It’s The Sizzle, Stupid!

Setting price for your items is often a concern. Are you charging too much or are you giving the items away? If they price is too high will they even sell? Will people pay me what my work, or the item, is worth? How can I ask that much in an economy like this?

There is an old adage among marketers that says, "Sell the sizzle, not the steak!" and it is something worth understanding and remembering. It is a simple thing that lies at the foundation of all selling and marketing.

To better understand the concept let's consider a full page add placed many years ago in a nationally distributed news magazine by Pierre Berton, a prolific and successful Canadian writer, offering what he called beautiful "Golden Crown" lawn plants that were guaranteed to provide lush golden cover for any lawn in sun or shade.

The ad extolled the wonderful golden blooms and rigorous growth in almost any climate. There were even pictures of the beautiful "Golden Crown" flowers that would make you the talk of your neighborhood. Taraxacum officinal, the marketing exercise continued, a genus the family Asteraceae, was available through this special offer... and then the somewhat ridiculously high price for any lawn covering plant was stated.

The ad was a joke of course and which, if I remember correctly, came out in an April 1 issue of the news magazine that carried it, and you may "get it" if you look up Taraxacum (I've done it for you). The really funny part, though, was that thousands of people sent in checks in response to the ad, to purchase these beautiful "Golden Crown" plants for their lawns!

It's the sizzle people buy, folks, not the steak. If the sizzle is good enough, the price doesn't matter.

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