How to Shift Your Marketing from Entry-Level to Premium Clients

In this episode of The Power Table Podcast, Taylor Smith breaks down exactly why the premium, high-caliber clients you want aren't showing up — and it almost never has anything to do with your skill set or what you actually offer. It comes down to positioning, and the way you're speaking to your audience might be quietly repelling the exact clients you're trying to attract.

This episode is a complete breakdown of buyer psychology — what makes an entry-level buyer say yes, what makes a premium buyer mentally check out, and the specific shifts you need to make to start attracting the higher-tier clients you actually want.
Taylor walks through real examples from her own content, the exact objections each type of buyer is working through, and why pain point marketing — the thing that works so well on beginner buyers — is often the single biggest reason advanced buyers walk away. 

This episode also gets into why your credibility doesn't just affect a premium client's results, it affects their reputation, and why that completely changes what you need to lead with in your marketing.

If you're a founder who has the offers, has the clients, and has the results, but can't seem to get the higher-paying, more advanced clients to say yes — this episode was made for you.

In this episode, we cover:

• Why pain point marketing converts entry-level buyers and repels premium ones
• The real objections entry-level buyers are working through (fear and money) vs. what premium buyers are actually protecting (trust and time)
• Why an entry-level buyer asks "am I good enough for this result" while a premium buyer asks "is she good enough to deliver it"
• The specific checklist premium buyers run before deciding to invest, including testimonials, case studies, and accurate numbers
• Why underpricing is actively repelling the premium clients you want, not attracting them
• The tactical shifts to make starting today, including putting your prices on your website and stopping the discounts before anyone even asks

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Power Table. If you are leading your business with a big vision and you're ready for your visibility to match your ambition, you are in the right place. I'm your host, Taylor Smith, founder of the Power Table, serial entrepreneur, and international keynote speaker. I've generated millions in my business for speaking of personal branding and community building, and I'm here to teach you how to do the same as a founder-led brand. Each week we dive into the business strategies, identity, and leadership work required to become the woman people recognize, trust, and choose again and again. Because your next level isn't just about what you do, it's about who you become in the process. This is your seat at the table. I can almost guarantee that it's not a reflection of you, your skill set, what you actually offer in your business, but rather about the positioning and the way that you're speaking to and presenting your offers that's actually turning away the luxury clients that you want or the premium clients that you're hoping to get. And instead, you are caught in the trap of attracting lower pay or less advanced or entry-level clients. This is a common problem that a lot of people have, but it is a very solvable problem. It's important for you to understand that marketing to higher quality or higher price luxury, more advanced buyers is completely different from a sales psychology point of view than it is to market to the person who's buying something low-ticket, who is in the early stages of just getting started, their beginner or newer person on the journey or has a newer business and you're selling to them and they're very, very budget conscious. And a lot of us want those higher paying clients, but you have to speak to them in a completely different way. And if you're not doing that, then you're always going to struggle getting people to pay the prices that you want them to pay for your premium experiences, services, coaching, or consulting. So in today's episode, I'm going to break down what is different in the marketing and the way that you speak to and you attract those two different groups of people. What entry-level buyers respond to, what premium buyers or advanced buyers respond to, and the specific shift that you need to move from the lower ticket or entry-level buyer to the premium, high ticket, or luxury buyer. Welcome back to the Power Table Podcast. I'm your host, Taylor Smith. And this is episode is for the woman who's already successful. You have the offers, you have some clients, things are happening in your business, you've been consistently marketing and you've got the results. But you know that you're ready to grow. You know you want to speak to that more advanced portion of your audience or the luxury side of the niche, the industry that you're in. You know you want to sell a higher tiered experience that comes with a higher price tag and even faster or more in-depth outcomes. And yet the high caliber, high-paying clients that you want, they're just not there and you're not sure why. So I can tell you why it is a fixable problem. We can solve it by the end of this 25-ish minute podcast episode. So we're gonna get right into it. But really quickly, before I do that, I want to start with talking about language for just a second because it does matter. So I'm gonna use the phrases entry-level client and premium or advanced client just for the purposes of differentiating who you're selling to