Copy Tip 38: Two More Ways To Reduce Your Perceived Price
It’s a good evening for writing … after a rather warm day (over 36C/97F, and with three days ahead all over 40C/104F) the evening is cooler and my brain is more switched on!
So a few blog posts to get into full swing as school holidays end and everything gets back to regular pace.
We’re talking still about “price contrast” — ways to lower the perceived cost of your product or service in the eyes of your prospect.
So far we’ve covered:
- Stating your price in another way
- Comparing your price to other ways of getting content
- Comparing your value to competitors or alternative products (eg silver/gold package options)
And my final contribution on this topic covers two final (and related) price contrast tactics:
1. Showing how your price is effectively “Free”
What I mean by this is clearly demonstrating that the return on investment your client will get as a result of investing in your product or service will be well in excess of what they pay.
You can then show how your costs are met from profits they’re not currently realising — effectively meaning your costs are “free” because the extra profit received is higher than the extra cost.
This is one “LRBN” — a logical reason to buy now — a prospect can justify their investment based on their expected future returns.
They’ll still may need to pay for it now — although your product or service might allow for progressive payments, to help strengthen the persuasive nature of this approach.
Better still, a strong guarantee also helps back up this tactic … you are certain of your results and use risk-reversal to make sure the prospect has no risk in saying “yes” to your offer.
2. Compare to something your client already knows
A final way I want to share with you about minimising the impact of price is to take your price and compare it to a cost your prospect already knows.
You often see this expressed in terms of “that’s like the cost of just a cup of coffee per day…”
But when you’re talking one-on-one with prospects and providing proposals and estimates, you can take this a step further.
It involves you knowing in advance though the profit and returns the prospect will get from your product or service.
Here’s an example:
Let’s say you know your prospect earns $500 profit for every new client they acquire.
And you have a product or service that attracts new clients for the prospect.
If your product cost $950 — you could demonstrate that the prospect only needs to acquire two new clients and they’ll already be in front in terms of the value returned from their investment in you.
They’ll then be able to keep using your product or service “effectively for free” because they’ve already covered their costs and now they’re earning extra profits.
(So you can see from this how these two approaches can be combined).
Before You Use This …
This is especially effective — and a great approach — when you know both the likely profits your prospect will earn (so ask them as part of preparing your proposal!) and you can relate that to an easily achievable outcome (acquiring just two new clients).
It also means your prospect needs to know the value of their customers so you may have a little work to do there to get them to determine this important figure.
What’s coming up
Next tip, we’ll look at the common question about how long your copy should be!
Until then, keep smiling!
Copy Tips: Road Map
I’ll start this post with a quote from Alice in Wonderland by master story teller Lewis Carroll …
“One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree. Which road do I take? she asked. Where do you want to go? was his response. I don’t know, Alice answered. Then, said the cat, it doesn’t matter.”
In fact I used this quote in the opening of my first business plan when I launched my full-time business venture back in 1998. Here’s one much related also from Lewis Carroll:
If you don’t know where you are going,
any road will take you there.
So today’s a pause on our Copy Tips road to get a snapshot of what’s ahead!
So far, we’ve covered …
- Each part of the MOOVE formula
- Headlines
- Persuasive Sales Factors
- Openings and Rapport
- Writing Formulas
- Effective Pricing Contrast
- with a few topical tips thrown in along the way.
Once we finish on contrast in pricing, this is where we’re heading …
- Answering the common question about the length of your copy
- Language in copy
- Nine Ways to build Trust
- Formatting, including some in-depth graphic and design tips
- The Order and the Close
- More on Guarantees
- Sign-off and PS’s
- Focus on Testimonials …
- Nineteen ways to use Testimonials
- Seven ways to capture Testimonials
and I’ll wrap up with three copy secrets that reveal free, easy ways to ensure you continue to learn and develop your copy; and my final secret reveals how to make your copy work much more effectively for you than you may have ever imagined.
So now you now where we’ve been, where we’re at, and where we’re going!
Copy Tip 37: Three Ways To Use Comparison Tables
The first way we looked at contrast was to take a price and state it in a different way ($320 per year versus less than 88 cents per day).
The second way we looked at contrast in pricing was to compare the product price to other ways of getting the same content (CD package versus cost of attending live event).
