Marketing Experts Reveal Top Strategies To

[00:00:51]
Arlen:
Welcome to the e-Commerce Marketing Podcast everyone. My name is Arlen Robinson, and I’m your host. And today we have a very special guest, Bryan Trilli who has bought or started 6 different businesses in 5 different industries in 4 different states from a brick-and-mortar service business to the #1 online company for computer vision training in the world. After running a successful lead-gen agency, Optimized Marketing, Bryan decided that if his team truly is great at marketing, they should cut out the middle-man and buy and build companies we control. That adventure led him down an unexpected path about the crucial importance of pricing strategy that we’ll be discussing today. Welcome to the BRO Podcast.

[00:01:36]
Bryan:
Thank you very much. Glad to be here. Yeah, I’m excited to talk to you and you know, of course today we’re gonna be talking about pricing and how it is very significant for really any e-commerce business, getting that right pricing because it, it can really definitely make a world of difference.

[00:01:55]
And so I’m really excited to talk to you about that and, and see, you know, how you can give us some actionable strategies on, um, Picking that right pricing. But before we do get into all of that, if you don’t mind sharing us a little bit more about your background and specifically how you got into what you’re doing today.

[00:02:11]
Bryan:
Sure. So gotta hit a lot of it right there. I owned a couple of brick and mortar businesses out in New Mexico, Colorado in 2008 and sold out of those in 2010 and realized that one of the weaknesses in that particular, Industry and business was digital marketing. So I started doing that for myself. Once I saw those businesses, started building up an agency around that and so ran that.

[00:02:36]
I still ran that business. So optimized marketing since 2011 and realized that I love my customers. I love what we do with that. It’s, it’s a really rewarding business. We, with small businesses and grown there businesses and seen how that improves their lives, however, We generate leads. Yeah. So somebody else has to follow up with those leads.

[00:02:53]
Somebody else has to run the appointments, somebody else has to go and close those deals. And so I just thought like, man, if we’re, we’re as good as we believe we are with our marketing. We need to just acquire businesses, have businesses in our portfolio that we can follow the entire sales funnel. Mm-hmm.

[00:03:12]
So we get the traffic, we convert the traffic, we split test the landing pages, we follow up with them, we do the email marketing, we close the deal. And so that led me down to time search. And that is an e-learning company that we run. And that’s where I learned a lot of pricing lessons. Not, not all the ones we’ll talk about today, but a lot about the importance of getting the right pricing.

[00:03:35]
Arlen:
Okay. Awesome, awesome. Well, sounds good. Yeah, definitely. It sounds like you’ve kind of have a, a plethora of experiences that have kind of shaped you to where you are today and dealing with all of these different types of companies and kind of, you know, a lot of lessons learned, seeing what works and seeing what doesn’t work.

[00:03:50]
You know, that’s, that’s really what it comes down to. Just, you know, trial and error. I think that’s with anything in life for sure. But yeah, so basically, you know, where I wanna start off with is, you know, if, if you can just kind of explain why do you really believe pricing is the most crucial aspect of an e-commerce business?

[00:04:05]
And, you know, how does that really directly impact the company’s success overall? 

[00:04:11]
Bryan:
Yeah, so probably, cuz I got it wrong a lot, right? So a few examples, we’ll go back to my brick and mortar business and which is getting warranty e-commerce these days. But, but then it really wasn’t. It was, it was uncomfortable when you had payroll to make and you didn’t have the cash to make the payroll.

[00:04:32]
Right. And so one of the things that I’ve learned and what I’ve looked at as I’ve looked at different industries and businesses and so on, is sure you have some recurring revenue built in. And the same thing is true in the eCommerce world. So for instance, when we were looking at payment search, they had three different pricing structures.

[00:04:48]
One was a one-time payment, one was a annual subscription, one was a monthly subscription. And so all of those have different pluses and minuses. So the one-time payment gives you cash right now and, and more of it, but in the long term, you’re actually giving up cash versus a subscription model. Mm-hmm.

[00:05:06]
Right? And then you also say, okay, If I get ’em on an annual versus monthly, which one gives us a longer lifetime value for the customer? So pricing isn’t just about, Hey, what did I get today? Even if I’m selling a product, if it’s consumable or anybody’s ever gonna come back and buy this again. I need to understand the lifetime value of that because if I understand lifetime value, I can now look at subscription models.

