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Today I’m going to share with you some of the most useful ways to increase sales of your service. It’s especially helpful in highly competitive markets like wedding videography and wedding photography. We see so many businesses not following these principals that implementation should give you an immediate edge.
We employed these strategies after reading about them in, “Brainfluence: 100 Ways to Persuade and Convince Consumers with Neuromarketing,” and saw an increase in sales and clients chose the exact package we wanted them to.
3 Proven Ways to Increase Sales
1) Package pricing.
Of course, most photo/video businesses are already doing this, but not all. Package pricing allows you to simplify the offers. From a psychology perspective, package pricing (or bundled pricing) minimizes the negative effect that departing with money creates. Auto manufacturers have employed this technique for years by offering a base model, mid-model, and fully-loaded model package pricing.
The reason this technique works is it makes it difficult to evaluate the cost of individual items. Pro tip: Don’t show a bunch of small add-on fees like extra discs or DVDs in your package pricing or near it. The costs of these items are negligible to the business but displaying them can have a negative impact on buyers. Customers may start comparing cost per extra DVD fees (ridiculous, I know), question whether or not enough is included in the package, but moreover subconsciously feel that there are more pain-points even after the purchase of a package. The overarching theme of package pricing is reducing pain-points of money.
Even if you never do #2 or #3, this is one of the best ways to increase sales.
2) Reduce the number of choices.
We recommend three packages be offered. Three packages allow you to employ the strategies in this list without overwhelming your potential customer with choices. I often see websites offering photo/video services with 5 or more packages with lengthy descriptions. They’re terribly wordy and make it difficult to understand what the differences in each package are.
Sometimes they even name them with completely meaningless names like the “Picasso” package or “Michaelangelo”. Better business owners know that reducing the number of packages is likely to result in higher sales. The psychology research here has shown that when presented with too many or confusing choices, the brain actually prefers to make no choice at all. As a result, when presented with fewer choices, sales are likely to increase.
3) Create decoy packages.
A slightly less expensive option with significantly less value placed near the package you’re promoting will make your preferred package more appealing. It’s sort of like going to the grocery store and seeing a “25%” more sticker on a product and then seeing it’s only 3% higher in cost. You may not even need more of the product, but it’s such a good deal!
The same works in package pricing for photo/video work. For instance, if you have a $3,495 package that includes everything a normal client wants, you could create a $3,295 product that has some common items missing.
The second part of decoy packages is adding one on the extreme high-end. By including a high-priced offer, you make the package you’re trying to sell seem like a bargain. If your preferred package is $3,495 you might make a $6000 or $7000 package. One way to do this is including something like coverage for the rehearsal dinner.
Summary:
These techniques work, so I expect you will find they are excellent ways to increase sales. They work so well that it wouldn’t be ethical to use them to ‘trick’ your client into buying something they don’t need or want. We had amazing ratings and reviews from our clients, but we also nudged them toward a package we knew they would be happy with and fit in their budget.
Any marketing technique can be used for good or bad, and the easiest way to tell if you’re doing the right thing is client satisfaction after the completed project. If they’re ecstatic you’re just engaging in good marketing. If they feel ripped off or regret their purchase you’re likely engaging in unethical business practices. Be one of the good guys.
If you’re interested in diving deeper into the psychology of why these work, and other valuable tips, we suggest you check out Brainfluence.