and how to market to them. However, none of this is a judgment or values call. So this is not about defining some people as a premium human or that an entry-level or beginner buyer is somehow a worse client. I see people talk about this on social media and I completely disagree with it. The person who can only afford $50 or $500 is not necessarily a better or worse client than the person who can afford $5,000 or $50,000 worth of work from you or your business. That doesn't correlate. The $200 client you have that can afford a one-time call is not lesser. It doesn't mean you shouldn't serve them. It doesn't mean they aren't deserving of your help in any way. This is not about that. Rather, it's about understanding buyer psychology, neuromarketing, and who it is that you want to sell to at this current stage that you have in your business. And you may have sold to entry-level clients successfully for a very long time. But if you're feeling a pull to some bigger, you're actively working towards selling to those premium or advanced clients, it might be time to let some of those more entry-level clients go and let someone else serve them in that capacity or create something different in your business that can serve them well. We're actually not going to spend too much time on that today on offer suite, but rather we're going to focus on the sales psychology and the marketing, how to shift from entry level to selling to advanced, premium, and luxury clients and what is the marketing difference in those things. Now, most people I see can actually sell pretty effectively in their business to that entry level or beginner level client. And it's because you've been taught that and you've been taught the basics of buyer psychology, what you should be selling to them. You've been told sell the benefits, sell people on their pain points, sell them on the transformation. And the sales do work, but then you're limited in revenue because those people only have the budget to pay so much. And they're not necessarily going to be the people who will ever be able to afford your higher value offers or see the value in them and choose to work further with you. Again, not a universal, we're not putting labels on people, but from a marketing standpoint, there is some truth to the fact that the people who buy the $47 product are not going to be the people who buy the $4,700 product. They are two different groups of buyers. And if you're struggling to get those higher tier, higher paying clients, clients that are further along or more advanced, I can almost guarantee that if I were to look at your website, your sales pages, your social media content, I can tell that the person you're marketing to is an entry-level buyer. And the way that you're talking to them is what will keep them coming in, but will keep turning away the premium clients. And the thing that's doing that over everything else, the entire reason I made this podcast episode is because you are relying so heavily on pain point marketing. I can almost guarantee it. Pain point marketing is the engine that will win over entry-level buyers almost every single time. It's the exact thing that also repels the premium buyers and premium clients. So you have to know which game you're playing. So I'm going to go through two parts of this podcast. We're going to talk about entry-level buyers first, what they respond to, and then we're going to move into advanced and premium level clients and what they respond to. I really think it's important for you to understand both. So we're going to go through both. So by entry level, I mean someone who's buying anything from a $20 to $50 low ticket product or service to probably up to about $2,000. And I know that's a huge range, but lower ticket is typically defined in the coaching and digital products industry as anything from like $20 to about $250. And then mid-ticket is anything from like three to $500 up to like $2,000. And then from there, a $2,000 plus basically anything mid to high four and five figures is going to be considered high ticket in digital products, coaching, and services. Now, sometimes a $2,000 product for an agency is maybe their entry level price point or offer. This or even $3000. This might be a VIP day, it might be a one-off project for an agency. So keep these numbers kind of just as a general guideline, but that's who we're talking about is like what is your lowest level entry point into a customer paying with you? That's your entry level buyer. So for this person, pain point marketing generally does work and it works very well. The buyer is moved by, are you struggling with all of these symptoms? Well, did you know that it is not your fault that you have those symptoms? It is caused by this external problem or internal problem. And if we solve the problem, your painful symptoms will go away. And I can show you what life will look like on the other side of that problem. It's really good over here. That can be applied to whether you sell financial services, people don't know how to budget. It can be for why their cookie icing on their decorated cookies is always falling apart and not working to marketing and sales in their business. The playbook is pretty much exactly the same. It's also the same for service providers. So let's say you have a website or you do email marketing, the same pain point marketing, like not sure why this isn't working for you. Well, when you have a professionally designed XYZ by me and my agency, we can solve that problem for you. It's all the same. And mainly what you're doing is you're