[00:05:26]
And so we did systematically, as we said. Okay. Let’s, we got rid of the one-time option cuz we were selling an ongoing service. We were providing ongoing training and Ben said, okay, well what about the annual versus monthly? What happens there? Well, we found out that the annual was worth about three times a lifetime value.

[00:05:42]
We were just looking at data in stripe and so on. Mm-hmm. Hmm. Then split tested to say, okay, if we show people both options monthly and annual, what happens? Will we get a whole lot less people subscribing? And we didn’t. There was no statistically significant difference. If you gave people both options, certain number of people would go to monthly.

[00:06:00]
If you gave ’em just the annual option then, which was about 10 times higher price up upfront. Mm-hmm. You got less people overall. But it wasn’t a statistically significant draw and therefore our lifetime values was higher. Okay. Interesting. So we started saying, now why is pricing important? Like right there, I just went through a few different examples of where if you don’t dial that in, you’re giving up so much in the value of that customer.

[00:06:26]
Arlen:
Yeah. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. And I think you’re, you’re right on point. And that I, I, I’m starting to see that trend across a lot of actually, Service-based businesses as far as the online versus monthly, you know, I’ll give you a couple quick examples. You know, my business oversight software, we integrate with a variety of different e-commerce platforms like Shopify and Wix.

[00:06:47]
And so we’re, we’re always in and out of their platforms, testing our integrations, working with customers to set things up. So I’m always, I always kind of get to see their holes. Behind the scenes things. And so one of the things I have noticed with actually both those platforms, wicks and, and Shopify, is they’re, they’re, they’re pushing people to the month, the annual option actually with Shopify, they just did a price increase, but what they’ve said is that you can keep the same monthly pricing on our, on your plan.

[00:07:18]
If you commit to the annual pricing structure, so you know, of course they’re saying, you know, you can get a discount for that annual and wics, they do something a little bit different with their platform. When you go to sign up for one of their premium accounts or premium stores, they, they’re, they basically default the pricing to the annual price, cuz that’s gonna show you the cheaper option.

[00:07:40]
Well, actually it kind of the same thing. They, they show you the cheaper price with it going annually. So you get a discount if you pay annually and you kind of see that prominently and it’s, it’s selected by default. So they’re, they’re, they’re pushing people that way. 

[00:07:53]
Bryan:
Yeah, there’s, there’s probably another reason for that.

[00:07:55]
So I want business acquire, right? So a investor in looking at how the value business is. I used to be a business broker, actually, it’s one of the businesses I own for a while, okay? And so when you look at how you value a business, recurring revenue dramatically increases your business. But not all recurring revenue is the same.

[00:08:10]
Yeah. Right. If I’m selling like supplements and people just come back sort of on their own. Mm-hmm. To buy more when they need ’em. There’s a recurring component to it, but it’s not very strong. Right. Your strongest as far as when somebody comes into the value business to buy it is a contractual agreement for a certain amount of time, and the longer the time the better.

[00:08:29]
So I have a contract for a month, it’s recurring, but you know, I’m not really locked in like 65 and say for instance with Amazon. But if they push you to that annual, Even though they’re giving up a bit of revenue, they actually might increase the multiplier if somebody ever looks to go buy the business.

[00:08:45]
Yeah. So giving up that instant money to increase the value of the business, that also helps the Shopify’s trying to raise funds and they could show their burn rate and their cash flow and all that stuff. Yeah. Because they got people locked in and the way the accounting works, you know, makes that. Kinda interesting cuz they didn’t receive the funds yet and, and whatever, but mm-hmm Certainly a lot of companies are pretty, are looking to raise money, are trying to push to that because it values them differently.

[00:09:09]
Well, I see small business, you should think the same. Right. Think eventually I’m, I’m building an asset here’re somebody who’s gonna wanna buy this. I need to make it valuable. Yeah. And keeping those things in mind beyond just US lifetime value is higher. That wasn’t a guarantee, though. It’s possible that the monthly could have been a higher lifetime value.

[00:09:26]
Right. So you can’t just peak that and say, okay, let me just automatically get rid of that. Right. Right. Or we could have lost a statistically significant number of subscribers. That’s true. So we could’ve lost revenue. Right. Right. So all those things need to be part of the strategy to figure out, okay.

[00:09:41]
What makes sense for your business. 

