Once you settle on the regular price of your product, you can still offer incentives for customers to buy. Many customers will purchase something at a discount that they wouldn’t purchase at full price so use discounts as another way to build your revenue. In the following paragraphs, we’ll look at some of the various types of discounts you might want to offer.
Quantity Discounts
Many marketers, whether brick and mortar or online, will offer discounts when a certain quantity of a product is purchased. Often referred to as bulk discounts, this benefits both the customer and the seller and should be considered a valuable marketing tool. While it is easy to think of selling physical products in bulk, many Internet marketers don’t stop to think that many digital products can also be sold in bulk or that services can also be discounted for quantity. However, many online writers, who are marketers as well, often give discounts for quantity when selling a large number of articles.
Preferred Customer Discounts
Many brick and mortar retailers, as well as Internet marketers, offer special discounts to preferred customers. These are usually regular customers who receive a discount for being loyal customers. This is an excellent marketing strategy to help retain customers who have already purchased from you. People love to get discounts and offering this type of discount could mean the difference between retaining a loyal customer and losing one that isn’t so loyal to the competition.
Seasonal or Holiday Discounts
Every single holiday, even the ones that may not be very well known, brings a throng of sales events to retail establishments. That’s because they know their customers love a sale and will use any excuse to buy something at a discount. You, too, can capitalize on seasonal and holiday sales events to boost your profits. Some Internet marketers even offer special discounts to their customers on their own birthdays.
Start now to notice the kinds of discounts other Internet marketers are offering to their customers. Also, take a close look at the products and services you are offering to see where you might be able to incorporate discounts that will tempt your customers yet still allow you to make a profit. You might consider offering discounts for products or services that aren’t selling as well as you had hoped at their current prices or if you have a bestseller you might consider discounting that instead.
Visit Internet marketer forums and message boards to learn how your fellow marketers offer discounts and where they have found success. Remember, too, that no matter how much you discount some products, if they don’t offer real value to customers then they probably still won’t sell. As with many other aspects of Internet marketing, this is an area where trial and error may be the only way to truly gauge how beneficial offering discounts is to your business.
There are various pricing structures that Internet marketers use to price their products and services. While the inexperienced marketer may just pick a price that sounds good, far more consideration than that needs to go into your pricing decisions. In the following paragraphs, we’ll discuss some of the most common price structures in use today in the world of Internet marketing.
Cost Plus Mark Up
Some Internet marketers will figure out how much it cost them to create the product and then mark it up a certain percentage. This percentage will vary widely, depending upon how much the marketer had to invest, the perceived value of the product, and other factors.
Competitive Pricing
This is another popular way online and offline marketers price their products. They constantly measure what their competition is charging for similar products and then they make sure they are charging somewhere in the same neighborhood as the competition. Basing your rates on the competition’s rates is a popular way to do business. If you’ve ever spent much time looking for a traditional job, you have probably come across job listings that state that they pay “competitive” wages.
Tier Pricing
This kind of pricing often involves various versions of a product or service where the first tier might be the cheapest with the least amount of features, the next tier costs more and offers more value to the customer, and the third tier costs even more and offers the most features to the customer. There is no rule, of course, that there can only be three tiers but it is often common to see three. Depending on the product or service you are offering, this may be an option for you to explore. This works well with software and also works well with service oriented offerings.
Other Types of Pricing Models
Take a look around at what kinds of pricing models other Internet marketers are using and you will probably see a great deal of flexibility in these offers. You’ll see one-time offers, limited time offers, and introductory offers. You’ll see special offers and events, where the offer is limited not by time, but by the number of people allowed to sign up. This is especially popular when PLR (Private Label Rights) items are sold so the market doesn’t get over saturated. You’ll also find a limited number of customers allowed when coaching or special online courses are offered.
There really are no hard and fast pricing rules. Much of an Internet marketer’s expertise on pricing comes from trial and error, split-testing, and experience. Furthermore, while one pricing model will work just right for one type of product or service, it may not work well at all for another. That’s why it is important to understand the various pricing models you have available to you and decide which one will work for the particular project you are working on at any given time.