showing them the possibility of change. You're saying, if you take action on this problem, you can stop feeling that pain. It doesn't have to be uncomfortable. You're also selling often version of your transformation or your client's transformation that is that early experience. You're saying, I used to have this problem too. And here's what I did, or I help people who also had this problem, and here's what they did. So, like you're really, really problem and solution oriented. And that can be a really good thing. That is the single best way from a neuromarketing perspective to convert an entry-level client. So this is actually a good thing. Please don't take this as a bad thing. If you're trying to attract that type of buyer, then that's exactly what you want to be doing, is show them the step-by-step, make them problem aware, make them solution aware, show them that they don't have to have that kind of pain anymore. The entry-level buyer also has unique objections that are different than premium level buyers. Entry-level buyers, their sales objections are most often fear and money. They are afraid. Can I afford this? What if it doesn't work for me? Will I have wasted all that money? Those are the walls they're putting up. They're afraid it won't work for them. And then they will have spent precious resources, money, and time that could have been spent doing something else, could have been spent on, you know, generating money in other ways, trying something else. They often have a very scarcity mindset and they are afraid of what if it doesn't work? What if that was a waste of my resources? What if I am judged for the fact that it didn't work? That is usually your entry-level buyer's primary fear and sales objection. They're often asking themselves, am I good enough? I've tried this before. It didn't work for me. I'm afraid to waste money. They're mostly evaluating if they are good enough for the result that you're promising. Are they good enough to achieve what you say they can achieve? It's all about them. Your entry-level buyer is pre-qualifying themselves, pre-qualifying their budget, pre-qualifying if they're capable. They're really focused on themselves. That's so, so important. I'm gonna talk more about how that is different with premium buyers in just a few minutes. So remember that. Entry-level buyers are mostly focused on if they are good enough for the result. What will usually get past the walls of and objections of an entry-level buyer is lowering the risk. So having a clear refund policy, having fake cues, really making sure that you are making it easy for them to understand what they're buying, but also relatability and humor. These lower the walls and objections and build trust with entry-level buyers. They love humor. They want to feel like you get them, they want to feel like you're a real human. They love the relatability. They love feeling like she's been where I am. Connection lowers that fear. So you're really doing your best to connect with them on a more personal and human level. They want to be seen in her. They want to feel safe, right? And entry-level buyers also need the most hands-on support. So it's kind of funny. I feel like we all know this, but it's not said very often is like the lower the price of your offer, the more hands-on support that person needs. The higher the price, the less support that they actually need from you. And that's why we so often want to shift into these premium or more advanced buyers, right? The lower level, entry-level, less advanced buyer, lower ticket buyer, they need more of you, more guidance, more practice, more repetition, more questions and answers, more feedback. And that is not a flaw. That is not a character flaw of them. It's actually just the stage that they're in. So build your entry-level offers to deliver that kind of really high-touch hands-on support. And I want to give you two quick examples of my content that markets to that person that I've used in the past so that you can see it. So the first one, I have a post that I used to run a few times a year, and it was an Instagram reel or carousel that would get people to then go take a quiz that would diagnose their problem and then feed them into a funnel, an email marketing funnel for different offers, low-ticket, entry-level digital product offers in my business. And the hook on the content is like your business isn't stuck. You're just spending all your time trying to solve the wrong problem. And then it's like, but you don't even know which problem you have. Well, there are only three problems that block sales in your business, and growth is visibility, profitability, and authority. So let's take the quiz and figure out which one that you actually have. That's speaking to an entry-level buyer. It is like, let me diagnose your problem. On the personal branding side, a real example of speaking to that entry-level buyer would be I had a whole series of talking head reels about a year and a half ago that were all about personal branding tips. And each one was like, you have to do this, you can't do this to grow your personal brand. And there would be things like, you can't be a late girly. You have to be on time. Your reputation depends on you being on time. And you cannot be someone who is going to habitually show up late if you want to be reputable with your personal brand. It's punchy, it's human, it's funny, like you can't be a late girly. And I had all these comments of people being like, My God, I had to learn this lesson. I former late girly here, and it was very relatable to