[00:09:43]
Arlen:
Yeah, yeah. Very true. Yeah, it’s gonna be individual for your business. Cuz like you said, there could be a case where you know your specific type of customers. You know, they’re only gonna be amenable to the monthly pricing where, you know, historically they may just, not any op annual option, they’re gonna, you know, they, they, they’re gonna just kind of pull away from.

[00:10:03]
And so yeah, you, you have to be careful. So, yeah, it’s, it’s not just a, a flip of the switch type thing and say, yeah, I’m gonna turn off the monthly, come with annual and you’re gonna immediately increase our revenues, our lot customer lifetime value and earnings and, you know, we, we, we’ll be good to go. It does, this is not that quite, quite that easy.

[00:10:20]
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, so yeah, interesting. You, you had mentioned Amazon and so you know, of course Amazon, Walmart, they’re the biggest players, the e-commerce product space or some of the biggest players in the space where people go to these marketplaces. And so like how does like a everyday e-commerce business balance their own, their own competitive pricing with profitability when you’re dealing with those major players that are able to, you know, Do a lot of things, you know, with Amazon, of course it’s a marketplace, but Walmart is a platform.

[00:10:51]
You’ve got these third party sellers selling through it, but you know, they offer their own brands as well. Their, which are Yeah. Heavily discounted, you know, because they, they, they can command, you know, from suppliers at such, you know, low, low cost of goods. So, you know, how, how do you compete? In that case, it’s worse than that.

[00:11:10]
Bryan:
Like Amazon West. The research I saw is the number one trusted brand in America. Oh wow. Okay. So it’s not only are they cheaper, fast, they’re more convenient, they’re also trusted. Okay. So, you know, I tell people all the time, you know, from a marketing perspective or even just building up my own business, it’s like you can’t out Amazon.

[00:11:29]
Amazon. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And it’s interesting cuz you mentioned Dollar Shave Club and like Dollar Shave Club was in, came to that sort of subscription model for that recurring product, right? Mm-hmm. Consumables business. And then Amazon copied them. Mm-hmm. And subscribe and save. Mm-hmm. And so Amazon, even if they’re late to the game, is still gonna be way ahead of any of us.

[00:11:49]
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Right. And so how can you not compete with Amazon? I can give you a a few examples. One of the customers we’ve worked with for years in Texas, it’s actually a brick and mortar business, but that entire industry’s in the water treatment industry. Mm-hmm. Is going more and more e-commerce.

[00:12:03]
And so right now you can go on Amazon, you can look up a water softener, you can order that water softener, depending on where you are in the country or any major city, you can get it installed by professional schedule that’s got 4.6 stars and whatever, right. On the website. Right? Mm-hmm. So how does a local brick and mortar that specializes in that, Pete, when it’s just so easy and convenient.

[00:12:25]
Yeah, your pricing has to separate you from that. If you’re going online and I’m just trying to sell a water softener, and they can go look it up the same way, the same price and whatever, you can’t. So what this business owner did is they said, okay, let’s package it into a subscription model. There’s different terms for that.

[00:12:43]
Sometimes they call ’em rentals or whatever, but it’s a subscription model where they say, okay, you’ll get the water softener, you’ll get the salt, you’ll get the parts, you’ll get the labor. You just gave us one monthly fee and you have great water. Mm-hmm. And that’s it. And so even though they’re competing with Amazon in a way, cuz you can go buy these products directly online, right.

[00:13:02]
They figured out a way to repackage it so that even if I went and looked and said, oh, it’s $600 on Amazon, what’s your price? Oh, it’s $45 a month. Well, I can’t even compare ’em. Because their pricing structure is set up in such a way that makes that different. 

[00:13:16]
Arlen:
Yeah. Yeah. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. It definitely does.

[00:13:19]
And yeah, that’s the type of thing I I, I totally agree that you have to do as a business, because the bottom line is, like you said, Amazon being the most trusted brand, you know, by consumers, you know, their next day shipping, their same day shipping. All of these things that just make it super convenient for the, for the customer.

[00:13:38]
How do you come up against that and yeah, you, you do have to just really, at the end of the day, look at your value proposition. What, what can you bear to put into this pie or create a course that you’re giving away to the customer and not, you know, lose your shirt and not, you know, still make a profit at the end of the day.

