Most of my clients are very reluctant to talk about the prices of their products and services. On the other hand, it’s something that readers really want to know.
I’m not making this up. Readers expect price information. This is why journalists and reviewers always give prices. Look at any magazine. (Wired, for example.) If you don’t talk about prices, you’re not playing fair with the reader.
It’s also best practice in terms of website usability. See Jakob Nielsen’s article on prices.
I put representative prices on the Articulate website and I’m doing fine, thanks. The world didn’t end. If anything, it’s helped me get and do higher quality work.
Why the reluctance?
- Everything’s negotiable so you don’t want to tip your hand
- Regulations around recommended retail prices
- Complexity, where prices vary by spec, region
- Yield management, where a ticket today costs less than the same ticket tomorrow
- Competitive pressure; companies don’t want to give away their best price to a competitor
- Prices change fast but websites and brochures change slowly
- We’re English, money’s embarrassing and negotiation is worse
Some of these are reasonable and understandable. But from a marketing perspective, there are two overriding principles:
- If you compete on price, you’re a complete idiot. Only one company can be the cheapest, everyone else needs to compete on quality, reputation, brand, design, service etc.
- Respect your customers and readers. Tell them the truth. If you can’t give a firm price, give an indication or a way for them to easily get an accurate price.
Does anyone have any suggestions about how to talk about prices in a smarter way? This problem is so common but rarely discussed that we need to have a proper discussion about it.
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{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }
This questions comes up again and again with clients.
As you say, price is very important to readers, and I think it shows maturity and confidence to mention prices.
One way to talk about price is through ROI, so you frame the info about costs in the context of value.
In my own business I find that bringing up prices at an early stage is very benficial. First, it indicates the quality of my work, and second, it helps me not to waste time on people who are not willing to pay.
ROI, yes, good idea. Do you find that sometimes clients want to talk about the R but not about the I? I have done two or three ROI white papers where I wasn’t allowed to mention the cost side of the equation at all.
And I completely agree about prices and your own business. When somebody finds me through the internet (rather than by recommendation which is how I get most of my new work) the fact that I have prices on my site tends to keep away the ’50 articles for $2 each’ types of people.
Hmmm…very interesting, indeed! I have always been firmly in the “don’t put the sticker price” camp. As a marketing translator, I often work in the price-per-word world. The more professional end of the market tends to feel that putting a per-word sticker price contributes to commoditizing professional services and that it should be avoided. But is that still true if your sticker price is really high?
I do like your idea of using indicative pricing for types of projects or documents to filter out requests that are light years away from your end of the market. I would not hesitate to do that for my typical copywriting and rewriting jobs. However, I am still hesitant to do it for per-word translation rates. However, Einat’s remark about maturity and confidence is really making me think about this slightly differently than I have in the past.
Thanks for the thought-provoking post (and comments)!
@Sara, I understand the reluctance around professional services but here’s a great example of a company that is really upfront about prices; even when they range up to $1m per project: http://www.nngroup.com/services/. Just click on any of the services to see a price range a the top. It can be done and I don’t see why others shouldn’t follow their example.
You make a convincing case for making price/rate information public.
I have flat hourly and per-word rates that I use as my baseline, but I often adjust them based on the project budget, timeline, etc. So rather than put up a firm fixed number, I’ve updated my website’s Services page to explain that I follow the Editorial Freelancers Association’s guidelines for editorial rates (http://www.the-efa.org/res/rates.php) when estimating prices for writing and editing assignments, and then invite people to contact me to request a tailored estimate.
I’m very curious to see how that affects queries that come through the website (I get a fair number). I’ll report back if anything develops. Thanks for the tip!
@Paul, I had a look at your site and I think that’s a really good example of giving customers the information they need to estimate costs themselves without boxing yourself into a corner by being too specific before you have all the details. I’d be really interested to hear how that works out for you – let me know!
Hey Mathew,
An R without an I is a funny way to phrase the problem.
Of course it happens. I don’t write many white papers, but I come up against this question on landing pages, websites, and other promotional materials.
In general, if a product’s price is around the market’s average, then I wouldn’t emphasize it, and often wil not even mention it. But if the price is very low (thanks to superior technology for example) or very high compared to the market (indicating quality as in Sara’s case), then it becomes an advantage that I write about exactly like I would write about automatic updates or certficiations.
I agree. I quite like the way Stellar Artois advertises its beer: “Reassuringly expensive.”
Yeah, Stella has made a whole issue out of its price. If only its taste was a match…
Beer aside, Einat, it’s an interesting thought that people don’t ask for the cheapest brain surgeon if they need an operation but they will happily fly with the cheapest airline. It’s hard to make a direct correlation between price and safety but it’s interesting how people will make one choice in one area and a different choice in another.
Thanks for the article, Mathew, it has me reconsidering my positon. I’m a one-man ecological consulting business and have to compete with both large multinational organisations and the “cowboy” brigade (people that have undertaken university courses in ecology or botany and are happy to undertake surveys for plants and animals and just cover costs-sort of like paid bushwalkers!). The latter group have made survey work a commodity, making it difficult to explain to clients that survey pricing is reletive to area covered, species found or targeted etc, and that with my services you have a track record for both the survey work AND the approvals for your development. Many clients will look at the output of the work (i.e. a survey report) and look for the cheapest price, hence I have always been relcutant to post pricing (although I’m thinking that I should probably be happy to loose projects for these type of clients). However I agree that being proud of your pricing shows confidence and professionalism. Might need to play around with the range thing as I’m currently developing my website.
Thanks again
Gary
@Gary It’s one way to differentiate yourself from the ‘cheapest providers’ although I wouldn’t necessarily say ‘proud’ of your prices but certainly ‘unembarassed’ or ‘unashamed’ would be accurate. But remember, you’re going to have a conversation about price at some point so getting it out of the way early can be very helpful. In this way, by the time someone calls you, they’re not fishing for the cheapest price, they’re a serious, well-informed prospect. That’s a much better use of your time.
yes, you’re right Mathew. Proud was the wrong word.
I had a potential client come into my office yesterday. Asked for a “rough” estimate of my costs to conduct his surveys. I sat him down with a coffee, and worked out a precise costing, and told him the days I could do the field work, and finalise the report. While he was initally a bit shocked at the price (some people don’t realise what things cost), he told me to go ahead and schedule it. I then asked him what convinced him to contract me, he stated that he had been to two other environmental consultants (one a major international firm with a local office) and did not get specific information, they faffed around saying thinks like ” it depends on what we find” etc. He told me the confidence in which I produced a specific quote with timelines (took me about 5minutes to work out!, I’ve done hundreds of them in his location so it wasn’t difficult to calculate) while he was in my office, convinced him that I knew what I was on about and was not someone that would “stuff him around”. He said my confidence in putting a price together reassured him that the job would be completed well and within his timelines. While it was more intially than the others, he suspected that the other two quotes would creep up. With my quote he knew what he was up for. I can tell you now, I have scheduled a few hours tonight to re-design my website to include basic survey tasks along with more complex work that I do, and include a spectrum of prices for each task, based on past projects. I’ll let you know how it goes. Thanks for your comment and blog.
Cheers
Gary
Gary, that’s a great story and it reinforces the point I was making. Thanks for sharing it. M