-: Okay, thought leadership posts.
This is my trick for writing good content
that actually matches your opinion
and you need to be the secret source.
I think that's what a lot of people get wrong
when they're trying to write content with GPT-4.
So I'm just gonna type in here,
write a blog post on value.
Let's say the topic is
the merits of value-based pricing for agencies.
Actually, let's make this a little bit more interesting,
the danger of value-based pricing for agencies.
Okay, so if I just type, just let it type,
it does a pretty decent job here.
So it's just writing this out.
And what you're gonna get
is basically the average of the internet, right?
So I'm just gonna stop this here
'cause I don't need it to write the whole thing.
But this is what a lot of people do.
GPT-4 is really good at this.
But it's saying it's increasingly popular.
It seems like a win-win scenario.
However, value-based pricing
can also present significant risks, right?
So financial stability, client relationships,
et cetera, right, difficulty in estimating value.
So it's picked up on some interesting things,
but I would say that a lot of people complain
about the writing here because it's kind of dull sometimes
and actually a little bit too perfect
and comprehensive, right?
So how do you make it more like your own voice?
How do you make it more interesting?
So this is my sequence of prompts.
I'm just gonna start a new chat.
I'm gonna go GPT-4.
And you need the browse model, so browse with Bing.
If you don't have that, you can turn it on in settings.
All right.
So the first thing I'm gonna put in here is
please look up topic and then provide a summary.
So I'm gonna say
the dangers of value-based pricing in agencies.
And I'm choosing this topic
'cause this is something I know very well.
I used to run an agency and we did test value-based pricing.
Okay.
So now it's gonna browse the web.
And the reason why we're doing the browse first
is I found that it tends to hallucinate
when it doesn't have at least a summary
of what value-based pricing is, right?
Like, and I'll say, it becomes less comprehensive
if all you do is take your opinion.
I also find that having the summary to look at first
really helps you in the next section
where we're gonna actually ask GPT-4 to interview us.
So we're starting with this,
it's coming back with a few drawbacks,
a few different things.
Actually, if you wanna see what it's doing,
it found this Forbes article, found this Pricefx article.
So if we wanted to actually dig into this,
we could look at those.
And sometimes I do while I'm waiting for it.
We're just gonna wait for this to finish thinking.
It's clicking on links, reading.
So hopefully it'll be done in a second.
One thing I would say is that the browse model
is sometimes a little bit funny,
like status clicks fail, that sort of thing.
Okay, so it's looked at three different articles
and done some comprehensive research here.
So we'll see what it comes back with.
Here we go.
Now it's finished.
So let's see what it's coming back with.
Difficulty in evaluation.
Yeah, that's important for sure.
Implementation costs.
Yeah, it can be costly to implement
because the perceived value of the service
needs to be strong.
So actually, so if you don't know about value-based pricing,
it's where, instead of saying,
I wanna charge whatever it costs me to deliver the service
plus 10% plus 20%.
Value-based pricing is I'm gonna charge
whatever the value of the service is,
even if that's significantly more than the cost.
So if you're doing a big,
if you're churning out logos for small businesses,
you might do cost plus and say I'll charge you 30% margin,
but if you're doing like a logo for Nike,
it might be, you might do value-based pricing,
you might say, even though this took me 10 minutes,
it actually really took me a lifetime to be this good,
and therefore, a new logo for you is gonna be worth
like $50 million, I'm gonna charge you $5 million, right?
So you get 1/10, I'm gonna charge you 1/10 of the value,
but for me, it only took 15 minutes,
so I'm getting a huge margin.
Also, the problem here,
so a lot of people talk about value-based pricing
as if it's a holy grail.
And of course, you should charge more,
like of course you should try to, but there are some issues.
And GPT-4 has done a good job of finding these.
Implementation costs are difficult,
hard to evaluate what the value is,
and there's also ongoing effort.
So yeah, that's something we found as well.
It's alright with the first contract,
but then over time they expect more and more value
and you, it gets harder to deliver.
There's also overpricing and underpricing.
You could actually charge too little
because they estimate the value
as being less than what it actually costs to deliver.
I think that's why accountants and lawyers charge hourly
because people always expect that accounts
will take less time than they do.