[00:13:58]
Bryan:
I, I can give you another example from, so, um, In the info market business. So you’re selling e-learning, you’re selling courses, right? Yeah. The big guys. Your uds. Your coursera’s, you’re selling ’em for 10, 15, 20 bucks. Mm-hmm. How heck are you gonna compete with that? Yeah, true. So if Pioneer search number one, online training for computer vision.

[00:14:17]
So if you wanna be a programmer that’s doing the stuff like Tesla’s doing, in pretty much every other big company on the train we have is top notch. But still, you still gotta compete with them to some degree. Mm-hmm. So what we did is we said, okay, well all of those courses are static. But this industry is changing rapidly and so every week we release new content.

[00:14:37]
Every month we add new courses. So part of our subscription is if you want to be a deep learning or computer vision practitioner and not like, Hey, I just wanna learn this once, but I want, I’m gonna be here in this space. Yeah, nowhere else in the world are you gonna get that consistent, ongoing information.

[00:14:52]
Beyond that, we also provide production ready code. So what does that mean? So we actually write code that you can copy and paste and solve your program. So if you’re trying to do OCR r or you’re trying to, you know, take a text from a license plate, I mean, there’s, there’s hundreds of different things on there mm-hmm.

[00:15:08]
That you can use right away. And so being able to strategically step back at your business and saying, okay, what can they do really well? What can’t they do? And how do we build a model that puts the pricing in a much different perspective so that they can’t even compare it? Right. Yeah. And so we can talk about other examples all day long, but the idea is to be creative, just to understand that you’re not gonna beat Amazon, right.

[00:15:31]
But you have to put something different, even if that’s your personality, even if that’s the, mm-hmm. To some degree, you know, anti-corporate. We’re just small. You know, Etsy is a great example. I mean, that’s what Etsy is, right? Yeah. It’s, I’m connecting with this individual, this working mom or, or whatever that’s doing things.

[00:15:48]
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Uh, you know, Pinterest has a whole group of that Instagram. My wife follows all kinds of people that things show up in my dorm. I’m like, where the heck this thing come from? You’re right. Right. So that works. I mean, that does influence people a lot in making those decisions. 

[00:16:00]
Arlen:
Yeah. That that is true.

[00:16:02]
And I, you, you have to take advantage of that cuz Yeah, right now, I, I mean there is a, a kind of a, uh, a air that some people do have that’s, you know, it’s, it’s always been kind of brewing, which is against these huge corporate behemoths. I mean monopolies, if you will, almost when you, when you, when you do think about it, as much as these giants like Amazon and Walmart control.

[00:16:24]
So there, there’s a fair amount of people that are like, yeah, you know, It’s, it’s not good. You know, we wanna support local, we wanna support the smaller businesses and cause, you know, these are people that are day-to-day people that are, you know, just trying to make a living. And so, you know, more and more people are starting to, to realize that and you can, you know, take advantage of that, that sentiment that most people have or a lot of people have rather well, and you need to, to build that up a bit, right?

[00:16:47]
Bryan:
Yeah. So that means you have to have a personality. That means when they get a product from you, if it’s a physical product, there’s gotta be a little note. It’s handwritten, you know, that’s even better, like mm-hmm. These little things that show it’s not corporate America, machine driven robots filling up the boxes, you know?

[00:17:05]
Right. Exactly. So thing like, if you’re going to lean into that mm-hmm. Uh, need to do so. Right. And you need to, to show that part of your personality. Yeah, yeah. For sure. 

[00:17:13]
Arlen:
For sure. Now, you know, when we’re talking about pricing, there’s a kind of, you know, a lot that goes into it when you’re thinking about pricing and then, you know what?

[00:17:22]
Pricing to actually come up with for your products or services? What, what role do you think psychology actually plays in, you know, shaping the consumer’s behavior and just, you know, driving sales at the, at the end of the day? 

[00:17:35]
Bryan:
Yeah, that’s a great question. So there’s kind of a few different levels of pricing.

[00:17:39]
So one, the price itself, two, the bundling and the packaging of it. And three, the understanding of how does the consumer buy your product and how important it’s to them. So we’ll kind of touch on each of them. The pricing itself is basically, should I be charging $80 or should I be charging $79 or should I be charging $99?

[00:17:57]
Mm-hmm. And that one is really tricky. So I did mention that doorways, the split test, and we’ve done that to some degree, but most of that split testing. We’ve done it both ways. One was what’s product, so sort of the monthly, the annual or the lifetime. But you can also test it from, Hey, what is that price?

