Why 'DM for Price' Is Quietly Costing You Customers
Hiding your prices doesn't filter for serious buyers — it filters for people willing to endure friction, and most of your would-be customers simply scroll on to a business that tells them the number. Here's why price transparency wins on social media, and four ways to show pricing without publishing a full rate card.
Dave Smith
# The 'DM for Price' Problem: Why Hiding Your Prices Costs You Customers
There's a belief that's been passed around small business circles for years, usually delivered with a knowing nod: never put your prices on social media. Keep them guessing. Get them into a conversation first. If they message you, you've got a lead — and once you're chatting, you can explain your value before the number lands.
It sounds sensible. It's also costing you customers every single day.
The theory versus what actually happens
The theory goes like this: someone sees your post, wants to know the price, sends you a message, and you charm them into buying. What actually happens is rather different.
Someone sees your post. They want to know the price. They see "DM for price" or, worse, silence on the subject entirely. And then they do what you do when a restaurant menu has no prices on it — they assume it's expensive, feel slightly awkward, and quietly move on to somewhere that just tells them.
Here's the uncomfortable truth: the customers who can't be bothered to message you aren't lazy. They're normal. Messaging a business to ask a price is a small social risk. What if it's way out of budget and they have to politely back out? What if the reply takes two days? What if they get a hard sell? Most people would rather avoid all of that and buy from the business down the road that put "£45" in the caption.
You're not filtering for serious buyers. You're filtering for people willing to endure friction — and there are far fewer of those than you think.
"But my competitors will see my prices"
This is the other half of the argument, and it deserves a proper look. Yes, if you post your prices, competitors can see them. Here's the thing though: they already know. Your industry is not a mystery to the people working in it. Anyone who's been trading longer than a fortnight has a decent idea what everyone else charges, whether it's posted publicly or extracted through a mate who rang up for a quote.
Meanwhile, the people who genuinely don't know your prices — the ones you're actually hiding them from — are your potential customers. You've built a wall to keep out people who already have a ladder, and the only ones stuck outside are the people you wanted in.
What the research says about price transparency
Study after study on buying behaviour points the same way: uncertainty kills purchases. When people can't find a price, they don't usually assume it's reasonable — they assume it's high, or they assume the business is going to judge them for asking. Either way, the emotional maths comes out at "not worth the hassle."
And on social media, the window is brutal. Someone scrolling past your post gives you a few seconds. If the post creates a question the caption doesn't answer, most people won't chase the answer. They'll just keep scrolling. "DM for price" doesn't create intrigue. It creates a dead end.
What to do instead
You don't need to publish a full price list against every post. There's a middle ground, and it works considerably better than silence:
Use "from" pricing. "Decking projects from £1,200" tells people roughly where you sit without committing you to a fixed quote. Anyone for whom £1,200 is a shock was never going to buy — and now they won't take up an hour of your time finding that out.
Anchor with examples. Post a finished job with what it cost: "This full rewire came in at £3,400, including the consumer unit." Real projects with real numbers are the most trusted pricing content there is, because they show what the money actually buys.
Explain what moves the price. If you genuinely can't give a number because every job is different, say what makes it vary. "Most bathroom fits land between £4,000 and £7,000 depending on tiling and whether we're moving pipework" is honest, useful, and still gets a conversation started — with someone who already knows the ballpark.
Post about your pricing openly. A post explaining how you price — what's included, why you're not the cheapest, what corners you refuse to cut — does more selling than a dozen "DM for details" posts ever will.
The customers you'll never know you lost
The cruellest part of the "DM for price" approach is that its cost is invisible. The person who messaged and haggled? You met them. The fifteen people who wanted the price, didn't see one, and bought elsewhere? They never show up in any inbox. You can't miss customers you never knew existed — which is exactly why this habit survives. It feels like it's working because you only ever see the people it didn't put off.
Price transparency isn't about being the cheapest. It's about being the easiest to say yes to. Put the number where people can see it, stand behind it, and let the customers who were quietly scrolling past finally stop.
And if writing posts that talk about money without sounding awkward is the bit you dread, that's a solvable problem too — it's exactly the sort of thing Aunty Social was built to take off your plate, for rather less than the cost of one "DM for price" enquiry that goes nowhere.