Using Added Value to Sell Subscriptions

Pitching value for subscriber acquisition is a more involved process than simply offering attractive price points. When a business needs to emphasize the added value of its subscription offerings, it should keep the following information in mind to craft its marketing and acquisition strategies.

Give Customers Ownership

Making customers feel that they’re directly involved in the growth and improvement of a product can trigger a sense of loyalty due to perceived ownership. Accomplishing this can be as simple as regular (but brief) customer surveys, but companies should be willing to adopt radical measures if necessary.

The independent gaming industry provides an ideal example of this in its growing phenomenon of “early access” sales, in which customers pay full price to receive access to a pre-release game in alpha or beta testing. This is a win-win from the company’s perspective, as it literally convinces customers to pay for the right to serve as product testers. This guarantees revenue, and most importantly, ensures that the software is tailored to user needs at every step of development, vastly improving the quality and value of the final product.

Highlight Iterations

Every company wants to pitch its current products as “the best” available, but this can actually become a liability in a subscription billing model, as it fails to emphasize the benefits of a recurring relationship with a company.

Products can still be sold as “the best,” but this should be done within a framework that emphasizes iterations, and paints a clear picture of a company’s history of product improvements from one generation to the next. If a potential acquisition is already interested in a current product, a meta-message that says they can count on even better versions of it in the future is an effective way to convince them that they need to purchase recurring access to that product line in the present.

Emphasize Service

Properly implementing the prior two concepts requires establishing productive relationships with clients, and a customer service ethos that emphasizes frequent business-to-customer interactions ensures that the groundwork is laid. Taking a passive approach to customer service can be a fatal mistake in a recurring billing model, as it requires customers to already be dissatisfied in some way before they have a chance to interact with the company.

Regular surveys, product tutorials, and invitations to special events allows a business to begin building a loyalty-based attachment with its customers, and each point of contact presents an opportunity to initiate any number of added-value tactics.

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