Take note: these ideas, including today’s tip, can be combined in your copy!
In today’s Copy Tip, I want to share another popular way to contast what you have to offer versus alternatives and competitors:
Show the differences in a summary table
By doing this you can help build the perceived value of what you are offering.
Here’s an example of what I mean that I saw online yesterday, comparing features:
This comes from Outskirts Press, a custom book publisher. In their copy, they say this:
Outskirts Press offers you the best of both worlds by combining the advantages of independent self-publishing with the advantages of traditional book publishing. Before, during, and after publication you will receive the assistance of a dedicated group of publishing professionals, all the while maintaining all your publishing rights and setting your own retail price, royalty, and author discount.
And the table appears below the copy to really highlight just how you are combining the “best of both worlds”.
It’s very easy to see in the table what they’re talking about — all of the features of their offer that combine the best of traditional book publishing and self-publishing.
While you might have seen this used plenty of times already, it’s a good reminder of what you can use to help your prospect understand about your offer and why it is compelling and should be responded to!
Standard vs Deluxe
Another example of how you can use a comparison table is to highlight the extra value in your premium product offer.
For example, if you have a product with both a standard and deluxe option — you can show both products side-by-side in a table to highlight the value … and also highlight how much extra value is in your premium deluxe version.
Total Value With All Inclusions
In this example, you can compare the price of your product “package” to the total potential value of each individual component within the package, if purchased separately.
It’s another way to demonstrate overwhelming value for what you are offering your prospect.
This is an example of a Copywriting product (originally authored by Jeff Paul, and offered here by Mal Emery, which I also have resale rights to) …
Realistic Value
One caveat with this approach — the values you use must be realistic to your prospect.
For instance, I saw a table used on a sales page yesterday attempting to illustrate how the cost of eye surgery was perceivably smaller when you add up the costs each year using prescription glasses and contact lenses.
They included $1536 of costs for the “competition” each year — new glasses, new designer sunglasses, contact lenses and cleaning solution.
The first thing that came to my mind was that my costs were much less than the example — it seemed way over-valued to me (here I was starting to defend myself, and they haven’t even got me to a consultation).
My contacts and solution cost way less than they suggested, and I don’t buy new prescription glasses and sunglasses every year (hey, my Italian Vogue glasses frames and super-thin coated lenses I wear actually cost way more than their example, but that is not an annual purchase!).
So that unrealistic value was a hurdle to me as a prospect: it can leave a prospect asking, “if they get this wrong, what else do they get wrong?”
Had their copy raised that objection, and provided an answer, it would have been much more effective.
For example…
In a sales letter I recently wrote, one of the bonuses in it was literally worth $30,000 to a student.
Could I value that bonus at $30,000? Well, yes, there is a documented example, and there are in fact others where the estimated value is even higher. But is that realistic to a prospect? Maybe not.
So, when I explained it in the copy, I mentioned that it’s not the same value for everyone.
I mentioned that even if this value was halved, it’d still be $15,000 value. Or let’s halve that again, and it’s still worth at least $7,500 to you. Or let’s be really conservative and say the value of ______ is worth at least $5,000.
Is that more convincing than just putting a $5,000 value on this product bonus? I certainly think so, as the testimonials demonstrate several examples where students value the bonus many more times higher than this.
Despite most of those using this bonus finding it worth much more than $5,000 — setting a lower realistic value ensures the prospect isn’t starting to think you’ve over-estimating the value of what you say (for this AND everything else). And with the explanation, the prospect sees how you’ve arrived at this figure.
Copy Tip 36: Fruit-Based Pricing Strategy
The summer fruits are simply delicious at the moment.
Last week, Mel and I were given bags of nectarines and apricots.
And today at our Rotary lunch, we had a special fundraiser with lots of donated fresh country orchard fruits, tomatoes, cucumbers and free range eggs. (A very generous donation: about a dozen big boxes all filled nearly to overflowing! It helped us raise over $750 for our local Rotary projects).
Well, I missed out on a box in the raffle but picked up one in the auction — so home we came with cucumbers, peaches, plums … and there’s more in that box I haven’t even discovered yet!
