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Pricing Your Product for the Marketplace
It's Not as Easy as You Might Think, to
Find The Perfect Price-Point. You might be tempted to choose the lowest price you’d be willing to accept on the basis that you think this will attract the highest possible number of purchasers and in so doing you’d maximize both revenues and ultimately profits. This can be a pricing strategy that works, but it is often an erroneous way to approach the subject of price. Perceived value can be crucial to the success of a product, and by charging a low price you could be positioning your product at the budget end of the market when in reality it may be a premium product. Potential customers could equally be put off, because they might think such an inexpensive product couldn’t possibly meet their needs fully. Let me give you an example of how important price can be. Imagine you’re booking a hotel to celebrate your wedding anniversary. You choose your location and then call two of the hotels in the area. The first hotel charges a very reasonable $120 per night and the second one, which is right next to the first one, charges just $25 per night. If you had no other information to go on, which hotel would you book if you wanted to make sure your dream of a romantic break was going to come to fruition. The chances are you’d go for the $150 a night hotel as you’d assume that the $25 a night place was a budget motel and not in the same league as the more realistically-priced hotel. Exactly the same can happen with your product or service, which is why you shouldn’t just jump in with the lowest price possible. Another reason why you should think twice about charging a very low price is the that you’ll have to sell much more at a lower price to make the exactly the same profit as you would if you were charging a higher price. For example, if you priced your product at $50 and made $25 on each sale you’d need to sell forty of them to make $1000, whereas if you dropped the price by $20 you’d need to sell 200. In other words, you’d have to sell 500% more just to make the same amount of money. On the opposite end of the pricing spectrum, you need to be careful about pricing yourself out of the market. If you charge too much for your product, many people simply won’t be able to afford it, or will question whether your product is really worth the price. Some people see Internet Marketers such as John Reese or Frank Kern selling products for $1,000 or more, and they think they can do the same. The problem is that their product often isn’t worth that price. Just because other people can sell high-ticket items at four figure and above price tags doesn’t mean that you need to follow suit. A standard eBook will be extremely hard to sell at anything over $100 and you’ll be lucky to get $200 to $300 for a series of video recordings unless the content is incredibly valuable, the series has been put together to a very professional standard, and you have a good number of testimonials from well-known and trusted people. Most ‘standard’ products fit neatly into the $20 to $50 price bracket. At a price point under $50, you’ll still have a good perceived value, yet your product will still be affordable for most people. If that sells well you will build up a list of loyal and enthusiastic customers and at that point you can look at introducing a higher priced backend product that you up-sell to your customers once they have bought your entry level product.
As with many things Internet marketing
related the golden rule is to test. Until you do you are only
guessing at what price will work best. Once you have run tests
at various price points you will have empirical evidence that
the price you are charging is the right price and you’ll often
be shocked to find that it’s not the price you were originally
thinking of charging. About Paul Smithson - Paul Smithson is the founder of Intellimon and the driving force behind the best-selling XSitePro web site development tool. Since graduating in Business Strategy and Direct Marketing from two of Europe’s leading business schools, Paul has set up five multi-million dollar companies, one of which is now owned by the BBC. His areas of expertise include business strategy, e-commerce, on-line and off-line marketing, software development, and maximizing the potential of on-line businesses.
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