If you’re like most business owners, you put a lot of thought into your website design. You make sure it’s responsive and looks great on all devices. You make sure the copy is well written and flows well.
Yet have you addressed pricing? Studies show that if pricing isn’t displayed prominently on your website, it can be a roadblock to conversions.
In this blog article, we’ll discuss some tips for displaying prices on your website in a way that will encourage conversions.
Even before the digital revolution, when digital marketing was nothing more than a “science fiction” concept, the pricing of products and services has always been a major driving factor in customers taking action.
Pricing is still the primary driving force for customers today who make everyday purchase decisions considering their budget limitations and the value they receive by participating in the transaction.
The way people shop has now changed, and consumers have more control of the buying process than ever before; they know if they do enough research online, they’ll find exactly what they’re looking for, including the price of the product or service that will provide the solution to their problem (regardless if it is a “need” or a “want”).
It is the number one frustration of buyers when they’re in the researching phase and cannot find pricing listed or even approximate costs discussed on a website.
If you’re not discussing pricing on your website you can be guaranteed your potential clients will be looking for a competitor’s website that does.
Yet, despite this fact, many businesses still fail to address pricing on their websites.
At WEBO Digital, we come across different business owners every day who want to leverage the power of digital marketing to grow their business and increase their brand’s visibility in the digital world.
What we discover during our conversations with these businesses is that out of a hundred business owners, only a few are open to discussing pricing on their website.
The problem for all of those businesses is that most, if not all of their potential customers want to learn more about the pricing of the product/service they are looking for early on in the buyer journey.
Marketing today is not as straightforward as it used to be a few decades ago, although the principles remain the same. You still need to first earn the trust of your potential customers before they seriously consider buying your products or services.
To do that, you need to be as transparent and as honest as you can. If you fail to discuss your pricing openly, your prospect will quickly begin to feel like you are trying to hide something from them and the possibility of a deal shuts down from there.
It’s simple; people want to know details about pricing before even thinking about making an actual purchasing decision.
One of the core concepts of content marketing is to address every possible question your customers ask you.
Businesses that avoid addressing pricing on their websites insist on various reasons for doing so. The most common reasons for this include the following;
Most customers choose not to further engage with a business that isn’t open about the pricing of their products and services, as pricing is one of the major interests of your potential customers.
If you fear losing potential customers before you have even had a chance to speak to them, remember this – you’ll lose more customers if you fail to address pricing on your website in the first place.
The key to not “scaring customers off” is to explain and justify why your price is as high or as low as it is.
Not listing pricing on your website does not stop your competitors from researching your business and what you do. If they are that keen to find out your pricing they can very easily speak to a mutual customer to find that information out.
Please don’t get us wrong!
We do understand there are certain situations where some pricing is sensitive, and it may not be the best idea to make that information public. However, we firmly believe there is always a way to address pricing in some form for each business.
Modern-day customers have more freedom and full control over the products and services they use. That’s why most growth-driven businesses are incorporating the concept of inbound marketing into their marketing strategies.
The message here is clear and straightforward – you have to win the trust of your potential customers for them to take action and continue the conversation with you.
Being as transparent and as straightforward as possible is the key to gaining any customer’s trust. Not discussing pricing on your website will only enable your competitors to take advantage of your failure to do so.
As marketing activities have transitioned to the digital world in recent years, it’s become harder for businesses to continue to sell with the mindset of remaining vague about pricing until you have spent a bunch of time with the prospect.
Information around costs and pricing has become vital for consumers in the current context of digital sales and marketing, and it’s one of the most searched-for subjects on the internet.
No matter what industry you are in, your customers want to know how much your products or services cost.
If you aren’t going to tell them, your competitors will!
It is very important to put in the hard yards in researching and fully understanding your ideal customer. It doesn’t matter what you sell; you don’t sell it to everybody.
If you try to sell your stuff to everybody, you’ll have more prospects that aren’t a good fit, increased marketing overheads, and more meetings that will only lead to more rejections.
So you don’t need to spend your time, money, and effort trying to convince prospects who will ultimately turn you down for the price of your products/services.
Instead, you can invest your efforts to convince the right customer who won’t shut the deal down because of pricing.
If you are worried your pricing will “scare off” your leads from the outset, then keep this in mind: the pricing you reveal on your website will save your time, money, and resources by eliminating the leads who are not a good fit for your business anyway.
You may have fewer sales appointments, but your sales conversion ratio will be higher, your time will be more productive, and your sales conversations more profitable.
Isn’t it funny that you hesitate to reveal something you’ll have to show anyway at a point to complete your sales process successfully?
Let’s suppose you haven’t addressed pricing at all on your website, and your prospect calls you to speak further; what do you think their first question will be?
You’re right, 9 out of 10 people will ask you about the price of your products/services. Are you not going to answer their question then?
In light of that, don’t you think not addressing pricing on your website is just a waste of your time? Educating your prospects about pricing will ensure you have quality leads more likely to convert into paying customers.
Revealing your pricing to your customers when they search for it will ensure you’ll start gaining their trust from the first interaction, which takes us to our next point.
Let’s just pause briefly to discuss customer behaviour and, in turn, focus on your behaviour from a potential customer’s point of view.
Don’t you appreciate a business that answers all your questions immediately without you having to push them for the information?
How is it a bad idea for your business to be transparent with your prospects if you do?
Transparency is one of the most critical things to help you build your brand’s trust among your customers. If you aren’t discussing pricing on your website, you aren’t likely to be considered as being genuinely open and transparent.
Your customers will appreciate you more if you are more transparent than your competitors. Customers always compare different companies before choosing the one they are comfortable taking the next step with.
Who do you think customers will call when they have to choose between a company that is transparent upfront about costs and pricing on their website and a company that isn’t?
Search engines such as Google and Bing display web pages that cover the keyword(s) a searcher is looking for. The price of products and services is one of the highest search volumes on the internet. If you aren’t addressing pricing on your website, you are missing out on the opportunity to be visible in front of an audience looking for the answers you have.
The key to successful content marketing is to understand SEO in building the right strategy. Addressing as many questions of your target audience as possible is the only thing that guarantees visibility and trust on your website.
So many examples of companies have managed to rank in the top results of search engines, generating crazy numbers of sales after addressing pricing on their website.
Being as transparent as you can and addressing as many of your prospects’ questions as you can is an opportunity for your business to stand out from your competitors in today’s marketing world.
It’s the key to successful content marketing.
After explaining why you won’t “scare off” the right clients but only the clients that don’t fit your business by addressing pricing on your website, you might argue your pricing is complicated with many different variables.
You will want to help your client understand how your pricing structure works and what influences it anyway, no matter how complicated it is.
If your pricing is somewhat complex this is even more reason to write an article (or better still, create a video) addressing your pricing details and explaining what factors influence the types of products/services you provide to be more expensive and what things enable them to be cheaper.
Work with your sales team to put together a list of FAQs they hear from customers regarding pricing concerns (and any other questions) and then provide in-depth answers to each of them. It’s one of the primary things people come searching for on your website, guaranteed!
“Converting leads is more important than just attracting visitors to your website.”
Providing your potential customers with what they are looking for is crucial for conversion. Not addressing pricing early on can be a significant factor as to why your leads are not interested in progressing further in the sales process with your products/services.
August 31, 2020