Writing About a Service You Are Not the Cheapest At

The other quote is lower

A customer has two quotes for what looks like the same job. One is yours. The other is lower, sometimes by a good margin, and that competitor puts its price on the home page.

The customer opens your website to find out why you cost more. Your service page says quality workmanship, attention to detail and outstanding customer service.

So does the competitor's. Those phrases appear on nearly every service page in every trade, which is exactly why they cannot explain a difference in price.

Two pages saying the same thing, beside two prices that differ. The lower one usually wins that comparison, and nobody can blame the customer for it.

Words every competitor can use

• Quality workmanship, which nobody admits to lacking.
• Attention to detail, with no detail attached.
• Premium materials, never named.
• We do not cut corners, without saying which corners.
• Outstanding service, promised on every page in the trade.
• Years of experience, as a number with nothing behind it.

The fourth gives the game away. It admits that corners exist and that somebody cuts them, then stops at exactly the point where the page could say which ones.

What the extra actually buys

Most price differences in a service business come from somewhere real: more time on each job, better materials, employed and insured staff, a warranty with a business behind it, a crew that cleans up before it leaves.

The customer cannot see any of that in a number. Four questions bring it into view: what is included, what the customer avoids by paying it, how long the work lasts, and who it is for.

Answered specifically, on the service page beside the price, they explain the figure without ever sounding defensive. A separate page called why choose us is rarely opened by somebody weighing two numbers.

What is included

Write the price as a list of what happens, not as a total: removal of the old material, preparation, the number of coats, cleanup, disposal, a follow-up visit.

A customer comparing two quotes line by line often discovers that the cheaper one describes a smaller job. No preparation, one coat instead of two, disposal charged separately.

A page that names each item lets the customer find that out without anybody having to say it.

Be precise in the wording. Two coats is a fact; thorough is an adjective. Name materials by type or grade, so the customer can look them up.

What is avoided

Part of any price is the trouble the customer does not have afterwards: a second visit, a delay, an extra added on the day, damage to something nearby, a job that has to be done again.

Describe how your process prevents each, in your own terms. For instance: we measure before quoting, so the quoted price is the invoiced price.

Write it as your practice, never as an accusation. A claim about a competitor has to be true and provable, and it invites an argument. A claim about your own process does neither.

How long it lasts

The cheaper option often costs less now and more later. That is a fair comparison to invite, provided the years are honest.

If your work typically lasts longer, say why: thicker material, an extra coat, a better joint, a part replaced rather than patched. The reason is what makes the claim believable.

State the warranty in plain words: what it covers, for how long, and how a claim is made. A warranty is only worth the business behind it, so say how long yours has been trading.

A worked example

A two-person landscape lighting installer outside Kamloops was regularly asked why its quotes were so far above another installer's advertised starting price.

Its website said quality installations since 2006, above a gallery of night photographs. The other business's site said much the same, with a lower figure.

The difference was in the work. The cheaper price covered plastic fixtures on thin cable laid on the surface, with clip-on connectors. The company used brass fixtures, buried heavier cable, sealed every connection and sized the transformer to the load.

None of that appeared on its site. The owners rewrote the service page around it: each step of an installation, with photographs of an open trench and the fixtures named by material.

They added what that avoids, such as corroded joints and fading lights, and who it suits: owners staying for years. A house about to be sold, the page says, may need only lights at the steps.

The questions on the phone changed from why so much to which parts of the garden were worth lighting.

Who it suits, and who it does not

Say plainly who your service is for. A landlord turning over a rental suite and a family restoring an older home want different things from the same trade, and each should recognise themselves on the page.

Then say when the cheaper option is the sensible one. It sounds like turning work away, and it is the most believable sentence on the page.

A business that admits where it is not the best choice is believed when it explains where it is. It also stops spending evenings on quotes that were always going to the lowest price.

Evidence instead of adjectives

Every claim on the page is stronger with something the customer can see.

A photograph of the preparation before the first coat says more than meticulous. A sample page from a written quote shows what itemised means.

Photographs of the parts nobody normally sees are especially useful: inside the wall, under the floor, the cable beneath the lawn. That is where the difference in price usually lives.

The counter-case

Some customers will choose on price whatever the page says. The page does not need to win them; it needs everybody else to understand the difference.

In some services the difference really is small. Then the honest case rests on availability or service terms, or the price itself needs a look, which is a business decision rather than a writing one.

Where the price is higher for real reasons, though, write those reasons down specifically, next to the price.

Before the next quote goes out

1. Read three competitor pages in your trade.
2. Cross out every claim they could also make.
3. List what your price includes, item by item.
4. Write down what you avoid, as your practice.
5. Say how long the work lasts, and why.
6. Name who it suits and who it does not.
7. Put it beside the price or the quote button.

Step two is the one that clears the ground. Once the borrowed phrases are gone, what remains is material only your business can write, and the gaps show exactly what needs saying.

Publishing the figures themselves is covered in a pricing page that says contact us.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.