7, 17, 27, 37 - Why the 7's???

It's like so many other things in internet marketing: people copy what they see on the usually mistaken reasoning that it "must" be working and have been reliably tested by others in ways relevant to themselves, otherwise they wouldn't be seeing it everywhere. This is how myths are perpetuated.

The reality is that someone once allegedly split-tested it with the menu prices in a pizza restaurant in the 1960's, and unfortunately one of the people present was a "marketer"; ever since then everyone's copied it because "it must work, otherwise people wouldn't be doing it, would they?"

Meanwhile, I've seen some recent actual testing done by my own former clients, in which it was discovered that:-

(i) For a short report, $10 converted better than $7 (I thought $12 might have converted better still, but I couldn't persuade the client to test it, because he already "knew" it would be worse);

(ii) For an e-book $39 converted slightly better than $37;

(iii) For some coaching videos and a membership package $22 converted a lot better than $17.

In each case, when I say "converted better", I'm referring to "more sales", not just to "more net income" (though obviously that was also true).

But the established wisdom is for prices to end in a "7", and of course it must work, otherwise people wouldn't be doing it, would they?

Meanwhile, if you ask amateur forex traders why they're using a 34-period exponential moving average, and ask scalpers why they're using an 89-tick price-chart, they'll look at you as if you just got off the boat that very morning and tell you that it's "obvious", because those are "Fibonacci numbers". It's the same syndrome: there are lots and lots of them, they all repeat what their colleagues say, and they think they're talking sense.

The thinking behind it is two things. First, human psychology. People have discovered repeatedly through split-testing that numbers ending in 7 convert higher than other numbers because that's what humans respond to for some reason. Not much more behind it than that.

The second situation is the copy cats who just see the number 7 everywhere and don't split test crap and just throw up numbers that end in 7. Which is a good strategy for speed, they got it up there based off of someone else's results.

The problem is, someone else's results is a really bad measure of what you're results are going to be. Therefore, you should set up two pages for every product you promote, each with a different price, and run the same amount of visitors to it to see which one converts better for you.

Then you take the one that converted better and you split test it against a different number to see which converts better out of those two, and repeat the same test ad infinitum until you have a really good idea of what's working in your business.

Definitely easier said than done though, but it's one of the most profitable tweaks you can do. Saying you ran something for 22 pound once isn't really a solid test, because how many visitors did you drive to it, did you split test the offer against something else, and send the same amount of 500 visitors or so to it, and then did you do the same test again and again?

Your profits will thank you if you do it. But of course, it requires having a steady flow of traffic. To make matters more complicated, it might convert at a higher price better from different sources, which only makes sense, but really want a good average of what price the market will bear in general.

Personally, I'll admit I have a lot of work to do in this area myself, split-testing and driving a ton of traffic to optimize what the market determines is a fair and reasonable price for the value I deliver, but that's the concepts behind it.

To complicate it again, as time goes on and you improve your products and get testimonials and such, when you take your product to market, it will be accepted at a higher price, because the perception of value is higher.

Anyway - I hope I effectively confused the hell out of you. Just kidding!

Marc

Thanks Alexa and Marc for the cool answers.

I have to admit I didn't test it and record the results in any meaningful way, though I still have the data within DPD and analytics so i could go back and analyse it for myself, especially the £22 point.

Maybe the next product launch will have 2 separate prices split tested then, to see what works best for me.

But if 7's worked in a pizza joint, then it must work for my eBooks and courses. Mustn't it?

Since the craze of the $7Secrets, people start pricing their offers at $7, that would explain why some priced their products at $7.

Are there any hard statistics behind the effectiveness of this pricing strategy? Or are people just operating from hearsay?

Haven't you ever heard of lucky number 7 :p

It's more of monkey see, monkey do, you will be better off testing your own price points

you get $2 more than $5 but still the same feeling.

9 feels too much, $7 feels like $5 but you get more.

It's definitely just one of those things that people see everyone else doing and so they do the same. I think if most people were to split test some different price points they would probably be surprised at what actually converts best.

In marketing it is ok to base your first decisions off of what others already successful are doing but then you must test that against other options to find out what actually works best for you. Quite often the two will be very different.

Notice costco also likes to end their products with 7 when there's a REAL sale (not those over-priced, slightly marked down prices)

Most people believe that the 7 is lucky number.

Besides the 7, both 9 and 9.99 always used for the pricing. e.g: $9, , $9.99, $19, $19.99, $29, $29.99...

From the opposite point of view, as a customer $7 looks significantly cheaper than $10. A $5 report seems almost too cheap!

It has been expounded better above, but I intend to split test these theories in my upcoming products to have an even better understanding of the concept.

Some interesting views here. I think no one can be certain about the logical reason though.
Also this is the trend only for Online products and not for offline products. I guess that opens up another line of thought.

Stephen

It's for the same reasons that most consumer products are priced like $XX.99!!

TV? $399.99!!
Gaming Console? $199.99!!!
New Car? $29,999.99!!!

just looked back over 8 years and 5 months worth of testing prices. That is for single products and also membership sites.

The numbers that pulled the best were 7's and 9's - $97 did well so did $147 (as an average)

next the best numbers that pulled the best were 2's and 5's especially. The best were $22 and $55 (as an average prices under $100)

Some interesting views here.