Mmmm, stone fruits … it’s a great time of year for them and they’re scrum-diddly-umptious!
Now I bet you’re wondering how that ever relates to copy?
I mean, there IS a connection here, yes?
Of course!!
After 36 copy tips there’s always a connection!
Yesterday we started talking about contrast. And specifically, taking a price and using it in a different way — but still stating the same amount — to help change the perception of the price to your prospect.
I used this very successfully a couple of years ago for a client, just like yesterday’s example.
In that project, I took a $347 subscription and also had the copy: “that’s just $29 per month, or 95 cents per day” — with a picture of coins totally 95 cents. This is the image I used:
That approach helps put the offer in perspective: it was for the education market, and I showed all 3 prices to use contrast: breaking down the price to easily imagine how affordable it would be in a school’s budget.
(And the project worked brilliantly for my client, they loved it! So much so I use the testimonial in the right-hand column at the moment on this website — it’s the testimonial from Michael Grose).
Today, I want to talk about another method of “contrast” that is also used in copy as part of a pricing strategy.
It’s used to show value between two otherwise incomparable products. It’s called …
Apples to Oranges
(This is my fruity connection!)
I first picked up this tip from Dan Kennedy as a great way of minimising the impact of price.
He had an example in his excellent must-read book The Ultimate Sales Letter about using this price minimisation tactic for a series of tapes of a seminar.
Now, as an example, some business-based CD’s can be priced at a fairly small amount of money, just $10 or $15 each in a series.
So if you’ve got a product on CD yourself, but have it priced say at $297 — then comparing it to another CD product (an apples-to-apples comparison) like a $15 CD would not help your cause!
You know of course there’s lots more value in your CD to your prospect than the little cost to make each copy, so to illustrate that high value you can compare the price of your CD package to other things.
For example, if you have three CD’s that each go for an hour and your normal consultation fee is $800 per hour, then if you compare $297 to 3 hours of your time valued at $800 — $2,400 — then you can show a real “bargain” in terms of what the prospect might pay you for hearing the same content in an appointment.
Or if your 3 CDs are based on the recordings of a workshop you ran — you can (as Dan uses in his example in the book) compare the $297 investment in the audio course to:
- the actual ticket price of attending the workshop;
- plus your travel and accommodation costs; and
- plus the time away from your business and family
let alone also including the value of now having the convenience of listening to the material over and over again, in your car, or any place you choose … and putting a value on all of that can easily reach the thousands, again helping to minimise the perceived price of your CDs versus the overwhelming value contained on them.
When you also then use real scarcity, price instalments and valuable bonuses, your price starts to seem much more scrum-diddly-umptious than it might have without using these pricing tactics.
It’s a fair way to use comparison to make the price seem insignificant.
After seeing these pics again, I’m off for some more fruit … yum!
Aaaah, Compliance!
I’ve started working with a new client recently in the financial services/life insurance market.
We sent off a direct mail piece today to the legal compliance department for their “inspection” and feedback.
I’ve gotta say — based on previous conversations — I was prepared to dig in and battle to make sure we didn’t lose the direct response nature of what we were doing.
Another friend in the industry has told me many times about the battles he’s had to get things approved.
The legal stuff, the red tape. Gobbledygook. Legal mumbo jumbo. Fine print.
They’re not necessarily limitations, but in some businesses they are essential considerations!
So off went the proof to the client.
And then to compliance.
Stand tall I thought, be prepared to advocate! Defend thy words!
The email came back an hour later.
I was slightly hesitant to open it and read their reply.
Click. Open. Read.
Alas, my fears were unfounded!
Other than one small sentence to add in (my choice of the body copy or the fine print), all was fine!
Phew!
In some ways, it’s a great backup for my client — to “cover their a***” legally and make sure they’re not stepping out of bounds.
All that regulation and red tape to adhere to: enough probably to wrap the planet several times!
At the same time, as a copywriter, it becomes essential to get to know the ins and outs of an industry. For example, I’ve worked with the travel industry for 10 years in May, so there’s a lot of inside stuff I take into account when creating advertising and marketing projects (many times we even get to keep out clients out of trouble for potential problems that would have otherwise slipped through).
Just another consideration in this wonderful profession!
Now … let’s see how they go with my next project!