Have Attitudes Changed About Price Point Blogging?

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Awhile back, I began one of my Say It For You blog posts by quoting a remark by Marcus Sheridan of social media examiner.com, something he’d written, back in 2012.“Many business websites fail to address the subject of pricing,” Sheridan had observed. “Instead of addressing the number-one consumer question up front, they decided to wait until the initial phone contact, or worse, the first sales appointment in the home. But, although this “hidden approach” may have worked in marketing five or ten years ago, today’s consumer don’t like their core questions to be left unanswered.”

I wonder – has thinking on the subject of publishing prices on websites and in blogs changed since then? Even Sheridan admitted that there might be factors that dictate – and change – the ultimate pricing any consumer would pay.  Because of this, he suggested that “It’s best to offer ranges, not definitive numbers, allowing potential clients to get a feel for the cost and know if they’re at least in the ballpark.”

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 discussion pricing, she acknowledges, and you certainly want to stay away from “tire-kicker”, price-shopping prospects.  On the other hand, Greenstreet pointed out, many customers will not do business with a company that is not forthcoming about pricing and fees.

A 2017 article by Trevor Current deals with the question – should photographers provide pricing on their websites? Current begins by recounting reasons many photographers continue to avoid giving price information:

  • I offer a custom service, not a commodity.
  • I need to evaluate the client’s needs before naming a price.
  • I want to be able to negotiate with the client.
  • I want to be able to adjust with the market.

Current “gets” all that, but still comes down firmly on the side of putting prices on the website, because:

  1. Buyers are very busy in today’s world. Consumers want information now!
  2. Without seeing prices, consumers may assume they can’t afford your services and move on to other sites that have prices listed.

From my point of view as a corporate blogging trainer, the topic of “price point blogging” fits in nicely with the overall concept of putting information into perspective for clients. 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?”  Pricing is one of those sets of facts that must be put out there in order for you to be able to put those facts into perspective.

 

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What Blog Title Phrasing Doubles Your Click-through Rates?

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Researchers at the BI Norwegian Business School in Oslo, Norway were out to determine what factors make certain headlines drive more click-throughs than others. They performed two experiments, one using Twitter, the other using popular Norwegian auction and shopping website FINN.Putting aside possible cultural differences among readers in different countries, the major takeaways from the study were these:

  • Question headlines are more effective than statement (declarative) headlines.
  • Question headlines that reference the reader (you, your, etc.) are most effective.

Kevan Lee agrees about the importance of “you” words. In “How to Write the Perfect Headline: The Top Words Used in Viral Headlines”, he discusses headline analysis based on twenty-four different websites. Question headlines referencing the reader were the most effective, with “you” and “your” both making the top-20 word list. Question words “what”, “which”, and “when” were all important, while “why” appealed to the ‘curiosity gap”.

Superlatives in headlines “sell”. “The most successful people”, “The happiest people”, “The most interesting people” – these are people we want to know more about. ”Readers enjoy discovering, learning, and challenging the details behind blanket assertions like this,” Lee explains. There’s also a certain level of authority when you say “the most”.  At the same time, that phrase taps into readers’ argumentative side – does the superlative really ring true? “How to” posts promise a certain level of education, Lee continues, and valuable subject matter will generate clicks.

Whether in magazines or blogs, there are two types of titles, I’ve noticed. The “Huh?” titles need subtitles to make clear what the article is about, and the “Oh!” titles are self explanatory. The“Huh?s” startle and arouse curiosity; The “Oh!” subtitle then clarifies what the focus of the piece will be.

As a business blog content writer, I love the tongue-in-cheek remark by  Thomas Umstattd in “Top 5 Blog Title Mistakes Authors Make”.  In school, he says, your teacher probably taught you that the purpose of a title was to describe your writing.  That’s wrong, he says.  The purpose of a title is to tell readers why they should bother to read your writing!

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Musing About Blogging for Business and Being Human

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Just the other day, friend Jim Anthony (So-Mark Founder) sent an email message full of statistics about blogging – (music to my blog content writer’s ears, of course!).

WordPress blogs alone are read by over 400 million people every month,
with users creating over 80 million new posts, 44 million comments and
23 billion page views each and every month.

The truth, Jim concluded (I couldn’t agree more) is that creating content can work for anyone, no matter what they do. To support this claim, he suggested business owners check out an article written bv Paula Hicks of the Marketing Insider Group.

I particularly liked the point Hicks made about blogging prompting you to focus on what you want to achieve with your business. On my Say It For You website, I call that phenomenon the “training benefit”. Here’s how I explain it:

When you blog, you verbalize the positive aspects of your business in a way that people can understand. You put your recent accomplishments down in words. You review the benefits of your products and services and keep them fresh in your mind. In other words, you are constantly providing yourself with training about how to talk effectively about your business. If your employees read your blog, they review these messages and also receive this benefit to an extent.

