Marketing Trap #48: Discounting for Its Own Sake

From 99 Marketing Traps and How to Avoid Them: A Survival Guide for Marketing Pros and Those Who Hire Them*


Discounting is the last resort of marketers who don’t know their buyers well enough.

But don’t discounts result in more sales? Of course they do. But the cost of using those discounts is more than simply what you are giving up in margins.

Discounts are addictive; once you start discounting, it’s extremely difficult (for some marketers, impossible) to stop.

Discounts can fool you into thinking you’re doing real marketing, when what you’re really doing is surrendering to the notion that what you have to offer is worth less than you wanted to believe. How do you know that the marketplace believes the same thing?

When you discount automatically, you don’t give the marketplace the opportunity to determine your value.

Even worse, discounts inevitably reduce the perceived value of your offering – and your brand. How can your offering actually be worth more when you’re asking for less? Buyers aren’t stupid … certainly not as stupid as marketers who believe the path to prosperity is paved with discounts.


How To Help A Brand That May Have Fallen Into This Trap:

Except for genuine commodities, your price is simply the default consideration when there is nothing else of importance to differentiate your offering from anyone else’s.

When your offering provides superior convenience to anything your competitors can offer, the importance of price goes down. The same is true when your offering provides the buyer with more control, or when your brand’s communication with the buyer is superior to the communication provided by your competitors.

Your buyers want more from your brand, and that more is more important than simply paying less. Stop selling your brand short. Learn what buyers really want, and what’s worth paying more to get.

Listen to them.


*Available now from Amazon.