Today in Digital Marketing - The Risk of "Pay What You Want" Pricing

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Starting point is 00:00:18 starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected, be Zen. Today, new research discovers the right way to use pay-what-you-want pricing Be protected. Be Zen. is up for Oscar contention? Can Google's new anti-harassment tool help your brand? And on the premium podcast with no ads, more stories and extended weekend episodes, tap the link in the show notes for more. Three steps to prevent your brand from having your media buy, accidentally contribute to Russian misinformation.

Starting point is 00:00:59 It's Tuesday, March 8th. I'm Todd Maffin. Here's what you missed today in digital marketing. One of the advantages to selling online is that we can change things up at a whim. The pricing, for instance. We can test different prices to different audiences without needing to change signage or train retail staff. We can also test the pricing models themselves. Take the set-your-own-price model.

Starting point is 00:01:21 You see it frequently on information products, but it's used more widely than you may think. Panera Bread stores in the US used it for sandwiches a few years back. But are we marketers using that model all wrong? That's what Cindy Wang set out to investigate. She's an assistant professor of marketing at the California Polytechnic State University. She and her colleagues recently published an academic paper about the topic. I spoke with her earlier today.

Starting point is 00:01:46 Normally, we would think if companies show this gratitude and have consumers to pick their own price, consumers will love it. In fact, they do, but they give somebody full control over the price, they embrace this opportunity, but they also don't like the fact that they have to think about a price to think about a number to pay. Of the people who were asked to sort of fill in the price and make one up and not be presented with a list, did you find that that deterred purchases or that the revenue generated was lower? I think it's both. Because sometimes when you give people the opportunity, they do pay lower. In our research has shown that the price paid per unit was lower when you gave them to pay whatever they want. And also this process will also deter a group of people that they feel this is so effortful. I'm going to go to other place or pick a product that I don't have to come up with the price. I'll just take whatever the retailers ask for. So I think both the volume and the price per unit

Starting point is 00:02:59 are lower in this case. We want to reduce the effort related to product decision making. So anything, if you can think of ways to reduce the effort consumers need to make, that will be helpful. So in short, if you want to use pay-what-you-want pricing, it's better to give your customers a list of price recommendations rather than letting them type in a specific price of their own. Dr. Wang's full paper is easily Google-able. It is called The Control Effort Trade-Off in Participative Pricing, How Easing Pricing Decisions Enhances Purchase Outcomes. Hey, remember when Facebook changed their desktop website layout and everyone hated it? Ha! Guess what? Meta is testing another redesign of the desktop version of the platform. And this one is worse.

Starting point is 00:03:52 Users in test groups started seeing the new layout last week. It moves all your navigation options to two menu columns on the left side, sort of similar to Facebook Business Manager, or for that matter, Twitter. It is chaotic, to be generous. From a visual perspective, it doesn't seem like users will be able to find anything quickly within the menu. Other major changes in the new layout being tested include the home button in the top left is gone. It's been replaced by a logo. And there's no longer anything in the top right corner,

Starting point is 00:04:27 which is where important options like notifications used to be. Might be something in the water. Gmail this week started offering users a new view, which basically moves the primary icons also into the left rail. Facebook has asked us to believe a lot of nonsense in the past. Nonsense like, this new desktop UI is nice to look at, and you should do what our marketing experts say, and turn on automatic placements,

Starting point is 00:04:56 because audience network is great for conversions. But this next one? This next one takes the cake. You know how in Ads Manager, when something is good, like the cost per action goes down, the change percentage is in green. And when something is bad, like CPMs get more expensive, it's in red, right? Well, some people on Twitter posting screenshots today showing that Facebook has reversed this now. Phil Keel, managing director at Hello Earth Agency, showed his campaign that had a CPM increase of 888%. Remember, when CPM goes up, that's bad news for us marketers.

Starting point is 00:05:32 And Facebook showed a green arrow there. Also, it seems Facebook continues to devalue custom audiences, the workhorse of the digital media buying community, moving it way to the bottom of some people's ad manager setup screen. As Corey Dobbin asked on Twitter today, how long before Meta removes this entirely? Where is the exit door in the Metaverse? Again, is it over here somewhere? A file transfer site that thousands of digital marketers use every day has made a film that is now nominated for an Oscar. The Academy announced that the film The Long Goodbye, made by WePresent, that's the digital arts platform of WeTransfer,

Starting point is 00:06:19 is up for Best Live Action Short. Quoting the company, the 11-minute short film is an unflinching look at what may lie ahead for us in these increasingly intolerant times and what is unfolding for minorities in many countries around the world. We know that sometimes getting started

Starting point is 00:06:35 is the hardest part, so we present, um, presents stories to get things going. Unquote. The film has already won best Short at the British Independent Film Awards and the prestigious Cannes Lion Awards. Do you have business insurance? If not, how would you pay to recover from a cyber attack, fire damage, theft, or a lawsuit?