[00:18:15]
Mm-hmm. Is it $200, is it 205 and whatever. And obviously Amazon does that constantly. Yeah. I literally bought something the other day, was out, put on my shopping cart, come home. It’s $10 more expensive. Like, so they’re, they’re brilliant at that. Mm-hmm. But the downside of that is you have to be careful because it can annoy people that might be following you and are familiar with your brand.

[00:18:37]
Right. If they’ve gotten different price points and and so on. And so you can scare people off or confuse them. Mm-hmm. Is the price different? Cause this is a completely different product or, or whatever. Yeah. So another way to look at it is I’ve a ton of books on pricing strategy. One of the ones that stood out to me, It’s called the Price Whisper.

[00:18:53]
Mm-hmm. Guy named Ha, I’m gonna mess up his last name cuz it’s Scandinavian Sos. So Fors, I’m not sure how to say it, but if you just Google the Price Whisperer, you’ll find his book and you know, to get pricing, you can do competitive analysis, you can do cost plus. There’s a handful of ways, but he does points out that really none of those are that effective.

[00:19:13]
Okay. But he looks at it as called willing to pay. And so it’s somewhere between, if I said to you, Arlen, Hey, I have this product, and what price is so low that you’re gonna be like, I’m not buying that, cuz that’s gotta be low. It’s just junk. Like there’s a price for everything. It’s so low, you’re not even to consider it.

[00:19:31]
Mm-hmm. The other side is, okay, what’s the price that’s so high that no matter what the benefit is, You know, you’re stepping away from it. It’s just not for you. Yeah. And when you look at a supply curve, and we’ve all seen ’em in, you know, basic economic classes, you know, as your price goes up, your, your demand goes down.

[00:19:46]
Right. That’s not actually how it works in the real world. It’s like stepped. You know this price and you plateau and then you drop down and so on. Yeah. And when you understand that, now you realize, can I double my price, triple my price, cut it by 10%, and there’s different points for for volume. So what’s the action that I would read this book and kind of get an idea of how that works.

[00:20:05]
Mm-hmm. Because it’s a really interesting strategy and it’s unique. I’ve never gotten acrossed anything else like that. Okay. The other part is the bundling. I think we kind of already talked about that both with. If I’m in search with the water company. Mm-hmm. So that’s just not doing it the same way as everybody else.

[00:20:19]
Yep. They’re ones the, the timing importance. So what does that mean if I’m selling coffee right. There isn’t like a seasonality into coffee. When I’m outta coffee, I’m gonna buy more coffee. Right, right, right. And but when you’re selling something like an info product or if you’re selling something like kids’ toys or, or books or things like that, there is different, right?

[00:20:41]
Like kids’ toys sell more in Christmas. Yep. Right. An info product. Most of the time that’s not what we call bleeding neck product. Mm-hmm. Like most of us aren’t saying like, man, I’m. I just need to buy this training or this course or this thing, or I’m going bankrupt or whatever. Like it’s just not that important.

[00:20:59]
Mm-hmm. Okay. So what does that mean? Well, that means you have to institute, Robert Chaldini, his, his book Persuasion talks about all of this stuff, scarcity, urgency, social proof, all of these social triggers to help people make that decision. The two most powerful. Jeff Walker, I think has 12 or 13 in his product launch formula, but the two most popular are just scarcity and urgency fair.

[00:21:19]
So if I have a product and I realize that this is not a bleeding neck product, I have to accept the fact that I’m gonna have to run H based possibly with scarcity A, a limited quantity sales on a regular basis. Otherwise, people never. You know, get up and make that purchase. Yeah. Yeah. It’s not that important.

[00:21:38]
So those are the three things I’d really consider. What’s the price? And you know, the price whisperers research on that. How do I bundle it to make it unique? Mm-hmm. And it includes the recurring revenue component to it, and then the third, which way do they buy? So that I understand if I can just every day, like a SaaS or a business SaaS.

[00:21:55]
I mean, people are signed up for a CR R M every day. There isn’t like, you know, a need to run all these promotions. Yeah. Unfortunately not all businesses are that way. And you gotta know where you fall. 

[00:22:03]
Arlen:
Yeah. Yeah, very, very true. Yeah, I, I think oftentimes a lot of businesses kind of get caught up in kind of that first part of it, which, which you mentioned was the, the actual price, whether it’s 97 versus 99 versus hundred dollars.