I guess a lot of it is down to strong sales copy too - like I just read, it's the copy that sells a product, not the price.

While this is a valid point it is also useful to benefit from the mistakes & case studies of others

I think in general, a newbie starting out it's best to read and implement the general arguments that have been tried and tested. Once you've gain more experience then you can benefit more from your own testing by having a rough perception of what already works.

Here is a thread about this matter:

http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...marketing.html

i had some Ted Nicholas tape program about 15 years ago in which he says that nobody really knows why, but through testing it was determined that prices ending in a 7 converted much better. maybe people just copy everybody else now, but there was a reason for it to begin with. he said also that sometimes a higher price will sell more units than a lower price for the same item, again this was determined through testing.

I hate that number seven. Like it smells to me like a scam. Burned once too many. First you get an offer for THIS WEEK ONLY a FREE PDF, and then you are told that the FREE offer is over. OK so you now have to pay money. $7.77 is the new promo price. Well, you pay, but instead of a real product, the PDF is a list of links to courses that cost $77 - yes. Hey, that is too much money. What is it with sevens any way.

It's simple, 7 is a "lucky" number and 13 is an "unlucky" number.

Go with luck... Always go with the luck!

It appears to stem from a weird little bit of brain science: the rational part of the brain thinks in tens, but the emotional part of the brain thinks in fives.

So the logic goes like this. You get your prospect all emotional, then hand them a seven. The emotional brain rounds that down to a five and passes it off to the rational part, which rounds it down to a zero. So the $27 price is mentally evaluated like a $20 price.

Now, I've been looking at this with some interest for a couple years, and there is absolutely no hard evidence or test data to back up this hypothesis. None. At all. Anywhere.

Technically, the idea that the emotional part of the brain is processing numbers anyway is rather out of left field. The emotional brain processes groups of items in fives. If it sees seven rocks in a pile, it will interpret this as "about five." Add another one, and it interprets this as "about ten." So yes, the "seven" trick works on the emotional brain... if you use a picture of 27 one-dollar bills.

But the emotional brain never processes numeric symbols - that happens on the left brain, the rational side, all the way from the beginning. So that $27 is processed as $30 anyway. You may as well just charge $30. Or, for that matter, $35. (Fives get rounded down. Think about it: is $35 closer to $30, or to $40? You know it's exactly in the middle, but you want to say $30.)

Basically, at this point everybody is just copying everybody else, and nobody really knows why.

It's buyer's psychology. Like when you see a product on sale for $9.99. It's actually closer to $10 but the customer will see the first digit (9) and sub-consciously process that as $9.

You are squeezing that much more out with little or no resistance.

It's e lucky 7/ Romeo.
Appearantly, when using an odd number at the end of your sales price, you allegedly make more sales.
It is pretty much like the new 9.99.
Marketing culture is very weird.

Some claim the 7s convert better, otherwise haven't found it to be the case.

I would guess that it depends on the audience which is why, I would assume, testing is so valuable.

Lucky 7 effect I guess? I've been successful with $10 and $15 prices.

There is a shortage of 9's online, so we use 7's to economize. It's all about saving the planet.

It's just one of those things where a copywriter came up with pricing thins at 7 at the end convert better than others. I have never noticed much difference. It has been this way for well over a decade.

The best way is to simply test different pricing numbers for a short period of time each just to see what happens. Maybe some numbers would have a slightly different/unique symbolic value/meaning in some countries or cultures, so it might be helpful to find that out as well.

One of the more well-known tips I know of is the adding of $0.99 at the end of the price, in that $9.99 is better than $10 because people subconsciously feel that $9.99 is closer to being $9 than to $10, even though logic contradicts it.

in western country,people treat number 7 as their lucky number,so maybe that's why people like to use 7 for the price,and then more and more people do that

I just like the way the 7 looks lol

lol... this makes me nostalgic.

once upon a time (in the 90s), when the only online promotional tools were link exchanges, link farms and banners, google didn't exist and altavista was the strongest search engine, there was only a handful of marketers selling ebooks. Allen Says of course, Paul Myers, Mark Joyner, Joe Vitale, Marlon Sanders and a few others (that were starting to be "famous").

These are the kind of people who tested prices on a split basis and figured that price points ending in 7 worked better - in their tests, but they always always always added the following caveat: do your own testing. This is what worked for us, it might not work for you. Do your own testing and figure out what works best for you, your product and your market.

Unfortunately people are lazy and it's probably the minority of the people who actually tested their price point, most just went with what sounded smart and "wise" and it became a tradition that most people now just follow blindly.

In short - test your price point for the best result possibile.

ciao

i think most of the internet marketers believed in the power of lucky 7.

people say they want truth, but they really don't, they say they want freedom but they really don't. People are irrational (I mean the 99). I saw a marketer say I'm not going to play games it's 500 and 0 people purchased (great product), the other times she did the BS song and dance for 497 and sales went sky hi. People say they want honesty but they are just liars.

Wow, thanks for all the responses guys and girls, some really interesting points and theories.

Incidentally, I am going to split test two different price points for my new product which releases around September/October - £47 and £42.

Because that's what everyone says to do and I'm too lazy to split test?

coz 67 sounds alot lesser than 70?