The Danger of Discounting Prices Too Often

Discounting Prices Too Often

You will already know about the importance of communicating with your subscribers and customers. Now we discuss the danger of discounting prices too often.

RocketResponder is a tool which allows you to ensure that important messages are always sent out regularly and on time.

This post deals with another important message which you may be inadvertently sending out if you are in a position where you set your own prices.

Obviously if you are an affiliate marketer then you don’t control the price but this information is still important to you if you offer bonuses or other extras to tempt in customers to buy from you.

Your customer will tend to have a price in their head which they consider a “fair price” for whatever it is they are buying.

This applies to everything from a can of soft drink to a new car or a luxury holiday.

If you sell goods which are at or below the “fair price” level then it is far more likely that someone will buy from you than a higher priced competitor.

Often marketers will try to give themselves an edge over their competition by lowering their prices – maybe for a holiday-themed special offer, a special sale or some other reason to discount on the normal higher price.

Similarly affiliate marketers will often include an exclusive package of bonuses to customers who buy the goods or services being promoted through their affiliate link. Bonuses could include a cash-back payment, free bonus products, free reports or free training on how to use the item being purchased.

As one off tactics – such as during an initial product launch or over a Black Friday weekend – these can be very lucrative indeed.

The danger comes if, in order to continue gaining a competitive advantage, you offer the discounted deal over and over again.

Now the discounted deal or the deal with all the added bonuses is so generally expected that this becomes the new “fair price” in the buyer’s mind.

So if you try to raise it to the old “normal” price again your customers will be less likely to buy from you and will tend to wait until you offer the discount again.

The lesson is that it is always a good marketing tactic to offer discounts – especially seasonal discounts – but don’t discount so often that the lower prices become regarded as normal in the mind of the consumer.

 

 

Patrick Griffin

Patrick Griffin has been marketing online for 15 years. He's a serial entrepreneur and an avid email and content marketing enthusiast with a background in publishing and journalism, including a UK Press Award.

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