Starting point is 00:07:02 No business or profession is risk-free. Without insurance, your assets are at risk from major financial losses, data breaches, and natural disasters. Get customized coverage today starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. Instagram is rolling out a new feature called Enhanced Tags that will make it easier to credit creators. And these tags look a lot like the tags on product images. Enhanced Tags will allow a creator's self-designated profile category on their professional accounts to be displayed in their People Tag. Through these new tags, Instagrammers can tag other contributors and brands within their posts, giving them more exposure for their work.

Starting point is 00:07:45 Here is how to set them up. First, obviously create your new post. Then after writing a caption, look for the option that says tag people. Select add tag and search and select your contributors. Tap show profile category to display the creator's category and then tap done. Once you've added any additional tags and details, tap Share. Google's Jigsaw unit has announced it is releasing the code for an open-source anti-harassment tool called Harassment Manager.

Starting point is 00:08:17 The tool is aimed at journalists for now, but since it's open-source, how long before brands start using it? Harassment Manager is a web application that uses Jigsaw's Perspective API to let users sort through potentially abusive comments on social media platforms, starting with Twitter. Quoting Google's announcement, our hope is that this technology provides a resource for people who are facing harassment online,

Starting point is 00:08:40 especially female journalists, activists, politicians, and other public figures who deal disproportionately with high toxicity online. The code is available now on GitHub for developers and NGOs to build and adapt for free. Amazon's Clubhouse competitor is finally here. The company announced its entry into the live audio space today with the launch of its new app, Amp. Amp is basically Clubhouse. Live broadcasts, a bunch of by Joel Stein on Medium says, quote, reimagine radio, unquote. As for the OG app Clubhouse, a great piece by Joel Stein on Medium says, it's probably dead, killed off by NFT dude bros. Quoting from his article,

Starting point is 00:09:54 to find out how this happened, I hosted a Clubhouse room titled, What Happened to Clubhouse? Did the app's functionality not keep up? Did it get infested with political arguments? Did Clubhouse say something racist and get cancelled? Before our What Happened to Clubhouse event even started, I had an idea of what had happened.

Starting point is 00:10:12 I got on the app early and scrolled the other rooms that would compete for listeners. Clubhouse, which seemed like a place for the smart kids, had acquired the stink of a multi-level marketing scheme. All the rooms were hosted by crypto guys talking about how to flip Ethereum with NFTs. Clubhouse descended in mere weeks from Silicon Valley to Miami. Only three people showed up to our

Starting point is 00:10:37 What Happened to Clubhouse room. One was my lovely wife, Cassandra, and the other left as soon as we asked him a question. Unquote. Last year, Twitter offered to buy Clubhouse for $4 billion. Clubhouse turned it down. Twitter went off and made their own version called Spaces.

Starting point is 00:10:55 So my wife has started making bread over the last couple of weeks and I think perfected the recipe. It is a fantastic loaf with a nice hard crust, which I love. But last night, that hard crust proved to be too hard. The knife slipped. Brace yourselves.

Starting point is 00:11:11 And yeah, I cut myself pretty bad, actually, on my left forefinger. So typing has been difficult. That may be why this episode's out a little late. But anyway, I think I'm going to get a proper bread cutter. I think that's going to be our next purchase. Talk before you ask. I'ma need the pass. One low for the lifestyle and one for the gram. They can't catch up, but that's a part of the plan. Flashy, you know the fit match me. If I hit the pose up low, then tag me.

Starting point is 00:11:54 Flashy, you know the fit match me. If I hit the pose up low, then tag me. It's the season for new styles, and you love to shop for jackets and boots. So when you do, always make sure you get cash back from Rakuten. And it's not just clothing and shoes. You can get cash back from over 750 stores on electronics, holiday travel, home decor, and more. It's super easy. And before you buy anything, always go to Rakuten first.

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Today in Digital Marketing - The Risk of "Pay What You Want" Pricing

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