University of Box

Today I wanted to address the topic of packages. Packages can help or hurt our sales, depending on our approach.

Let’s talk about the positive side of packages. What makes packages work? I think packaging has a psychological effect, they imply to people “this is what you need”. This can provide a floor for orders and can help them to a certain level. The package fills their needs as well as frequently offers some price incentive to the customer as well.

The downside of preset packages is that no only do they provide a floor to our orders, but they also create a ceiling. That same implied “filling of their needs” can begin to work against us on the top end. If our package fills their needs, it’s unlikely they will buy more. This is why people rarely add much onto packages.

In our studio, for our seniors, we offer a Create-a-Package. This offers a lot of flexibility for our clients, which has a lot of appeal. We stress these benefits to our customers. And like the benefit of packages, it provides a floor for our orders. But unlike set packages, our system has no ceiling, clients can keep adding things that appeal to them, with no limit applied by our pricing structure, only by the client’s ability to buy.

Let’s look at another aspect of packages, the discount. In each of our businesses, we have a certain amount that we need each client to spend for us to run a profitable business. We can call that our “base sale”. Unfortunately, unless we have minimum order, some order will fall below our base sale. What we sometimes see photographers do is offer discounted packages that are below our needed base sale. If we stop and think about it, that really doesn’t make much sense. Why would we DISCOUNT an order that is under what our base needs are to be profitable? It may be OK to offer a smaller package to create a starting appeal, but it should not be a discount from your normal prices. Who says that a package must be cheaper than your regular prices? In no way should we discount any package that is under our base sale needs. It’s probably even wiser to begin any discounts at our average order. If we take this approach, we are providing incentive to the better half of our clients.

So look at your packages. Do they make sense? Are they encouraging your clients to spend more?

I see a number of price lists posted here and other places that are simply not intelligently designed.

First of all, keep one thing in mind, a price list is NOT a marketing piece. It’s a selling piece. So it doesn’t have to be cutesy and loaded with graphics that you think are cool. It’s business time. Marketing might be aimed at seniors for appeal, but the price list should be aimed at the PARENTS who are making the buying decisions. Now, even with all that, we make sure that our price list matches the LOOK of our marketing for consistency. But keep it CLEAN AND SIMPLE, that’s rule #1.

Avoid any confusion. We want people to spend money right? If there is any confusion whatsoever, people are resistant to letting loose of their money if they are confused. So if your price list creates more questions than it answers, it’s BAD. If you have too many packages and people can’t decide, it’s BAD. Now it might make sense to YOU, you wrote it, but it could have all of your customers scratching their heads. So hand it to a few people and see if they get it without you making them a dissertation on how to interpret it.

The next major factor is that our price lists should maximize DESIRE and minimize PRICE. But so many that I see do the opposite. They FLAUNT the price really large without appealing descriptions or illustration. Look at these two examples:

FILET MIGNON $38.95
A succulent slice of the finest
beef, wrapped with apple
smoked bacon and served with
our stuffed baked potato
and french bread

FILET MIGNON
A succulent slice of the finest
beef, wrapped with apple
smoked bacon and served with
our stuffed baked potato
and french bread
39

Fine restaurants have done this for years. They know to make us want it, get our mouth watering and us thinking “Wow, that sounds great!”, then in smaller type “oh yeah, it’s this much”. And notice the LACK of dollar signs. Dollar signs emphasize price.

Are we trying to be deceitful? No, not at all. We do want to make their mouths water for our products. Since our work is visual, and people often don’t know what we say when we state an “8 opening folio”, to them, they are saying “hmmm what exactly is that? Is that the think that your cousin got?” So we try to illustrate many of our products in our price list. Hey, you’re a photographer, right? Take a picture of your finished product!

These are a few things that can help make your price list a little easier to sell from and encourage larger orders.