[00:22:17]
It is important, it’s the aspect of it, but like you said, there’s, there’s still a lot more in there to consider. Because yeah, there, there, of course there is a psychology behind, you know, just those numbers alone, you know, like the 90 sevens or the 99, 95. I mean, if you just go to your grocery store, you, you can kind of see the major brands, you know, doing this and Sure.

[00:22:37]
You know, they’re go, you know, they, they try different variations of it. You’ll off often see, you know, I was actually just a grocery store the other day, and so you’ll see. A lot of times what these big brands will do is, you know, they’ll have a, a higher quantity of the product that they sell for, you know, Slightly discount, slightly more discounted as opposed to if you were to buy two of the smaller quantities.

[00:23:03]
So it’s like, yeah. So that, that’s a bulk, the bulk amount. Yeah. So you’re gonna get slightly discounted amount, you’re paying more. So, you know, they, they’re going with that whole concept of what we talked about earlier, where you’re, you know, like the annual versus the monthly, they’re, they’re opting for people to get that bulk amount, paying that little bit extra where on their end.

[00:23:24]
You know, they’ve done the math, they’re looking at their, their cost of goods. And even if they discount it a little bit, it’s not affecting them and it’s still gonna increase their profit.

[00:23:32]
Bryan:
Well, yeah, they’re looking at average ticket sale, right? Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, my, my wife took, goes to Sam’s Club and she says she’s saving us money, but we just get these giant, whatever it is, there’s a ketchup or.

[00:23:45]
Not just somehow she’s saving money, she’s gotta figured out. But I’m, I dunno that I’m following. 

[00:23:52]
Arlen:
I hear you, I hear, I used to be a member of, of those shopping clubs and uh, yeah, I mean, over, over the long run, if you look at, you know, what you’re spending, let’s say if you were to go weekly versus like every three weeks Yeah.

[00:24:03]
You, you definitely save going bulk. Disadvantages and disadvantages to that. For number one, you gotta have the, the room to store the stuff and not clutter your place. Sec. Secondly, then you, you know, you gotta worry about spoilage, things like that. Right. Products getting old. So it’s, you know, it’s a, at the end of the day that, yeah, buying bulk, 

[00:24:23]
Bryan:
you can definitely say, well, and that’s a really good thing to think about for, you know, an e-commerce business.

[00:24:26]
If you’re selling a product that’s consumable, it’s not like a one-time purchase. Right. You know, understanding. Can I offer two or three of these? Get the sale. Save on shipping. Mm-hmm. Right. Because now I’m only shipping it once instead of three times. Yeah. And, and offer that to somebody where it makes sense for them to get three at a time as well.

[00:24:44]
Yeah. Even if it’s something like a, you know, children’s toys or books. Can I incentivize ’em to buy two or three cuz they’ve got two or three nieces or nephews or, or whatever. And now they got their shopping done and like that could even be part of your copy. Yeah. Like, Buy three, have your shopping done for all of your nieces, all of your nephews at once, right?

[00:25:00]
Mm-hmm. So keeping these sort of creative ideas in mind when you’re setting up that pricing can actually really help your margins out. Mm-hmm. Cause we’re reducing that cost plus the acquisition cost to get ’em in the door. Yeah. If I can offset that by doubling the sale, you know, increasing that average ticket price.

[00:25:16]
I mean, that’s huge. Yes. Now I can spend more on marketing to get people in the door, cuz now I’ve, you know, increased what I’m able to get in the back end right away. 

[00:25:22]
Arlen:
Yeah, yeah, definitely. Definitely. Yeah. But creativity is definitely a key component to it. You gotta be creative. You also have to look at your competitors.

[00:25:28]
What are they doing? What are their price points? And so, uh, yeah, it’s a kind of a, a mix of a lot of things to, to try to get it right. 

[00:25:35]
Bryan:
Just  don’t, don’t just copy your competitors though. 

[00:25:37]
Arlen:
Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Cause yeah, they do it. 

[00:25:41]
Bryan:
There’s no one marketing all the time. You probably experienced this in your agency days where people are like, Hey, I like that, how a company did that.

[00:25:46]
And it’s like, yeah, but they didn’t split test that. They didn’t like they’re totally guessing. You don’t know that any of that is successful. Exactly. So you gotta, yeah. Sleep with one eye open when you’re looking at those competitors like, yeah. Look at ’em, but just be aware. They might not really know what they’re doing.