People always expect that law, legal cases
will be settled quicker than they actually are.
So I think that that's,
in situations where perceived value is lower
or the expected value is lower,
then hourly pricing might be much better.
And then same thing with the fifth one,
limited applicability.
It's not always suitable for every business.
Actually, one thing we found was,
when we were working with really big businesses,
Fortune 500 companies,
they just didn't let us get away with it.
We had to quote the hourly rate
for everyone working on the project,
otherwise, they would have said no
and we wouldn't have been able to pass procurement.
Okay, cool.
So, but that's what GPT-4 is gonna ask us.
So the next prompt,
and I'm just gonna bring up my prompts here,
the next prompt is...
we'll say, ask me five interview questions on the topic,
All right, so,
on, and the topic is the dangers
of value-based pricing in agencies.
And now, I'm just gonna relay
some of the things that I just told you
when we were talking.
So the goal of this, I mean, this is really the meat
of the technique I'm using here.
We are trying to get like my professional opinion
on these things, my shared experiences.
I think people use ChatGPT the wrong way around.
ChatGPT is an incredible editor, it's a really good writer,
but it doesn't have life experiences.
It's a computer, right?
I have life experiences.
And I wanna talk about those things,
but I never have the time.
So if I can just be interviewed,
and we're gonna do this in a few minutes,
then ChatGPT can write it up as a professional post.
That saves me a lot of time.
It's basically what ghost writing is, right?
That's what ghost writers do.
A lot of really popular social media accounts and blogs,
especially if it's the founder talking,
like the founder doesn't really have
that much time to write that stuff.
They get interviewed and then the interview notes
get turned into a blog post by a professional writer.
Cool.
So it's asking me a few different things.
I'm just gonna give really brief answers.
Normally, I would give a bit more in depth answers
'cause I actually really enjoy talking about my experience.
But, and I think actually it might be even better
if you could just talk back and forth.
So if you're using the OpenAI app for iOS,
you can actually do that,
or if using Google Bard for this, you could do that.
So can you share a specific instance
in your professional experience
where a value-based pricing strategy
posed challenges for your agency?
So I'm gonna say, one is,
yes, we used to sell tracking implementation
and we always under-priced when using value-based pricing
because customers expected tracking
would be easier than it actually is.
Cool.
All right.
In your view, are there any particular types of agencies
or sectors where value-based pricing
is more dangerous or less appropriate?
Yeah, I would say, sectors which,
where the value is, well the perceived value is high,
or the perceived value is high,
higher than the actual cost will get away with it,
especially if they have a monopoly.
If you don't have a well-known brand name,
or other people can do what you do,
then you'll have to charge market rate.
Monopoly profits only accrue to monopolists, right?
Given the potential dangers of value-based pricing,
why do you think agencies prefer this approach?
I think the ability to charge more is exciting
and you feel stupid for not charging more.
There are also a lot of gurus out there
who haven't actually run scaled agencies
and talk a lot about this stuff.
Some agency owners listen to their detriment, right?
And I don't think that there's no value
in value-based pricing,
but I would say it's much less applicable
than most people expect,
or at least less than the gurus say.
Okay, so next one is how do you approach the issue
of potential overpricing or underpricing?
I would say the way we did it
was make sure your costs are covered in any scenario, right?
So if at least your costs are covered,
then everything else is upside.
Okay.
I would say, also try to differentiate your service
so that the perceived value is higher
and there's less of a market to compare you to, right?
If they wanna work with someone who does Facebook ads,
that's one thing, but if you're someone
who specifically who's done like Facebook ads
for Uber before and this is Lyft calling, right,
like if you're the person who used to run it for Uber,
you're gonna be able to command a lot of money
from someone like Lyft, right?
In their minds, there is no other person, right?
Like nobody else is available,
that their market is one person, and that's you.
So you can command, you can set the market price.
If you're just doing generic Facebook ads, you can't.
Right?
Cool.
And then number five, it's getting hard to read this,
so I'm just going to copy this, get rid of it,
and just, I've just pressed Control X to cut it.
It's a little bit of a UX issue.
From your perspective, how can agencies mitigate the risks
associated with value-based pricing?
