Price conditioning…
It’s rarely talked about but one of the most important elements in your copy.
There are no hard and fast rules, but the idea is to make whatever you’re selling seem like a tremendous, absolute no-brainer value to your prospects.
And you do this through price conditioning.
No matter what you’re selling, you NEVER want to seem like the “bargain bin” alternative to your competitors…
Because unless you’re selling a commodity (like a toaster) competing on price is a business you DON’T want to be in.
Here’s How To Do It…
1. Be more than worth it. I’m not the world’s cheapest copywriter, but I do have a track record, most of the ads I write have been winners, I have experience and you’ll always get 110%…
You wouldn’t believe how many times clients have been shocked by my price quotes and hired me regardless, even though the next guy may be charging thousands of dollars less.
But think about it, this is direct marketing, this business is cut-throat no matter the niche or medium. If they’ve put together a real product and expect enough prospects to see the offer to do 6 figures or more, they want to be confident they’re hiring someone who knows what they’re doing with the copy…
And that applies to ANY service (we’ll talk about products next)…
Designers, lawyers, Doctors and even landscapers… If you’re in the service industry, and position yourself as the “cheapest” you’ll always be struggling. But if you’re “the best”, and have an effective marketing funnel, you’ll have people lined up and begging to pay you a premium to work with them.
2. For products, unless your price is a selling point (incredibly low), it’s best to not mention it until AFTER you’ve conditioned the buyer.
What do I mean by “condition”?
I mean build up the perceived value so high that when they see the actual price tag it’s a bargain…
And there are a million different ways to do this, but I’ll give you a couple of examples.
Tie REAL value into the products and bonuses…
For example…
“This course regularly sells for $97 everyday, but it’s yours FREE when you try out x product today”… Make sure this is actually a product that does sell for $97.
Or if I were selling a paid webinar…
“Tickets to this live seminar have sold for $1,997 EACH (our last presentation in San Diego was standing room only with over 250 in attendance)…
And this is your ONLY shot at accessing the same information without shelling out $2,000 for your ticket, and spending money on airfare and a hotel room…
We’ve decided to do a ONE TIME webinar, and you’ll also be receiving the DVD set (to be sold for $497 in the future) absolutely free…
We only have 50 spots left, and we expect them to sell out within 24 hours.
You can get in right now for only $197, and remember, if you aren’t absolutely blown away by the information presented…
If you don’t feel that the techniques you learn will be worth 10-100x the price of admission after the webinar, simply let us know within 60 days for a full refund.”
Notice how I’m tying real value in with everything here?
Assuming this was a real world project, and the seminar really did sell out at $1,997, this would seem like a steal for any prospect interested in the subject matter…
They save $1,997 on a ticket, yet they’re getting the same information.
They’re probably saving another $1,000 on airfare and hotel…
And they get the information before the DVD’s are released to the public, and they get it now instead of waiting and paying $497 for the course…
If this was on a subject you were interested in with speakers that you want to hear from, after all of the expensive stuff you don’t have to pay for, you’d think $197 (relatively high priced for an info product) would seem like a drop in the bucket…
Final note…
You can do this with almost any product. A lot of times I’ll use benefits as conditioning points…
“When you start seeing 100 or even 1,000 new visitors coming to your site every single day, you’ll agree that this software would easily be worth $497 or more…
But if you act now, you get immediate the software PLUS the $297 in FREE bonuses just for taking it for a 60-Day test drive…”
This is a subject that is beyond a single blog post, so I’ll talk about it again in the future…
In the mean time, do you have any specific questions about price conditioning that you need answers to?
Let me know in the comments.
Thanks!
-Scott Murdaugh
P.S. If you’re charging low prices, you need to justify that too. But that’s another post for another day.