The Strategy Behind Our $29 Product and Why it Works
The topic of pricing comes up a lot in our community (on Facebook and via email) and it’s a hot topic for the creative industry as a whole. We are tied so personally to our offers that it’s difficult to take our emotions out of the pricing. So we fumble with the numbers until we find something that feels comfortable and safe. Sound familiar?
What if we shifted our thinking about pricing individually (per course, service or product) and began thinking about the entire roadmap? How do we want our audience to navigate through our offers? What can get them in the door the quickest, and then how can we wow them so they stay (and buy more)?
These are the questions we began to ask ourselves when we created and launched our most recent course, Trello for Business.
You see, we’ve launched courses of almost every price range. We’ve had free courses, $47 programs, $197 courses and even programs that sold for almost $600. So when it came to our latest program we didn’t ask ourselves what we should charge for it. We asked ourselves where that course was going to lie on our customer roadmap.
THE FREE EASY YES
For just over a year we had built up a library of easy yesses. An easy yes is something your audience doesn’t think twice about diving into. Our year worth of easy yesses were the content upgrades we included in our blog posts, freebies we offered on our site, our backstage library, and our free webinars.
The exchange wasn’t monetary, but rather foundation building. In exchange for the value we were offering our audience had to provide their email address. Since we knew we could continue to nurture them inside their inbox this was (and continues to be) a very valuable exchange for us.
In between these easy yesses we were offering paid products. Some services (when we were doing client work), but mostly courses and 1:1 strategy. Once our audience would see the value in what we were offering after they gave their email, they were more comfortable in investing with us for paid programs.
Once we had built up over a year of giving a lot of valuable knowledge away in blog posts and webinars we were ready for our first paid easy yes.
This is where the pricing strategy of the low cost of Trello for Business comes in. Spoiler alert: this program is only $29.
THE PAID EASY YES
Here’s how the flux of students came into Trello for Business. The first wave came through from students who have been around a while. They are probably in other programs that we offer and/or they’ve attended almost every webinar. They read our blog and they know the value of what we sell. So when they saw a less than $30 program come through from us they didn’t need any more convincing. They were sold.
Why did that happen? Because we had spent a year giving to them. We spent a year writing excellent content, giving away the kitchen sink in webinars and providing value in our paid programs. Without this foundation we wouldn’t have had hundreds of people dive in within the first few days of opening the doors.
The ease of that “yes” got easier to ask of them the more we gave prior to asking.
The second wave of students came in once they heard the feedback of the first round. Here’s what some of that feedback sounded like.
WOW! Trello for Business has literally been more valuable to me than some 1K courses I've taken. - Yana
And then you ladies come in like the angels that you are and just give me #AllTheThings for only $29?! Say, what?! All of your boards were exactly what I needed, all of your training was exactly what I needed. - Ginny
When these are the things being said about your program or offer, you know you’ve hit the jackpot. We knew that after so long of giving it all away we were ready to ask for more than just an email. We were ready to make some money, honey.
WHEN THIS STRATEGY MIGHT NOT WORK
The main reason we have seen the success we have with T4B is flat out because we waited just over a year to offer something this inexpensive. We know, we know you think it would be the opposite, right? You think you should start off small and then go up in price from there.
Of course there are exceptions, but here’s why we think that won’t be the best move for you. By starting off at such a low price (not free) from day one won’t pack the same punch because you won’t have as much credibility.
It’ll be easy for people to talk themselves out of $29 because they don’t know if what you’ve got is good. When you spend that little with someone it will go one of two ways: you’ll either be blown away because it’s so good or you’ll be blown away because it was totally lackluster and you’ll be left saying “you get what you pay for”.
People convince themselves that newbies charge less because it isn’t as valuable. If that’s how your audience feels going into your program that’s how they’re going to be left feeling about it.
However, if you’re a newbie and you want to offer something like a course or program we want you to put your all into it. Like everything. Teach, give, astound. If you’re doing this then you need to charge more than $29. Even as a newbie you can sell medium to higher priced programs if you focus solely on making it the most valuable thing you’ve ever seen in your life.
Then once you’ve built up an audience that knows what you offer is virtual gold you can introduce a paid easy yes. Then it will truly sell itself.
So here are your main takeaways:
Are you providing your audience with enough free value right now?
Consider ways to create a lot of easy yesses to build your audience (blog posts, content upgrades, webinars, etc.)
See what they truly need from you and listen
Know the roadmap you want each customer to go down when buying from you
Create programs that fill the holes in your roadmap
When we saw that a chunk of our audience needed help getting from our free material to our paid programs we knew we could toss in an easy (but monetary) yes for them. This is where Trello for Business fit perfectly.
We then focused on making it amazing, but not overthinking it. We just needed to show this audience the value of investing with us so they could be confident that our other programs were just as great.
Map out your buying roadmap today and see if the route makes sense. Is there a gap? Is there a strong enough foundation? Are you focusing on adding as much value as possible?
