If you've spent any time marketing, you've likely heard of the “rule of 100” that states:

• When your price is under $100, use a percentage discount (ie. 25% off)
• When your price is over $100, use an absolute value (ie. $25 off)

Essentially, use whichever gives you the “biggest” number.

For example, if you sell a $1,000 product, you'd use $ because 100 > 10.

• Related Course: How To Optimize Your Sales Funnel

Test EVERYTHING!

As marketers, we know we're supposed to test everything because different markets and sources behave differently.

Being that I am a marketer and I have some great clients that understand the importance of testing, we decided to test % vs $ … did the “rule” hold up?

Find out!

Our Ads

Percentage (%)

Dollars ($)

Results

As you can tell from the stats above, the ads with the “buttons” on them performed better than the ads that only showed the product.

We'll compare similar ad to similar ad:

• w/ Button: The % ad performed 37.8% better than the $ ad
• Plain: The % ad performed 22.7% better than the $ ad

>> The “rule” held true!

Our Landing Pages

Dollars ($) [Original]

Percentage (%) [Variation 1]

Neither [Variation 2]

Results

The % landing page performed 14.59% better than the $ landing page. (Variation 1 vs Original)

>> The “rule” held true!

Variation 2?

The idea for the Original and Variation 1 came from Ryan Daniel Moran in this video … and while I thought the pages were too involved, he makes a lot of money from Amazon. So, why wouldn't we listen to him?

As you can tell from the results above, his landing page style converted around 20%, which wasn't good enough and the reason we launched Variation 2. (side note: I've gotta give Ryan some leeway here, his video came out in 2014 and things have changed since then. So, maybe, “back in the day”, this landing page performed better)

As you can see, Variation 2 converts 86.69% better than the Original at around 33.7% (still lower than I'd like, but we're headed in the right direction!)

Conclusion & Final Thoughts

Bear in mind that you'll want to test against these findings; however, here are our final results:

• The “rule of 100” held true against both our ads and landing pages
• “Buttons” on ads increase click-through-rate (CTR) and therefore increase conversions
• Simple landing pages convert better

Final Thoughts

It had been a while since I looked at this campaign and I think testing the phrasing for the $ campaigns could have yielded different results.

For example, I have, “Get the product for $12.50”

What if I tested “Get the product for $12.50 off“? I believe that simple, three letter word, could make a HUGE difference in how the campaign was perceived.

ABT – Always Be Testing.

• Related Course: How To Optimize Your Sales Funnel