It’s a time old sales technique: offer a time-limited discount to secure bookings and make that final difference between their decision being made on the spot, rather than on the sofa. And of course, there’s psychology behind it – people love their perceived value for money. Especially in the remit of wedding planning, where everyone’s plagued by the myth that the W word carries thousands of extra pounds just for lols, people love to feel like they’re saving money in an area in which they’re otherwise haemorrhaging money away. However, more recently, with the advent of indie businesses becoming more and more popular, there’s been a movement against offering discounts as your lead magnet, and we’re here to explain why so you can assess for yourself whether you want to. It’s worth saying that there’s no right or wrong and we don’t mind whichever way you go – your stand is your stand to do what you like with, and we trust you to do what feels right for your business!

Your brand value

Funnily enough, the reason against is the same as the reason for: value. You have to weigh up whether your discount offering is harming the perceived value of your business ethos and practices. If you can afford to sell it at this lower price, even for a limited time period, you open yourself up to criticism that your normal prices are too expensive, and that you aren’t worth them. You also risk being accused of adding extra 0s in because it’s a wedding (yadda yadda blah blah, please watch my eyes roll so far into the back of my head that they fall out and I trip over them.)

Having said this, discounts are a commonly accepted practice, and the natural response isn’t to jump from “ooh a discount” immediately to “well their profit margins must be obscene” – it’s usually to “ooh, shall we take a closer look?”

Your USP or brand values

By offering discounts, your primary focus is centred on price, rather than what you offer. Considering the reason your application to us was accepted is because your product or service is so unique, it draws attention away from where people should rightfully be drawn to. Instead, you could focus on your genius product and quality customer service – the things that make you the best in the biz – to help people make the final push. We pride ourselves on having a visitor base that understands the quality and value of small indies and design-led businesses, so they understand that these things may cost more, and that they’re worth it.

If you still want to offer an incentive, you can use this instead to keep your customer’s focus where it needs to be, as well as cementing the final leap – more on that below.

Your pricing

Finally, if you offer discounts, you also give the impression that your pricing is flexible and that there are margins and grey areas that couples will start to try and haggle into. IF this isn’t the case, it’s frustrating and disheartening for you.

So, what now?

This is all well and good, but we still keep coming back to the facts of the matter, which is that humans love getting stuff for good value. We said so ourselves, and it’s true – I literally have “ASOS bargain hunting” on my CV (true story.) So how can you entice and enthral them instead? If you still want to offer something, rather than a monetary discount, there’s loads of great options. For example:

Instead of offering a discount on your services, why not offer an extra on top of them? It’s the same idea, but flipped on its head; you’re not saying ‘my service is only worth this discounted price’, you’re saying ‘my service is worth my normal price, and as a thank you for entrusting me with this big decision, here’s a little extra for you.’ Here you’re still offering couples more for less, but without all the potential issues of the above.

Competitions also work really well to draw people’s attention to your work. Again, the idea of giving more for less is the same, but at the same time you can increase your visibility to couples out there in the wider world and get something back from it - winner winner chicken dinner.

And remember, if you do decide to offer a discount or incentive, let us know and we can promo it beforehand!