[00:25:59]
Arlen:
Yeah. That that is very true. You just never know. You can’t, or they just have a different cost structure.

[00:26:03]
Bryan: Right. Amazon or Walmart, like mm-hmm. They just, they’re different. You can’t really replicate what they’re doing. Right. You can’t, yeah. 

[00:26:11]
Arlen:
You can see what’s going on on the front end, but behind the scenes, yeah.

[00:26:13]
You don’t know. You really don’t know. You’re kind of guessing, so yeah, you do gotta be careful about just cloning the competitors and their pricing, what they’re doing. 

[00:26:22]
Bryan:
Absolutely. 

[00:26:23]
Arlen:
Yeah. Well, Bryan, as getting ready to wrap things up, I wanted to see if you could possibly share some examples of some e-commerce brands that you’re familiar with or that you’ve worked with that have set optimal pricing and achieved success because of this.

[00:26:34]
And are there some unique things that they did to, to do this? 

[00:26:38]
Bryan:
You know, one thought just came to me as we were chatting through slightly off, but the c e O of Porsche said at one point, like, how many Porsches can the world handle? Right. And this point is that when you’re a luxury good, so I’m sure there’s people you know that are listening to eCommerce in the luxury world.

[00:26:54]
Yeah. Not everybody can have one and it still have its prestige. And his answer tongue in cheek was, yeah, was Well the second one in your neighborhood. Mm. You know, you don’t, you wanna be the one guy with the Porsche. Right. You can’t have the second one, so. Gotcha. You know, when you’re talking about brands that understand pricing strategy, you know, whether that’s an e-commerce or whatever, Porsche actually reduces its production.

[00:27:18]
Hmm. It only produces a certain amount when demand drops. Okay. Right. And so because of that, if you look at resale for Porsches and stuff, they’re all very good. Okay. So, We look at like what is an online branded, you know, we’ve mentioned obviously Amazon, we mentioned Dollar Shave Club. You know, you can look at some of the other ones like Yeah, I think is interesting cuz it’s built several of the components.

[00:27:39]
One, even though it’s a big brand, it does still have that personal component to it. It does have a recurring subscription component to it. Mm-hmm. Right. And it still doesn’t feel like to their customer base, like, I’m supporting the man. You know, if you wanna say the big corporate America thing. Yeah. So, Understanding where you blend in with all of those.

[00:27:59]
And I do really like, so for me personally, if I’m looking to buy or start a business and it doesn’t have a significant way for recurring revenue, then. I’m probably not gonna consider it. Okay. Wow. Call on the back end. I’m gonna get more value outta it. I know how much it hurts to be struggling to make payroll.

[00:28:15]
Yeah. With the current revenue, businesses can plan that out, you know, and be a little more prepared for that. Mm-hmm. Uh, so I’d look at that one. Another creative business. I’m not a customer, but I came across that, I think it was in a book years ago that did something like, I think they sold concealed carry products like holsters, things like that.

[00:28:31]
But they somehow spun that into offering liability insurance for people that carry, and I would bet, I mean, it’s probably a decade that came across that business. That’s probably a bigger part of their revenue stream now. Mm-hmm. The insurance side of it, the recurring revenue from that, then I would bet the products they were selling.

[00:28:48]
Yeah. And so that’s sort of creative, like, okay, where does the market really have an opportunity here for my products? Man, there’s so many ways that you can cut that, you know, being open to, to looking at those things maybe slightly outside of, particularly if you can offer something that’s high perceived value, but low cost to you.

[00:29:06]
Yeah. Yeah. So are the things like, Hey, I’m including. This boy, but I’m also gonna give you the seven different ways you can teach STEM with it. Mm-hmm. Right. For your, your child. And so it’s, okay. Well that’s interesting. Go buy a similar toy on Amazon. Mm-hmm. But this one’s gonna actually come with this pamphlet or book that shows us how to, you know, teach STEM lessons.

[00:29:27]
Right. Right. And so being aware of what’s that extra value add that I do that work once. And it could be the diet or what other supplements go with this one or, or in, you know, our payment search like about with we’re just giving you new content every single week. Stay in front of you, stay up date, and all the developments, you know, being aware of.

