Pricing: To Show Or Not To Show

I recently had a conversation with a client about pricing transparency, and this is a decision every single business has to make so I wanted to explore it a bit deeper in this post.

There are two basic options when it comes to pricing:

1. Openly sharing it on the website

2. Only disclosing pricing during sales calls

Showing Pricing On The Website

When businesses show their pricing on their website, it can be less of an obstacle in sales negotiations, and often removes any potential sticker shock when pricing is discussed during these calls.

While it’s only one component of bringing in qualified leads, transparent pricing can also contribute to improving the quality of all inbound leads. When a prospect has already seen a brand’s pricing, they may be more likely to have a serious purchasing conversation.

Although transparent pricing presents some strong benefits, it may only be effective when there is a large body of supporting content to justify the value of the prices shown. This is especially true for businesses who aren’t the cheapest option in their space.

In order for a buyer to follow through with a purchase, that buyer’s perceived value of the purchase has to at least be equal to the price they’re paying (in many cases perceived value has to be greater than purchase price). The only way to increase the perceived value of an offer is through demonstrating that offer’s:

• Features

• Benefits

• Advantages over alternatives

• Ease of use

• ROI

• Etc…

This can be difficult to do with just one landing page. As I’ve shared in other posts, buyer’s conduct a thorough amount of research, so having content across a website, organic social, review sites, YouTube, and more can help prospects move through their research process on their own terms. This can increase the perceived value of a product or service.

Given the advantages of transparent pricing, I recommend that all companies aspire to take this approach. The catch is that it can require some significant marketing investment.

Not Showing Pricing On The Website

Despite some of the benefits of sharing pricing on a website, taking the opposite approach isn’t necessarily a “bad” angle.

In fact, I’d argue that in some cases sharing pricing can do more harm than good.

As I called out above, it’s important to create a robust content library that helps to increase the perceived value of a product or service before openly sharing pricing. This is much easier said than done.

Planning, developing, and distributing all of this content can take months of work from a team of marketers. It’s not something that will happen by next week.

In these situations, it makes a lot of sense to present pricing options during a call after someone from the sales team has had an opportunity to share the true value of an offer in a longer conversation where a prospect’s attention will be focused in one area.

These conversations (and objections) can then fuel the development of some of that value focused content that can be leveraged in the long-term.

Wrapping Up

Every team has to decide whether or not they want to share the pricing of their product/service on their website.

At the end of the day, I’d argue that it's largely a function of whether or not they have the resources to develop the supporting content required to validate those prices by increasing the perceived value of their offer.

Have questions, considerations, or critiques? I’d love to hear them! If you’re reading this via email, just hit respond. Otherwise, you can find me on LinkedIn.