Selling at a discount or buy one - get one free?

SenseiSteve

SenseiSteve

HD Moderator
Staff member
In your experience, what works better? Discounting an item, let's say 50% to 50 cents OR selling for $1 and get one free?
 
I've never tried a "buy one get one" with web hosting per say. It's hard to say which would attract more buyers. Ask yourself what you'd be more inclined to purchase.
 
As a customer, 50% would go a long way with me, just because I rarely need 2 of something, but a 50% discount would always come in handy.
 
SenseiSteve said:
In your experience, what works better? Discounting an item, let's say 50% to 50 cents OR selling for $1 and get one free?
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I depends on what you are selling. If it was your 25 GB hosting plan with everything else unlimited why get two? I'd rather see discount :)
 
We've found that flat dollar discounts often outperform percentages or buy-one-get-one promotions.

$50 off a dedicated server that sells for $100 vs 50% off. We generally label discounts something like '$50 to get you started'.

Please let me know what you find. We are always looking for new marketing ideas.
 
The best way is to try both, one month or for x weeks do one and then next do the other - see the returns you get, compare and see what works best.
 
The 50% off worked for me last week.

Due to issues with my previous backup service provider i was looking for a new server for backup purposed only.

After a couple days searching i found one with a 250GB KVM for $10 with a 50$ recurring discount bringing this to $5 a month, this gave SSH etc, so was able to work with cpremote from my main servers. If i purchased more that 1 at diff locations they could mirror these, well at $5 i purchased 2, so i would backup to 1 through cpremote and this would mirror to the other, which is an ideal situation as having backups in 2 diff locations
 
I would go with 50% off. It might be hard to offer 2 for price of 1 in web hosting. Customers don't often buy 2 domains, websites, dedicated servers etc. You will gain or lose the same price so you should go with the easiest one, 50% off.

If you try to make your customers buy 2 things at the same time they might think you are trying to bait them into a long term contract and make them pay for multiple products after the discount period has ended.
 
I'd say we've seen much more volume/success from "Selling at a discount". But that a side, we have done free server deals on colocation packages and that actually has been fairly popular with our 1/4 racks.
 
The customers will be more happy to get one if the do get a discount instead of "one extra".

I've also seen in some cases a minor price increase and then the supplier added a discount.

This would mean that the provider can sell the product with a high discount (in percent) but still make more money.

The customer will still be happy to get a 50% discount, no matter the original price. :)

It's strange how the human mind works sometimes.
 
I believe the 50% discount version works best because its very rare that a customer will want two of what we sell (servers, hosting plans).

But if you look at the grocery store isle you will see the discount in terms of a twofer even though you are still allowed to buy one at half the given price for the twofer. The discount itself is usually under 50% per item, but customer is lead to believe they must buy two of the items to get any discount.
 
yes i just did our main shop yesterday as Asda (walmart brand) in the UK.

Jar pickled onions £1.98 or 2 for £2, but 2 months ago they had the same jars on sale at £1 a jar
 
Over here what is common (in grocery stores) is a $2 item will go on sale for $1.50 but the sign and/or shelf tag will say 2/$3.00 (along with regular tag of 1 for $2.00). But you are allowed to buy one for $1.50. A lot of people will buy 2 instead of 1 even though they would have just bought one if sign just said SALE $1.50.
 
Discounts are certainly more attractive in the form of percentage or a flat discounted rate of a product (i.e E3-1230v2 now only $99!). A buy one get one free promotion is fairly useless because most hosting clients will only buy one of the service, if they need more resources they'll only upgrade. Hope this helps.
 
SenseiSteve said:
In your experience, what works better? Discounting an item, let's say 50% to 50 cents OR selling for $1 and get one free?
Click to expand...

Buy 1 get 1 free doesn't seem like it would work for shared hosting. It MIGHT just work for lower end VPSs as some clients like to order multiple VPSs at once.
 
Collabora said:
Over here what is common (in grocery stores) is a $2 item will go on sale for $1.50 but the sign and/or shelf tag will say 2/$3.00 (along with regular tag of 1 for $2.00). But you are allowed to buy one for $1.50. A lot of people will buy 2 instead of 1 even though they would have just bought one if sign just said SALE $1.50.
Click to expand...

Indeed, but this seems applicable for a few services only - ex. buying bulk packages of domains. It doesn't correlate with dedicated servers or an SSL certificate let's say...

I do believe that a successful host should have a diversified portfolio - offer promotions frequently and experiment - one month give a % discount for new customers, the next month try to offer something for the existing customers only, then the next you can try a $ discount and so on... Keeping your promos simple and easy-to-understand will make them appealing and you can analyze the results from each promotion to find your future approach :agree:
 
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