A Short Primer on How to Write Copy (Part 6: Stating the Price)

The mere act of deciding upon a price for your product or service is a beast of a topic. Thus, I plan to avoid it and focus on the actual stating of the price.

Once you've decided on the price, you've got to put it in your copy (alternatively, you could hide it from prospects until they decide to buy--a method with mixed results).

The problem is, price is as much an obstacle as the headline. That is, if your prospects aren't closing your offer at the headline, they might end up closing it at the price statement. This is why you've got to do everything it takes to make the price appealing rather than appalling.

How You Do It

The main key to getting prospects to accept your price (other than choosing the right price, that is) is to pump up the value of your product/service all the way from the headline up to the price.

Your copy must continually build upon the value of what you have to offer... all the way to the price!

And this is where I see a lot of sales copy fail. If you're putting your price up at the top of the copy somewhere, you're doing it wrong. One of two things will happen:

1. Your prospects won't read your whole sales letter, leaving after they see the price.
2. Your prospects will already have internalized a value for your product, weakening the influence of your copy, and thus weakening the value of your product.

Following from point two, as soon as you mention the price, you've broken the influence of your benefit-building copy. No longer can you build up the value of your product. Even "free extras" that you include after the price don't help make the product more valuable and can in fact make your product appear less valuable (plenty of research on this counter-intuitive result exists).

That's why you have to see the space between your headline and your asking price as the most valuable space on your sales page. You need to be using as many techniques as possible to densely populate that space while expanding that space. Strong copy wins; long copy wins. This is so because it helps you boost the price.

Discounts Help

You've probably seen plenty of ads that state a resale price with a line slashed through it. Next to it is a new, lower price.

As much as I like to play the rebel and break copywriting rules, this technique does work. Mainly, because you're setting a price anchor for the readers with the original price.

Here's How You Do It, Step-by-Step

1. Before you write your copy, decide on a price.
2. Write your copy, building up your product or service as much as possible.
3. Based on the copy you wrote, estimate, in a percentage, how much more valuable you've made your product seem to be in comparison to the actual product. (This step is subjective, but there aren't many other ways to do it.)
4. Multiply your original price with (100 + estimate)% to get your "resale" or "original" price.
5. State the resale price.
6. State the "special offer" (your original price).

That's pricing in a nutshell.

For example, let's say you're selling hockey lessons. Your standard price is $30 an hour for one-on-one lessons. You've written a landing page for people looking for hockey tutoring in your area (Canada, probably). Your landing page is professionally written, and it makes your tutoring seem about 50% better than what it actually is. Multiply 30 by (100 + 50)%, giving you $45 an hour.

State your "walk-in price" as $45.

State your "online reservation price" as $30.

You've just made your prospect feel they've gotten a discount, which makes them more likely to buy.

Good luck!

Click for part 7 of How to Write Copy.