Putting Price Into Perspective

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Boy, those Harvard Business Review guys sure know how to put things into perspective… I learned that minimum wage employees in Venezuela would need to work 7,063 hours (in other words, more than three years) to buy an iPhone 13. (Here in good ole’ USA, you’d need to work a mere 114 hours to afford that phone.). Customers in every industry are price-sensitive, but, as Allstate found when it comes to auto insurance, it’s simply not true that most will buy the least expensive plan they can find. Price for the value you create, advises Dave Gray, author of Gamestorming: a Playbook for Innovators, Rulebreakers, and Changemakers. In fact, the Corporate Finance Institute defines value-based pricing as adjusting the price based on perceived value rather than historical price.

At Say It For You, we perceive our primary task as blog content writers to be this – clearly demonstrating the value delivered by a business or practice to its customers and clients. By doing that, we have the power to put the price of those goods and services into perspective.

Karen Greenstreet, writing in Forbes in 2014, offered reasons you should – and reasons you shouldn’t – put pricing on your website or in your blog.  You want the chance to establish rapport before discussing pricing, she acknowledges, but many customers will not do business with a company that is not forthcoming about pricing and fees.

My own take as a blog writer and trainer is that the very purpose of blogs is to put information into perspective for visitors. The typical website explains what products and services the company offers, who the “players” are and in what geographical area they operate; the better ones give visitors at least a taste of the corporate culture and some of the owners’ core beliefs.  It’s left to the continuously renewed business blog writing, though, to “flesh out” the intangibles, those things that make a company stand out from its peers.

For every fact about the company or about one of its products or services, a blog post addresses unspoken questions such as “So, is that different?”, “So, is that good for me?”  It’s not that pricing isn’t important or that it should be left out –  it’s simply one of many things readers are going to consider.

I think about putting price into perspective not only in terms of my blogging clients’ customers, but in terms of their own budget as we begin a blog marketing initiative.. Often it’s a small business owner in a retail or services field competing with giant national chains. With fewer dollars available, the little guy cannot hope to compete in purchasing ads and needs to rely on organic search to attract eyeballs.  In other words, my clients are wondering, what are their chances for success when they find themselves playing with fewer “game pieces” than their larger, better funded, competitors?

That is where blog value comes in – with consistency and commitment, they have every chance of demonstrating the value they offer, putting the price of their goods and services into proper perspective.

 

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Blogging Your Claim To Fame

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“After reading this,” is Stephen Lang’s hope for his Big Book of American Trivia, “you may consider yourself a little more knowledgeable, maybe even a little more appreciative, of this vast, enchanting land.” With over 3,000 questions and answers, this book certainly allows readers to self-test, which is one way in which readers tend to initially engage with the content in business blogs. In fact, content writers, we teach at Say It For You, can use trivia in different ways:

  • for defining basic terminology
  • sparking curiosity about the subject
  • putting modern-day practices and beliefs into perspective
  • for explaining why the business owner or practitioner chooses to operate in a certain way

    You can use trivia to help readers get to know the people behind the business/practice:
    – What Oscar-winning actress announced in June, 2011, that she was homeschooling her children? (Angelina Jolie)
    – What man said “I don’t know anything about cars,” then ended up being head of General Motors? (Edward Whitacre, Jr. )
    – What songwriter donated an Oscar he’d won to his hometown? ) Johnny Mercer)

In his book Tell to Win, Peter Guber points out that people want to do business with people. One important function of a business blog, we teach at Say It For You, is helping online visitors get to know the people behind the business (or the professionals behind the practice). Why did those owners choose to do what they do? What are they most passionate about?  What are they trying to add to or to change about their industry? What community causes are they involved in?

           Sharing failures as well as successes:

  • In April, 2009, Barack Obama caused controversy by bowing. To whom? (The King of Saudi Arabia)
  • What famous astronaut was cut from the TV show Dancing With the Stars”? (Buzz Aldrin)
  • What one-name pop singer declared “The Internet’s almost over”? (Prince)

“There can be success in the stories, but they have to be grounded in failure.” Stav Ziv said in Newsweek, talking about The Moth nonprofit dedicated to the art of storytelling. So how does all this apply to blog marketing for a business or professional practice?  It brings out a point every business owner, practitioner, and business blogger ought to keep in mind: Writing about past failures is important.
True stories about mistakes and struggles are very humanizing, adding to the trust readers place in the people behind the business. What tends to happen is the stories of failure create feelings of empathy and admiration for the entrepreneurs or professional practitioners who overcame the effects of their own errors.

Why share tidbits? Your blog readers may consider themselves a little more knowledgeable, maybe even a little more appreciative, of your value proposition – and of you!

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Blog Posts – Info in a Flash

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“There’s nothing like flash fiction to teach you how to write an engaging story ” Breathe Magazine tells readers looking for “activities for a happy and healthy mind”. Author Kit de Waal, judging a microfiction writing contest, says she looks for “a whole story that gives me depth and breadth, with a beginning, middle, and end, but not necessarily in that order.” The best microfiction, she adds, gets people talking and starts ideas in their heads.

While marketing blog posts are nonfiction, some of the tips offered by de Waal and other microfiction contest judges certainly apply.

