Why did we decide to create a pricing page for our B2B video production service?
Short answer: customers probably don’t want to talk to us.
Don't want to read the full blogpost? Check out the video:
Many animations or video companies will give you a quote when you reach out.
Some will even ask for your budget upfront. We’ve tried these strategies in the end, but decided on something different.
Just showing our video prices.
Since implementing it, our revenues have grown. Is it from our pricing page? To be honest, we can’t attribute the data precisely enough, but what we do know is:
Fewer tire kickers reach out
Less time spent qualifying on calls
Positive comments about
It also saves us time - which is of the essence.
More time means we can spend it developing client projects or doing marketing campaigns. Or even just take the time to work a bit slower and enjoy life.
All good reasons to win time :)
Picking goals for your pricing page - what are the right ones?
Everything is easier when you have clearly defined goals. So we started by brainstorming what ours would be.
- Clients could inform themselves on price without reaching out to anyone on the team
- Get a feel for the project along with some commonly asked objections/questions
- Have a plan for tracking our conversions/what’s going on-site
And we decided to not make it too detailed. We were originally going to include our animated process on the page but decided to just build a separate one all together.
Previous to this - we were using a Google doc which summarized our service and outlined the offering. It wasn’t on-brand but it “did the job”.
Progress over perfect, as they say.
So we had a pretty good base, and we were building the page from sales conversations with our customers. Again - we had a pretty good idea of the kind of messaging and positioning that resonated with them.
Let’s talk about the psychology behind our pricing structure.
Part of the approach admittedly came from LinkedIN conversations.
We saw a lot of posts saying how annoying it was to need to book a demo to get pricing on a B2B SaaS product.
SaaS products are often high-end can cost from 10 to 250k per year depending on complexities, users and other arrangements.
Our services are similarily priced. There’s obviously a lot of anxiety about buying something expensive.
The general idea we try to remember is that nobody wants to be sold to. People want to buy.
Buying means you want a solution to your problem.
But when people are trying to sell you - it can just come off as frustrating. So in a lot of ways… we didn’t want our page to be too confusing, complex, or convoluted.
No.
Simplicity was key - and to make it really simple it’s about what will you get and for what price? You want to see examples and a brief breakdown of styles or techniques.
That’s exactly what we focused on.
After that - we already knew the pricing per video category based on what we’d quoted clients in the past. It was about committing to productizing the video - standardizing the product, still going through a unique video production process each time but with a plan and intent.
Our general process for the pricing page creation
Every team will have their way. Ours starts with content.
And content is a lot about: offer design. So before we commit to making a page - we’ll usually do 2-3 customer interviews just to understand what offers may be appealing.
Customers said they were unsure what “add ons” were included, and if anything was outside of the base price.
We discovered that a segment of customers needed bulk/discount videos - which led to the creation of another sub-service
Content turns into wireframes. This is usually when the copywriter will surface a major re-write or new direction immerges (to the horror of the designer).
This is usually when we’ll re-write the content again. After seeing some layout or sturcutre, there’s often a new discussion about “what we are really trying to do”.
For this project, we knew the content or modules of the page would be something like this:
1. Customer objections
2. Clear overview of offers
3. FAQ and any other common questions
4. Breakdown of process if necessary
5. Social proof
You don’t need to overdo it.
Progress over perfect.
For us, going from Google doc to pricing page has moved the needle enormously. Just getting everything in front of customers will make the difference.
About wireframing and how we go about it…
Sometimes we’ll use a tool like Balsamiq to create the V1 of a page. In most cases it depends on how the team is feeling - we love to creatively approach our projects, which means that anyone can be the source of inspiration.
It could be the copywriter. The designer. Even the project manager who has the starting seed of an idea - and the rest of us will play with it, toss it around, and start to mold it into something new.
It’s a team effort. And we’re not technically web designers.
We educate ourselves a bit on direct response marketing.
We read books on how to design for the web. But, and this is a big but, these projects are a breath of fresh air for us away from the usual “video work” that we do.
That’s why a lot of our pages have GIFs, micro-interactions, and little elements of “fun” that we just felt like adding, for absolutely no reason other than “why not”.
A way to break up the sometimes monotone nature of marketing :-)
Tracking, optimizing your pricing page, sigh, CRO it must be done.
Historically we have been really bad with any marketing ops. That means analytics and reporting are not our forte.
Conversions rate optimization is not something we’re experts at.
We have gotten better, but not elite level yet.
For now, here’s our pricing page optimization stack.
1. Google Analytics to understand the traffic numbers
2. Heatmap to see where people are clicking (all though we don’t get enough traffic to activate the data yet)
3. Conversions tracking on the form (which at the time of writing may not be functioning correctly)
4. Video analytics software to see how long people are watching which videos
That being said - we are definitely not running split tests (our traffic is too low). So we are flying blind until we get more data, and until then we don’t know how to run meaningful tests.
Also, a huge barrier for us is traffic. Admittedly with larger numbers, this would be easier :-)
Our goal in the short term is to increase our traffic numbers. Given that our conversions are quite high (we think) just more qualified traffic would make the difference.
And at some point in the future, a more data-driven marketer could hoepfully take the tests we’re doing and leverage them into some serious insights.
Worth mentioning - pricing page testimonials and their importance.
Something that’s been a huge discussion for our internal marketing team is how to leverage customer testimonials?
From developing video testimonials (having people fly out and film clients)
Possibly just getting them to do webcam recordings
Logos, pictures, and nice “human” looking testimonial elements
Tying in client quotes with case studies (which is hard traditionally since most B2B marketers are not able to perfectly attribute performacne to assets)
The current next shift of our marketing is heading towards how we helped custom x achieve y or z outcome. We’d like to put the focus on our customers, what we have done for them, and not about our actual capabilities of services (boring).
Again: people want to buy. Who do they want to buy from? A company that does projects or achieves results that they are looking for.
So anything we can do to humanize our brand with our clients, their stories, and show how our products help bring them to market through story-telling - that’s our core value.
The testimonials discussion is ongoing on how to best approach that. We’ll create a more detailed post around testimonial design, acquisition and marketing ideas.
For now, it’s worth noting that most testimonials are not properly used. In the sense that
You can feel it’s a forced review
It doesn’t speak to an objection
It doesn’t promote the value proposition
The goal is to design pages and have testimonials which support the narrative you are creating. This is the harder ‘meta’ design of testimonials.
It implies that you know what your market wants to hear, and you know how to capture that answer from your clients. All things which are easier said than done. (or so we’ve learned).
Closing thoughts on pricing pages, strategies and notes.
Do it.
Put your prices out there, and see how people react.
You can always take down the page and go back to a sneaky “contact us” strategy.
However in 2022 with terms like “buyer-centric marketing” becoming the norm, it seems normal to not hide your prices. There are numerous prospects that can enable you to create intelligent budgets and estimates, so gating your prices behind a sales call ends up wasting their time - and your own.
It’s just not what buyers want in todays environment.
In a world of fast consumption - how does submitting a form to get gated content or pricing compare? You better have a VERY strong offer which is compelling to people.
Otherwise, maybe it’s better to reduce the friction. Make it easier for people to educate and inform about what you do.
Then let them know it’s within budget, so they don’t feel anxious about reaching out.
Remove that feeling of “is this for me?” by letting them vet an important criteria in any B2B buying process: what is the price?
Confront it. Own it. Turn it into an advantage instead of fear.
Oh, and BTW we recently launched our bulk video production service to scale your video strategy.
