Increasing Sales With Placement

Another profit center hidden in plain sight

The world is becoming more digital, disconnected, and distracted. What a great opportunity to take advantage of the psychological benefits of strategic placement. See Placement and Proof [Cash Now Strategy] for a base knowledge about “placement” and how powerful it can be.

Here are two extensions of a placement strategy using The Letter¹ as an example.

SAME OFFER, DIFFERENT MEDIUM

When we first launched the Letter we discussed what else we could offer to increase the order value on the first enrollment. Since the Letter is sent in a binder, we figured a fancy leather binder would make a natural add-on.

The initial micro-step was to make a few social media posts and send an email to our warmest lists, something along the lines of:

“We’re also offering a killer leather binder, let us know if you want one” - with far more compelling copy. Guess how many people raise their hands for the binder?

Two.

Not enough to justify ordering the binders and having them engraved - so we didn’t. Instead, I dropped a shorter, less compelling version of the offer in the Welcome Letter. If enough people wanted it we would deal with making it a reality later. Here’s the page from the welcome package:

No fancy copy. No checkout link. Not a greased slide. Guess what happened?

Letter subscribers immediately started emailing in to get their
”Appropriately Pretentious” at a rate we couldn’t keep them in stock.

Less than 1% of people who saw the offer in the email responded to purchase a leather binder.

Over 25% of Letter subscribers email in and purchase one.

Of course, we would expect buyers to be more responsive to offers than non-buyers - the interesting part is that nearly everyone who purchased a binder from the insert above did not buy from the email(s). The same people who did not buy from compelling email purchased immediately from a direct mail piece.

That’s a version of strategic placement; changing the context in which they are making a buying decision. Same person, same offer, different contextual conditions.

It’s also a version of “Inception Marketing”; using the thing you’re selling to sell the thing. Building a YouTube channel about building a YouTube channel is inception. Running video ads to teach video ads…inception. Using a physical product to sell a physical product…inception.

One of the easiest ways to take advantage of “placement” is by putting the same thing in a different place or on a different medium.

SAME PRODUCT, DIFFERENT DELIVERY

Ben Settle does this better than anyone I’ve seen. He sells his books for over $100, sometimes for over $1,000. For a book! And the right people are happy to pay it.

In this month’s Letter, I broke down the plan for the final R3 book and workbooks. R3 will be between $147 and $247 to get a copy - and there will be no digital version available.

Here’s a text I got shortly after the Letter was sent out:

Sat morning thoughts - price vs value - reading the letter last night and this morning - the R3 - I realize that if you had that booklet in a book store (Barnes and Noble, Amazon etc) and priced it at $24.99 - a lot of people would say that is expensive and pass on the amazing value there, yet in The Letter stating the price is expensive at $147-247 - I would say - wow - so much value - I would pay twice that !

Nailed it.

A $247 book on Amazon seems absurd. People would likely be offended by it.

A $247 book delivered strategically is “wow - so much value - I would pay twice that!”

There is a time and a place for everything, but it’s always worth thinking about placement because it doesn’t require building something new - just putting the existing thing somewhere different.

MBD Paid subs can get the R3 Draft here.

Letter subscribers will get the final draft for free if they are subscribed to the Letter when it’s ready. Thereafter, it will be around $247 for the full package and $147 for Letter subscribers who weren’t subscribed when it was sent out the first time.

Want help with placement? Drop a comment below and we’ll do our best to give you some ideas.

Live to learn. Give to earn.

Nic
Man Bites Dog

1. The Letter