  • “Focusing on a single idea is a really good technique.”
    When it comes to blogging, we at Say It For You firmly believe in the Power of One (one outcome, one audience, one writer, one client, and – one message per post, with a a razor-sharp focus on just one story, one idea, one aspect of your business.
  • “Pieces without a beginning, middle, and end don’t work.”
    In business blog writing, for the opening, you may choose to present a question, a problem, a startling statistic, or a gutsy, challenging statement. Later, on the “back end” of your post, your “pow” closing statement ties back to the opener, bringing your reader full circle.
  • “Editing and revising is the hard part, but it is important. Work with language and imagery.”
    The second hardest part of blog writing is cutting your own work down to size, cutting out the non-essentials.

  • “Readers must be made to think and talk about what you’ve told them.”
    For blogs, the “first take” message is crucial, showing online readers they’ve come to exactly the right spot to find the information they need.

  • “Choose three words at random and weave them into a story.”
    Blog readers tend to be scanners, and searchers will select the most important words, the ones relating most directly to what they came online to find in the first place. Choosing those keyword phrases should hardly be random, instead being the result of research about your target audience.

  • “Find your ideas in weird sources.”
    In order to create a valuable ongoing blog for your business, it’s going to take equal parts reading and writing.You need to keep up with what others are saying on your topic, plus keep up with your marketing and selling skills, as well as finding unusual or little-known facts that you can use to to explain your own (or your clients’) products, services, and culture.

“Flash fiction attempts to condense a story into the fewest words possible, telling big, rich, complex stories quickly and concisely, Catherin Sustana writes in ThoughtCo. Marketing.  blog posts, while not fiction, are a means of providing readers with valuable information, and doing it “in a flash”.

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Your First Job is to Communicate a Beautiful Idea

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“Caught up in the difficulty of mystifying, magicians often forget that the first job of any artist is to communicate a beautiful idea,” is a quote from Raymond Joseph Teller in Joshua Jay’s book How Magicians Think. One idea that audiences find irresistibly beautiful is that they are being given access to “secret”, or at least little-known, information. That is precisely the tactic Penn & Teller used in demonstrating the age-old cups and balls trick, but using clear plastic cups, demonstrating that it is the magician’s skill rather than the props that create illusions.

“The idiom ‘inside scoop’ particularly refers to information that is only known to people who are among a select group”, grammarist.com explains. In the book Craved, author Kel Hammond notes that people love behind-the-scenes video footage, which makes people feel like they’re in the know. Showing people a more personal side of who is behind the brand is a powerful marketing tool. In other words, it’s the idea of being empowered with “inside info”, rather than the information itself, the accomplishes the marketing goal.

Researchers at the University of Bath, working with Nielson, came up with two ways to score ads.

  1. Information Power Score – measures what the consumer perceives as the value of the message
  2. Emotive Power Score – measures if the emotion is going to change feelings about the brand

    At Say It For You, our business is blog marketing, which means connecting professional practitioners and business owners with prospective clients and customers. And, while I continually preach and teach that blog posts are not ads, but more like advertorials, establishing connections is the name of the game for both advertisers and content marketers. The first job of content marketing is, in fact, to communicate ideas that online visitors will find “beautiful”, making them feel as if they are part of a well-informed “inside group”.

    Sometimes, the “beauty” of the blog content is that it simplifies and unifies diverse details into central concepts.. Other times the “beauty” lies in linking “conversation-piece” tidbits of information to concepts that help readers better understand complex processes. Caught up in the difficulty of online marketing, let’s remember that the first job of any blog content writer is communicating beautiful ideas.

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Blogging for Business with Sympathy and Service: 4 “Amens”

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“Instead of selfish mass marketing, effective marketing now relies on sympathy and service,” Seth Godin posits in the book This is Marketing. What marketing is, the author explains. “the generous act of helping someone solve a problem. Their problem.” “Getting discovered”, “getting found”, and “getting the word out” are no longer the first things to consider, but come last. As marketers, Godin is firm, it’s our job to watch people, figure out what they dream of, than create a transaction that can deliver that feeling.

In planning how to market your product or service, Godin suggests, start by filling in the blanks in this sentence: “My _________ will be exactly the right choice for people who believe that_______ and who want to feel_________.”

Four Say It For You “Amens”:

  1. Belief and trust, we have found at Say It For You, are in large part a function of familiarity Precisely because blogs are not one-time articles, but conveyers of messages over long periods of time, they serve as unique tools for building a sense of familiarity (and ultimately trust) in readers.
  2. In blog content writing, ask yourself: Which psychological fulfillment does your brand support most? Exactly as Godin is expressing, blog readers will self select and become buyers only to the extent your content has focused on creating experiences that align with their values. Business blogs should never be rated “E” (intended for everyone).
  3. As content writers, we’ve also come to understand over the years that face-to-screen is the closest we will come to the prospective buyers of our clients’ products and services. Even when it comes to B2B marketing, we know that behind every decision, there is always a person, a being with feelings they have and feelings they want to have.
  4. Through the pandemic we became familiar with the phrase “social distancing”, which is the precise opposite of what we must try to do in blog marketing, which is to create connections with our audience and make them feel supported and in turn receptive to our message. As writers, we must present the business or practice as very personal rather than transactional.

In blog marketing, aim for sympathy and service!

 

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