I don’t particularly agree with one observation Hicks’ credits to “one of her good friends, a writer”, who reportedly “goes so far as to say that spelling and grammar mistakes can even make you seem more human”. (I suppose the same might be said about belching at the table!)

In fact, one long-time debate among bloggers and business owners is whether correct spelling and proper grammar really matter in blogs.  After all (as I myself have stressed), your blog is supposed to reveal the “real you”! Well, the “Real Me” has a very real opinion on the subject of grammar and spelling, I must admit. The way I see it, your business blog represents you and your business to the world, and you need to maintain a professional level of grammar and spelling even when writing in an informal tone.

One very important observation Hicks makes is that “if you’re knowledgeable in your field, then running a blog can be a great way o9f proving it to other people.  Customers love to buy from people who know their stuff…

 Amen to that.

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Business Blogging Takes Visitors Through Relationship-Building Meetings

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sales funnel for bloggingNot one encounter, or even two. “To ensure you are consistently giving clients this close attention, you should take them through a series of FIVE relationship-building meetings,” is the advice John Bowen, Jr. gives to his fellow financial advisors. Why five?  Each of the meetings has a specific purpose; each is designed to move the new client further down the “sales funnel”. There are:

  1. a discovery meeting  (to comprehend a prospective client’s full situation)
  2. an investment plan meeting (establishes you as a knowledgeable and thorough professional)
  3. a mutual commitment meeting (to answer questions and address any issues client has)
  4. a 45-day follow-up meeting
  5. regular progress meetings

To maximize conversions and sales from your blog, a proper sales funnel can help, big time, suggests the smepals.com blog for entrepreneurs. There are steps required for a visitor to convert – beginning with finding your content via a Google search, to reading an article, to signing up for a newsletter, to purchasing a product or service. “Every aspect of marketing,” sme.com points out, “is based on a foundation of great content.”

“Discovery” – Like the financial planning prospects in Bowen’s article, the searchers who land on your blog have an interest in gaining information related to your field of expertise. Your blog gives them some of the preliminary information they’re seeking and puts you on their radar screen. Your research has resulted in content that is relevant to the prospect’s “community”.

“Investment plan meeting” – Your content is chock-full of well-organized, interestingly presented information that is useful to readers in the target community. The blog content establishes you as knowledgeable and thorough.

“Mutual commitment meeting” – visitors are “invited” to learn more by clicking through to a landing page, downloading a list or white paper. The blog content reiterates your commitment to providing quality products or services. Searchers are encouraged to submit a question or participate in a survey.

“Follow-up meeting” – To stay top-of-mind with prospects and clients, continue producing useful , shareable, content in the your blog and social media.

“Regular progress meetings” – Periodically comb through your own blog posts, selecting individual past posts that you think might be particularly useful to certain clients, and shoot them an email with a link to that post along with a brief comment relating the material in the post to that client’s situation.

Not one encounter, or even two. The beauty of content market through business blogging lies in its continuity. After all, blogging for business is all about relationship-building!

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Business Blogging With Round-Up Posts – Part 2 of 2

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Round-up posts are blog posts consisting of lists of best sources of information. Those might be lists of best websites, best You Tube clips, or best of any kind of web content that relates to your topic. As a business blogging trainer, I loved many of Authorunlimited editor Cathy Presland’s ideas for round-up posts and am formatting  both of this week’s Say It For You posts as “round-ups” of noteworthy pieces of advice and observations about business blogging…..

“If you hang around the barber shop long enough, you’re going to get your hair cut. The more pages (blog articles) your website has, the more time consumers will spend on your site.”

– Marcus Sheridan in “50 Blogging Benefits that Will Change Your Business Forever
 

“ Your company blog is all about your buyer persona, not you.”
– Ramona Sukhraj in “Blogging for Business? Here’s Everything You Need To Know”

“The best business blogs answer common questions their leads and customers have. If you’re consistently creating content that’s helpful for your target customer, it’ll help establish you as an authority in their eyes.”
– Corey Wainwright in “The Benefits of Business Blogs for Marketing”

““The blogscape is not for the faint-hearted….There’s a shocking disconnect between one fact — you sitting at your computer — and the next — what you just wrote being instantly visible to the entire world.”- Brian Appleyard of the London Times, quoted by Jeff Bullas

“Blogging is one of the fastest and easiest ways to promote your business and increase traffic to your website.”
– ThriveHive

But is sharing others’ content really a smart strategy for business owners and practitioners?  After all, blog writing for business, as I’ve often pointed out in this Say It For You blog, will succeed only if two things are apparent to readers:  a) You (the business owner or professional practitioner) understand online searchers’ concerns and needs and b) you and your staff have the experience, the information, the products, and the services to solve exactly those problems and meet precisely those needs.

The answer is yes, as Presland explains: “Round-up posts are fantastic as an education source for your audience: they can see where your inspiration comes from, and widen the scope of their knowledge at the same time.”

 

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