[00:29:45]
What’s that value you can add, but particularly if it’s low cost to you, but high perceived value to the person in rank.

[00:29:51]
Arlen:
Yeah. Yeah. I like that. High perceived value, but low cost. Yeah. I, I see a lot of brands doing that offering. You know, something that’s gonna take you one time, whether it’s a PDF or e-book where.

[00:30:03]
You know, it’s gonna be a good value to your, to the end customer. People obviously have a, you know, a good perception of it, but then at the, on your end yeah, you, you produce it one time and you can sell it, you know, on and on. 

[00:30:14]
Bryan:
So, yeah, I, I see a lot from more sophisticated brands, not enough from smaller brands.

[00:30:20]
Right. Right. So that’s why I wanna put that out there, that know, even when you’re getting started off having that, how you get this extra connection, and, I mean, that could be so many things. It could be a live webinar. It could you jump on our thing here and ask me any questions as the creator of X, Y, or Z.

[00:30:34]
You know, there’s, there’s so many ways to tie into that, right? Join our faithful group. Yeah. Where you can ask questions and get feedback from other, you know, if you’re marketing to moms, other moms that are doing these things or Yeah. Or whatnot. I mean, there’s, those things are all essentially free. Yeah.

[00:30:47]
They really are. But, but I’m not gonna get that from Amazon. I’m not gonna get that from Walmart. I’m not gonna get that from major brand. Right. Mm-hmm. 

[00:30:54]
Arlen:
Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So as a smaller business, definitely gotta focus on doing those things if you can. You can really set yourself apart for sure. Well, well Bryan, it’s been awesome talking to you.

[00:31:04]
I definitely have learned a lot in this whole pricing concept, cuz it can be confusing. But I think you, Dave gave some great action little tips for our use or our listeners. And our viewers to, to be able to kind of dig into and then go back and, you know, retool some things and get back out there. 

[00:31:20]
So yeah, absolutely. good stuff. Good stuff. But yeah, I always like to close things out and switch gears so our audience can get to know you a little bit better. So if you don’t mind sharing one closing fun fact about yourself that you think we’d be interested to know. 

[00:31:31]
Bryan:
I don’t how interesting I am. However, when I sold my businesses in New Mexico, Colorado, mm-hmm.

[00:31:37]
This in my late twenties, I had nothing to do, so I just jumped on my motorcycle, had a sport bike and the road across 10 states over 17 days, 5,576 miles hit. Wow. About two dozen state national parks all. Okay. You know, all up the west coast. Okay. And that was, that was an amazing journey. I could talk about all the things that happened along Right.

[00:31:58]
But yeah, big fan of national parks and I don’t really ride motorcycles on the street anymore cuz I have kids. I just ride on the track. I understand. Fun fact about me. 

[00:32:06]
Arlen:
Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, I’m sure you quite, you saw quite a lot. Yeah. That’s, that’s a lot of miles to cover on a motorcycle. So Yeah. I’m sure you had some experiences.

[00:32:15]
Bryan:
I do remember being cold and kind of wet one day in Oregon and thinking, right eight hours a day on a bike is still better than at the office. 

[00:32:23]
Arlen:
That is true. That is true. The office at a desk in front of a computer. Yeah, you, you’re all right. A little wet and cold. Yeah, I would take, it’s worth it. 

[00:32:31]
Yeah. Yeah. I, I can imagine for sure. Well, thank you for sharing that, Bryan. I really appreciate that. Lastly, before we do let you go, if you don’t mind sharing the best way for our listeners and viewers to, to contact you if they wanna reach out to you and pick your brain anymore about pricing or anything under the digital marketing.

[00:32:46]
Bryan:
Sure. Yeah. I mean, I, I’m an investor. I’m always looking at acquire partner, you know, if people are looking to either sell or, you know, partner up and scale their business, you can reach me on LinkedIn. Just my name Bryan, v r y a n. Truly T R I L I, or you can email me directly, Bryan Yourway, again, optimized marketing.com.

[00:33:05]
Arlen:
Okay. Awesome. Well, thank you for sharing. I definitely recommend the people to reach out to you and connect with you offline, and we appreciate you, Bryan, for coming on to the E-Commerce Marketing podcast.

[00:33:12]
Bryan:
Appreciate it as well. Thank you for listening to the e-Commerce Marketing Podcast.

Podcast Guest Info

Bryan Trilli
Founder of Optimized Marketing