people. Both of these are entry level on purpose. I don't really do these anymore, but they were meant to diagnose problems, connect with that person, and show them a path forward where they don't have to feel that kind of pain of not knowing what to do. That was the main pain point that I was working on with these people, is like, you don't know what to do to grow your business. Well, I know how to solve that problem. However, you cannot use pain point marketing on premium, more advanced and luxury clients. It doesn't work. They will often be repelled by this kind of pain point marketing. Also, different topic. But if you're trying to get on stages on podcasts and the topics you're pitching are really focused on that pain point side, but the audience is more advanced, it could be one of the reasons that your speaker applications are getting rejected. More on that, a different podcast episode. Let me know if you want me to record that. But it's very important for you to understand the more advanced high-ticket buyer is going to be repelled and turned away by pain point marketing. It does not work for them. So let's talk about what that buyer needs instead. The advanced buyer is an entirely different person or at a different stage, and their experience and what they want almost entirely inverts. Their objections are not fear and money at all. Their objections are trust and time. They can afford you. And more than that, often they're not really afraid to waste money. They don't want to waste money, but they're also not afraid to take a risk in many cases because they were more concerned with making a decision than it having to be the perfect decision because resources are so scarce. They can afford to lose the money, but what they cannot afford to lose is time and trust and reputation. So their objections are very different than the entry-level buyer. And trust and time are much harder to win with a credit card and get someone to say, yep, send me the invoice. Then, you know, that's very simple. You have a problem, let me solve it for you. So remember how I said that the entry-level buyer is evaluating if they are good enough to achieve the result you promised. It's all about them self-qualifying themselves. Well, the premium buyer is evaluating if you are good enough to help them achieve the result you're promising. Huge flip in what they're evaluating and why. They already know they're ready to invest, they're already problem aware, solution aware, and they're just trying to decide if the person they're gonna invest with is you. Pain point marketing is a complete turnoff for advanced luxury and premium level clients. When you lead with, are you struggling with X? Does this happen to you? The reason you haven't achieved X is a premium buyer's gonna mentally check out of all of that. It's tired, it feels cheap, it feels copy and paste, it feels low effort to them. They're not interested in you telling them about their pain points, diagnosing their problem, and telling them what their solution is. Because it feels like you're talking to beginners, they don't see themselves in it. And this is the single biggest mistake that I see people make when they're trying to attract premium level clients. They keep running beginner marketing and broadcasting it at advanced buyers, and then they end up repelling the exact people they want. So let's talk about what wins over those higher quality, higher tier, more advanced premium clients. One of the most important things is thought leadership. Specifically, yeah, you can talk about problems that you solve in your business. You can sell the transformation, but you spend a lot of time showing the process. Entry-level buyers, they're less informed, they're less interested in the process, they want quick solutions. Whereas in a more advanced buyer, they want to understand the whole cross. They want the depth, they want the information. They're gonna spend a lot of time learning about you, consuming your long-form content, such as case studies, podcasts, articles, LinkedIn posts, long before they ever decide to buy from you. You also need to be painting a picture of the future of your industry, the future of what they're going through, the future of what their life could look like because of the changing world and how you represent a better path towards that future. With an advanced level buyer, you're not poking the wound and saying you don't have to struggle with this problem. Instead, you're demonstrating mastery and vision of what could be better on the other side. Show them quite literally the grass is greener. They also want to be more hands-off. So the more beginner audience, they need hands-on, they need support, they need encouragement, they need accountability and touch point. With a more advanced audience, the client wants more touch points ahead of time, hence that long-form content I just mentioned, but fewer touch points after they've bought from you. They don't have time for all of those calls. They don't have time for all that hands-in, hands-on accountability and support and multiple revisions of a service. They don't have time for that. They want you to get it right or deliver the outcome as quickly as possible in as much depth as possible without as much back and forth as possible. They need your judgment, your discernment, your results, not your hand holding. If you jam in too many videos, too many calls, if you're saying, I sent you seven designs to choose from, here's seven different ways we could do this, here's five different ways we could do this. If you're