Half of the time you shop on social media you will see an item that you like and realize it has no price tag.
So, you go ahead and ask “How much” in the comments and you will almost immediately get the ‘DM for price’ or ‘Inbox for price’ response.
And it is tiring from the customer’s end.
Imagine a supermarket where none of the items have a price tag and every time you need the price the attendant comes and whispers it into your ear. How smooth would the shopping experience be and how many items would you end up buying?
Customers, especially in the era of online shopping, want to put in the least effort and get the best experiences in how they spend their money.
Asking them to DM you for a price is just an unnecessary step that they are not willing to take. It becomes more annoying if they are seeking to buy several items.
Another way to put this in perspective is Fakebook’s Instant Articles discovery.
Facebook found out that when links were copied and pasted from news websites, they took longer to load and the drop-out rate in readership was over 70%.
Users just couldn’t wait for the articles to load.
By just migrating news content to Instant Articles – which loads immediately, a lot more Facebook users read the articles they would have otherwise skipped over.
See? Minimum effort and great experience. Customers always want to put in minimum effort regardless of the product.
Going back to the supermarket analogy, your social media page is the supermarket and of course, the items are the products that you are selling.
When you have to “whisper” the price to each customer’s ear for each product they want to buy, it becomes a chore on their end, and – for the umpteenth time – customers don’t want to put in more effort than necessary.
How did we end up at ‘DM for price’?
Three things, first, price discrimination, two, social media algorithms, and third, upselling products.
Price discrimination is a business term that means selling the same product to different customers at different prices.
It has no malicious origin but is rather simply founded on the idea that someone in Karen for instance can buy an orange at Kshs. 50 call it affordable while someone in Kibera will only consider the same orange affordable if it is sold at Kshs. 5.
Small businesses operating off social media, in Kenya particularly, use ‘DM for price’ for price discrimination because once a customer is in their inbox then the negotiation for price remains confidential.
Different customers, different prices.
A second reason behind ‘DM for price’ is that social media algorithms especially for Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram are set in a way that the post with the highest engagements is shown first (and repeatedly).
So, a business has to find a way to create engagement on its posts. They do this by leaving out the price intentionally because they know a customer will ask in the comments and then message them. The comments and inboxes count as engagement and therefore their post will reach more people. It is a clever little trick.
Lastly, a less common reason for ‘DM for price’ is upselling where a seller wants to talk you into buying more items beyond the one that caught your eye. It is easier to convince someone to buy more in a private conversation than out in the public (comments).
Whether intentional or not, all ‘DM for price’ habits by small businesses come from one or more of these three reasons.
Why your business should not do it
The simple truth is that you miss more customers than you gain.
It may feel like you are making more money via price discrimination, that your posts are seen by more people, or that you are convincing more customers to buy more than one item but overall, you are making lesser sales.
To justify this, you need to understand the buying process decisions. The concept in theory goes via several stages including problem identification, information search, evaluation of alternatives, purchase decision, and post-purchase evaluation consecutively.
On social media, because people are not there exclusively for shopping, any of these steps can occur when they see your product. This means they may want a product but are not ready to order yet and so it becomes annoying to have to ask for prices in the DM.
A comprehensive post with pictures, features, and prices all displayed therefore goes a long way to ease the decision-making process for the customer. And customers like this straightforward access to information.
Again, minimum effort and great experience!
What is the alternative?
On price discrimination, you can just set different social media pages for your products.
In the same way, you can have a Kibanda (Shed) in Kibera and a shop in Karen both owned by you, selling the same oranges but charging different prices.
This way you will not need to use ‘DM for price’ at all. One way or another customers will find their way into either of the social media pages despite the price differences.
On social media algorithms, the alternative is to promote your page via a paid advert. Pick one of your core products and spend Kshs. 10,000 on it in Facebook adverts and that will be enough to call for attention.
Assuming you did the ad the right way, people will definitely click through to your page to see what you are about and, in the process, they will find out about your other products. This sounds like wishful thinking but it is a more effective way of reaching potential customers and gaining page likes.
If you absolutely need engagement, use other content pieces that will make customers naturally like, comment, or share your posts.
On upselling, it could be easier to post product bundles alongside singular products with price discounts on the bundled products. Bundled pricing works because it is a concept of psychological selling.
There are many other ways to get customers but, overall, whatever you do, stop telling your customers to ‘DM for price’. Make their work easier!
