Make More Money with This Smart Pricing Strategy

Welcome back!  In today’s SEO Copywriting video, Heather shares an “old school” copywriting tip on how to make more money simply by re-structuring your price list.

If you have a price list on your website, or if you’re a small business owner and produce a printed price list for your clients, then you’ll find this pricing strategy how-to especially useful. And it’s a fun tip, besides!

How many times have you seen a page like this?

The first screen shot is of a web page that describes the pricing for project management software. As you can see, there are a lot of different product packages listed, with checkmarks to help people understand what product features come with each package.

What about this…?

Now, compare the first project management software price list with the second example from Basecamp. Here, you have three choices: the most expensive plan on the left, the least expensive on the right, and the middle option.

The middle plan is even called “the sweet spot”: it is clearly highlighted and catches your eye.

So the folks at Basecamp have drilled it down to three choices. What is interesting is that beneath the graphic, in regular text, they ask “Looking for something else?” and list a couple of more choices.

• What they’re doing with the pricing graphic is streamlining the experience and essentially saying “here are your three options”: it makes it much easier to make a buy decision.

The reasoning behind this price list strategy is based on “compromise choice.” Compromise choice reflects how people think when they are researching and buying a product or service.

How “compromise choices” work

• People compromise between what they need at a minimum and the high end of what they’ll pay.
• If there are three choices, the “middle choice” is often chosen.

Sometimes the compromise choice is essentially based on price, as with the left to right pricing graphic from the Basecamp example. In this instance, the middle choice represents the compromise middle ground in dollars.

See how the middle choice is highlighted?

In the next screenshot of ice cream makers, the compromise choice strategy is applied a bit differently. Here, the least expensive of the three products listed is highlighted as the middle choice, and in italicized, red font it reads “Exclusive.”

Perhaps the retailer needed to move a lot of that particular product quickly, and used compromise (middle) choice and the eye-catching highlights to influence the buyer’s decision. It definitely works in grabbing your attention!

Make it easy for people to buy from you.

Here’s all you have to do to make it easy for people to buy from you – and make more money…

• Reduce your choices.
• Place the most expensive option first – everything else looks like a bargain…and/or
• Highlight the choice you want people to make.
• Don’t forget benefit statements.

photo credit to: AMagill