Bronze, Silver and Gold Pricing

Bronze, Silver, Gold package prices can be really helpful, but they need to be done right or you'll lose out.

If your businesses offers packages of standardised products and services, in the traditional BSG (Bronze, Silver, Gold) format, then you're probably missing out on revenue.

In conventional BSG pricing, more often than not, people choose the lowest cost option.

But if you tap into human psychology, you can turn this around and get more people selecting higher value packages.

Here are three things you should do.

1. Reverse the order: go Gold, Silver, Bronze instead

When you present your packages in the traditional format of Bronze, Silver, Gold, you show people your lowest price first.

This creates a mental reference or price anchor against which all subsequent values are judged, and it artificially inflates the perceived cost of your Silver and Gold packages in people's minds to make the increases seem bigger than they really are.

When you present the alternatives from high-to-low, the opposite occurs; now your highest price becomes the reference against which subsequent values are compared, making your Silver and Bronze packages seem more affordable.

This simple switch will see more people choose your Silver option when, before, they'd mostly have chosen Bronze.

2. Highlight the features that will be lost when choosing lower priced packages

It's tempting to think that people will be swayed by your higher priced packages when they see the extra features they can access, but thanks to evolution, we fear loss more than we savour the prospect of gain.

For example, we feel the loss of £100 more keenly than the joy of unexpectedly finding £100.

It's known as 'loss aversion' and you can trigger it in people to get them to select higher value pricing packages like this:

Now you're presenting your packages from high-to-low, list all the features that can be obtained in your Gold package. Do the same for Silver, but this time grey-out and use strikethrough text to show which features available in Gold are lost when dropping down to Silver. Do the same for Bronze.

This way, not only do you set a mental price reference, you also clearly highlight the features people lose with each reduction in price. When they get to Bronze, they realise that the cheapest price option means sacrificing a lot of beneficial features, and so many of them will discount this option and elect for Silver instead.

3. Nudge people to select higher value packages

By now, with high-to-low pricing and having triggered loss aversion, more people will already be selecting your Silver package if not Gold.

There are lots of things you can now do in order to subtly draw attention to your preferred options.

For instance, if you label Gold as 'Best Value' you'll get more people choosing it. Label your Silver package 'Most Popular' and more people will choose that.

Give the CTA buttons for Gold and Bronze an outline colour but no fill colour, while making the CTA button for your Silver package a solid colour, and more people will be drawn to this option.

Obviously, you need to be sensible with these cues - don't use them all simultaneously as you'll just confuse people.

OK, let's now look at the potential benefits to you of these changes.

Imagine your package prices are £15 for Bronze, £25 for Silver and £35 for Gold and you present them like this from low-to-high. Research suggests that around 80% of people will opt for the lowest cost option.

Switch them around, and the same research tells us around 65% will choose Silver.

So, for every 100 purchases or sign-ups, that's a revenue increase of £425. And all you've done is switch the order.

Add-in the loss aversion and nudging cues, and you can push this increase up even further.

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