your audience? Because they want to work with people, not with companies, not with corporate. Otherwise, they would be not looking at your small business. They'd be looking at a big name. But they're interested in working with you because they want you. And so we have to be authentic and transparent with people. And that includes, hey, here's how much this is going to cost you.

Kevin Dennis (: 45:33

Yeah.

Yeah, and I think that all goes with planners who only do one wedding a day. Photographers can only do one wedding a day. ⁓ A lot of that goes. You're a commodity, and they're buying you as much as they're buying your service. Yeah, I love it. All right, Taylor, could have, I thought, kept going, we're at our little time limit here. So how do the listeners get in contact with you?

Taylor De La Fuente (: 46:05

Yeah, now let's wrap it up. ⁓

Totally. The best place to find me is on Instagram. I'm at Big Mouth Copy. And it is me running that page. So if you listen to this and you got a question, you DM me, and I am the person responding to you. But that's the best place to find me is Big Mouth Copy on Instagram. That's also my website too, bigmouthcopy.com. If you want to see an example of me putting my prices online, because I drink my own champagne, as they say. So my prices are online too.

Kevin Dennis (: 46:41

I love it. All right. We'll have all of Taylor's information in the show notes. And Taylor, can't thank you enough. You have been a great guest. So hopefully we'll have you on to talk AI or whatever, anything you want to talk about. We're happy to have you back. So folks, thank you ⁓ for listening to another episode of Mind Your Wives in Business. We'll see you next time. Bye, guys.

Taylor De La Fuente (: 46:53

Yeah, absolutely.