jamming all that content at them, they don't think, wow, she's really supporting me. They think I don't have time to go through all of this. And so once again, I want to share with you a couple of examples of content that I've created that speaks to that higher level client. One of them is on my pinned on the top of my Instagram feed. It's called How I Turned Coffee in a Beach Town into a global movement of thousands of women. Notice that this actually is not about pain points. It's not about how to grow your business. It's not about how to have a successful event. It's not about how to solve your ticket sales problem. It's actually a story that I'm telling that signals my process, my authority, my credibility, and really lets them see what is it that I'm building and what's the vision I'm casting for the future. It makes a premium buyer look at me and think she is operating at a level that I also want to operate at. Another really low effort example of a piece of content that I've done that spoke to that buyer that performed really well was just a single picture of me from a branding shoot that had text over it that said, My business is not the end goal. And in the caption, I described that actually my business has nothing to do with my goals. Instead, like I'm focused in on legacy building. And here are like five things that my business, five goals that I have personally that my business is supporting. And I talked about what are the things that are important to me that I lead with, and that at the end of my life, these are the things that I want to have said I have no regrets about. That post got so many comments about people saying, yes, I always say this about my business too, that my business is not the end goal. Some of the people who commented on that post became clients in the months after, and that they had never commented on a post before. The key takeaway from that is that there wasn't a single pain point in that post. Instead, I talked about how the women in my world, like me, are building legacies. They're building futures, they're building assets, they're doing satisfying work they really care about. And I was acknowledging where they are, that we all want this kind of path forward and that there is a way. This post also doesn't attract someone who's looking to fix an urgent problem. I'm not, I just don't operate day to day like in my coaching programs and my like schedule in my life. I don't operate in a world where I want to solve people's urgent like crisis, crises, and problems. I just don't. And so I make sure that my content never indicates that I could solve something for someone immediately. And so it's very important that if you want to work with people who want long term results, who care about the long game, who understand nothing is an overnight process, who want the depth and things done right, then you have to make sure that your content actually speaks to that person. So when a premium buyer is trying To decide if you are worth their investment, if you are worth them investing time in the process of working with you. Here's the checklist they're running, whether they say it out loud or not. In-depth testimonials. They want to see not just, you know, that your client had a result, but like in-depth. Same with case studies. They want you to walk them through the process of the case studies you develop for that client. Frequent touch points with your brand, omnipresence. Now, that doesn't mean post 10,000 pieces of content, but it does mean don't rely on one social media platform only. Have long forms such as podcasts, blogs, articles, LinkedIn articles. Have short form social media. Maybe you have a group chat or a group Facebook group or something like that. Have more than one platform. It makes you appear more established than the person who's only marketing on Instagram, for example. Strong branding, branding visuals are not a make and break at the entry client level, but they do help with sales and conversion at that higher client level. Have professional branding done when you have the budget to do it. Also, your accolades, like you, if you want to attract those high-performing clients, focus on getting featured, getting media, PR coverage, winning awards, getting recognition that the average person in your industry is not getting. Your network. People who are premium buyers care about who you're connected to. They want to know that if they work with you, you also have really great clients that they might want to get to know, or it reflects well on them. If they worked with an award-winning copywriter or an award-winning coach, that's what they want to see is they want to make sure that their brand reputation is enhanced by working with you, not diminished. Value-aligned pricing, this is also important. So what I mean by value-aligned pricing is that the perceived value from the client matches what you're actually charging. If you undercharge, you will have a really hard time getting a premium buyer because they will look at the price and be like, it's too cheap to work. It's going to be a waste of my time because it doesn't cost enough because the person who would have that much experience and expertise would charge more. So therefore, this person must not be able to deliver. They must not be that experienced because they're undercharging for their experience level. Again, coming back to the premium buyer really, really wants to make sure their time is protected and they're less likely to risk time than they are likely to risk money. So they care about accuracy and discernment