Mike Andes explains how to charge premium prices for lawn care by building a premium brand that extends beyond the lawn work itself to the full customer experience: website, estimate flows, automations, payment options, uniforms and vehicle branding. He argues that investing in these service and brand elements enables higher prices, supports marketing spend, and attracts less price-sensitive, higher-value customers; price increases typically drive away low-value customers who weren’t buying upsells anyway.
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Now you can't just jack up your prices and think that somehow that's going to make you premium. You've actually got to have a great product but a big piece that people forget. It's not just the actual work you do that needs to be premium, it's the whole service and that's what brand is. How does it make the customer feel when they call you? How does it make them feel when they go to your website? When they submit estimate request form, is there automations, are they able to put a credit card on file? What's the process like when they actually get the quote and get it accepted? These are all pieces and parts of your brand and if you make that really strong and you have a premium brand, you can charge a premium price by having a higher price. I can, I can actually afford to spend money on ads, I can actually spend money on getting the trucks wrapped and decal in uniforms. And so if you're like, well I can't afford it, I can't afford to get a great website, I can't afford to get great uniforms, I can't afford to wrap my trucks, you can't afford not to. Once you get it done, you can now charge a higher price. And by doing that, by having a higher price and a higher value, you're going to attract a higher premium customer that's less price sensitive. You can't have super low prices, you've got to actually increase them. And this is why a lot of times people realize in home services they raise their prices and no one leaves because they have good customers. And the customers you lose during a price increase are usually your least premium customers. The ones that don't accept all of your upsells, they always only use one service, they're never accepting all the other services you offer.