I would say that's probably the same,
so same answer as above.
I don't wanna hold you guys up.
Okay, cool.
All right, so there we go.
It's now summarizing what I've talked about, which is good.
I think this is actually pretty helpful just in general.
I find that if someone asks me,
hey, what do you think about value-based pricing?
I find I can talk a little bit about it,
but even just going through
these ChatGPT-generated interview questions
really gets me interested in the topic again.
It makes me think, oh yeah, I have done this before.
This is interesting, right?
Cool.
So, that's, now we have the summary
and we have, so we have the summary,
that's from like everyone else's opinion,
and then we have my specific opinion.
So the next prompt is to generate the outline and the title.
All right, so let's do this.
And I'm just gonna grab the topic.
Okay.
Now, what this prompt is doing is it is asking for,
to generate an outline first,
and also 10 very creative title options.
Now, the reason why we don't just say "write the post"
is that, well, two reasons.
One is it tends to not be as coherent,
like it starts writing and it stops,
and then when you ask it to write again,
it writes and kind of starts to duplicate old stuff.
Two is you want the post to be relatively comprehensive
and cover all the bases.
But then, I would say that
this is generally a good principle
for working with complex-type AI projects or systems,
when you need something relatively big to happen,
like the 1200-word post,
in general, use the least to most principles,
so start with the smallest thing, like the topic,
and then expand out to the next smallest thing,
which is the outline,
and then you can kind of write each section in the outline,
and then you have the outline,
then you can kind of write the conclusion,
and then, from the whole post,
then you can kind of write out
like all the other promotional stuff.
Okay, cool.
So, I'm just gonna check the outline.
So it's say understanding value-based pricing,
appeal of value-based pricing, real world challenges,
a case study.
Yeah, okay.
And then, dangers of value-based pricing,
sector-specific considerations,
mitigating the risks of value-based pricing.
I would say this looks fine to me.
And then, in terms of creative title options, here we go.
"Navigating the Pricey Waters", I like that, it's funny.
"Between Perception and Reality:
The Hidden Dangers of Value-Based Pricing."
I like that.
Number 10.
I like title number 10.
And you could actually just come back and say,
actually I want it to be something else.
But I find this really helps me
come up with a few different ideas.
I really like number one as well.
"Golden Goose or Hidden Trap?"
Yeah, this is some really creative stuff in here.
Cool.
And then, I'm happy with the outline.
And I'm happy with the outline.
Cool.
All right, so now the next prompt is,
write me one section at a time.
Incorporate my feedback for the next section.
All right.
And then, let's see what it comes back with.
Now, the reason why you wanna do this
and kind of get it at least two paragraphs per section
is that I find when you tell it to write it all in one run,
what happens is you end up being in a situation
where it like, it gives you just like one paragraph
per section and it doesn't end up being long enough.
Then also, the other thing I find is that
it's not that comprehensive, it's not that interesting.
Cool.
So the introduction's the most important thing.
Yeah, so it stirs debate, lucrative rewards, it's alluring.
Yeah, okay.
It's not that simple.
Okay.
Attractive facade, lie a host of dangers.
(chuckles) I love that.
A nightmarish reality, this is really cool.
Maybe just say like, mention in here
that I'll be sharing my experiences with Ladder,
the 50-person agency I founded, say marketing agency.
Cool.
And it's just gonna rewrite it.
So this is one of the real benefits of ChatGPT.
Okay, and then I'll say, yes, this is great,
continue to the next section.
Right, and you just keep going through like that.
And I'm not gonna go through the whole post,
just because I think you get the gist
and it's starting to get pretty long.
Now, the next thing you wanna do
is you actually kind of wanna get it rewritten
in a new style, right?
So first thing we're gonna do is,
I've actually run this prompt before,
but briefly describe the writing style of Harry Dry
from marketingexamples.com in bullet points.
Now, this is un-bundling, right?
If you haven't seen that lecture,
we have that elsewhere in the course.
But essentially what I'm trying to do here
is get an understanding
of like what style I want this written in.
And the one that I like is this style
of Harry Dry from Marketing Examples.
And it actually knows who this person is.