far more than you solving immediate problems. And then finally, they look for numbers and they look for accurate numbers. So instead of you just saying, we help clients everywhere, like, do you help clients in 32 states? Do you have a percent retention rate? Do you have a number of successful launches or media features or something like that? What are tangible actual numbers that you could share those premium clients that are going to show, hey, she's been doing this a while. She's established she's someone highly credible that we should work with. And I also want to give you some very tactical shifts that you can make to start attracting those premium level clients. Now that we've broken down the difference between those two clients, so the first one is put your prices on your website. You may already be doing this, but if you're not, put your prices on your website. This is also gonna be more important as people use AI for conversational search. They're gonna say, I'm looking for a marketing coach who can help me with this specific part of my business. So then AI agents are gonna go search websites looking for people who have a price on their website in that range. So if you don't have your prices on your website, you might not even be showing up in search results generated by AI agents. Also, if you're hiding prices, it signals that you are inexperienced or that you have something to hide. Premium buyers really expect pricing transparency. Doesn't mean you have to put the exact number. You can say starts at this or this is a range of what people pay, but people want to see a number. Also, stop offering discounts before people even ask. I find it so wild when people do this. It to me signals that you don't have as much confidence in your ability to generate results as you want me to have. When you tell me something is a price and then you say, but I'll discount it to this, or you build in a discount before we even start. People think a lot of people think that that is a sign of generosity, like you being generous by offering that discount, but actually to me, it's lessening your credibility because then I'm like, well, why? Why would you be offering this? It erodes that premium signal if you immediately discount. I'm not saying don't negotiate if you really want to work with them. Maybe there's a reason for discounting, but in general, we don't offer that out the gate to a premium buyer. Raise your prices, mentioned this before, because prices that look too cheap will turn premium buyers away. So accurate pricing is just really important, making sure that it is in alignment with what a premium buyer expects to pay and not what an entry-level buyer expects to pay. And then finally, leading with your thought leadership, credibility, accolades, and positioning for that right client. Like really spending the time on the depth, stop making so much copy and paste or pain point marketing content and really showing that process, showing the path to the future, showing why you're different and why you're able to get the results that you get when you work with clients. Positioning yourself as someone who leads your industry and not just someone who puts out fires for clients in a panic is really, really important if you want to work with that higher level buyer. So as we wrap all of this up, I hope that you found that incredibly helpful. I hope that in breaking down the buyer psychology, you understand you don't have to become a completely different person just to sell to a more advanced client, but you do have to shift your positioning. Stop selling from let me solve your most urgent problem and trying to inspire change through humor or relatability. And instead start leading your industry, establish your credibility, create long-form content or case studies, go after those awards, focus on building your network who can help you establish credibility and authority and cast a vision for the future. The premium clients that you want are absolutely reachable and they've probably been watching you already. They're just waiting for you to show up like the authority that you are instead of marketing to them like they are beginners. And that is not a skill gap or a talent gap. You don't have to be more qualified necessarily than you already are. It's just about positioning and making sure that you're actually speaking to the person that you want to attract. And if you are someone who's working on making that shift from entry level to premium level clients, I want to invite you to something very special this summer. Our virtual conference, Standout and Sell Out, is happening August 11th through 13th. And you can come for free. It is three days of entirely live feedback, audits, coaching, and masterminding with many, many different experts on all things like Instagram bio roast to email subject line audits to podcast SEO auditing to sales copy auditing your sales pages, your offer suites, funnels, and conversion. I'm very excited about Sand Out and Sell Out this year. And if you're someone who's like, yeah, I would love to market to that higher level luxury client or that higher ticket client, you need to come. It's completely free. Sand Out and Sell Out will be August 11th to 13th, and registration is opening very soon. So look out for that. And if you haven't already subscribed to the Power Table podcast, go ahead, hit that follow, hit that subscribe button wherever you're listening so that you don't miss the announcement for when it's live and you don't miss another episode. That's it, my friends. I will talk to you soon.