If you want to kind of learn from a style
that you, that it doesn't know about,
then you can actually just post in
a bunch of someone's writing or your own writing
and then ask for a similar style.
Now, I won't use exactly say Harry Dry's style here,
I actually have my own style that I use,
but I just wanted to kind of show you,
like you can actually kind of have it
in the style of the HubSpot blog,
you could have it in the style
of Seth Godin or Malcolm Gladwell,
you can do whatever it is you need.
So I'm just going to show you, I've run this prompt before,
describe the writing style
of Harry Dry from marketingexamples.com.
It's concise and to the point.
One thing I would say
is you need to ask it for bullet points,
'cause otherwise it blabs on
and it gives you different, I guess, formats.
But this is quite useful.
Now, once you have this, you can basically copy and paste,
and then we're going back to here.
So I have the first two sections and I'm just gonna do this
and you're gonna say, I'm just gonna paste in this style.
Actually, let me just paste,
I wanna copy it with all the bullet points.
So let me just find that.
Okay, if I copy here, it brings some bullet points with it.
So yeah, here we go.
All right, so now, let's just say this is the final prompt.
This is like how you get it done at the end.
So I'm just gonna paste that in here.
Rewrite the article in the following style.
So once you have the article written, you could do this.
Now, you don't necessarily have
to use specifically these styles.
If there's some things in here you disagree with,
engaging and conversational, concise and to the point,
relatable and accessible language.
So maybe I don't want humor and wit,
'cause then maybe that's a bit too much for me.
Yeah, I think this is good.
Yeah, it relies on examples and, okay.
I'm not gonna have informal and casual tone,
I'm gonna say professional and knowledgeable tone.
Cool.
And I'm gonna get rid of engaging and conversational.
Cool.
So now I've kind of edited the memes of Harry Dry, right?
Like Harry Dry has his own style,
I've kind of remixed it a little bit and changed it.
And you could actually work on this quite a bit.
You could bring in some of your own elements,
like you can see what it says about your writing.
You can mix two different authors together.
Really the world is your oyster.
But I find this is a really powerful way
to basically get it in a good format.
One, actually, one trick you can use, by the way,
is if you're writing a guest post
or you're kind of wanting it to get it past someone,
like an editor, like say you wanted to publish
on the HubSpot blog, you could actually have it rewritten,
like write it yourself, have it rewritten
in the style of the HubSpot blog
so it's like much more likely to get published.
You could actually even, if it's a smaller blog
that ChatGPT doesn't know about,
you could actually then just go
and copy a bunch of the recent posts
or the ones that rank the highest on SEO
and then paste them in here and then ask it,
tell me, briefly describe in bullet points
like what the style is.
Cool.
So, here we go.
Now it's been rewritten and I think it's much better.
It's much more concise actually.
So in the dynamic world of agency pricing, its appeal, okay.
Yeah, I've had my share of encounters.
Now it talks about Ladder, which is cool.
And yeah, I think this is much better, right?
Like it's much cleaner, it's,
yeah, here we go, it gives a really good analogy,
it's like trying to price a painting.
Yeah, this is brilliant.
Okay, cool.
Now we're at a much better post.
And, now the, I think the ethics of this
is much better as well.
Like I really don't like the idea
of just having ChatGPT write all my posts, right?
Like I actually have interesting stuff, I think,
to share with the world, and now using it as a ghost writer,
I think is much more ethical
because I'm contributing to the training data, right,
I'm not just consuming it.
I'm actually giving ChatGPT a lot of direction here,
saying like here's what I think about the topic
and here are my opinions.
I think this is much more likely to rank on SEO,
but it's more importantly
gonna be more uniquely interesting to other human beings,
and it's not gonna be just like the average of the internet,
like you would get if you didn't follow this process.
Cool.
So hopefully that's useful to you.
And I'm using it yeah, a fair bit now
and finding that it saves me a ton of time.
This post, it's taken us 24 minutes,
but I've had to explain it all to you,
but I find that I can actually write
like a four-hour post sometimes in half an hour,
which is pretty amazing.
Normally, it'd take me half a day, or even a day,
to write some of these things,
and now, I can just get it out of my head and onto paper
and use my professional writer
to make it professional for me
and help me move on quicker to the next post.