Your Offer Is Everything — Part 1

The 5 components to making an incredible offer (and examples of masters at each component)

The 5 components of making an incredible offer

After spending nearly a decade in sales and marketing (with most of it being online), I can say without a doubt that the most important factor in making sales is…

The offer.

It’s more important than great copywriting, great media buying, great branding…any variable you can name, the offer is more important.

If you make an offer so compelling that you could teach a five year old how to make sales, YOU are the master and will be chasing customers away like flies at a rodeo on a hot summer’s day.

But HOW do you create offers like that?

Well, that’s what I want to show you how to do.

I put together this series to show you the components I’ve learned in my career are vital to getting to and staying at the top of the offer creation world.

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Part 1: What Exactly Is An Offer?

When asked to define what constitutes pornography, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said:

“It’s hard to define pornography…but I know it when I see it.”

I’d say that’s a pretty fair way of defining how most people categorize an offer as well.

They may not know all of the anatomical breakdown of an offer but when they see one that was perfectly crafted for them, they pull out their wallets (practically without thinking) and hit the buy button.

But I want to break an offer down into its constituent parts to help you understand the different components you need to think about and test to find one that’s magnetic.

Here are the five (5) key areas of an offer:

1. The Product(s) — what is received in exchange for money
2. The Price/Payment options — the cost and how it hits the customer’s bank account
3. The Bonus(es) — what is thrown in when the transaction is complete
4. The Guarantee — how to ensure the customer has as little risk as possible
5. The Intangible Benefits — the benefits customers get by supporting you/your org with money

So now you have a list…but knowing and understanding are two different things.

I want to ensure you UNDERSTAND how to craft each of these areas and I’m going to do that by showing you examples of companies who have succeeded with each area of the offer

Product Champions

This is the easiest component of an offer to understand because everyone has a product they are trying to sell.

Whether that be a physical product, a digital product, a service, or something else, this is what the person is receiving in exchange for their money.

A few examples of products that I’ve personally experienced where the quality of the product is worth every penny are:

1. BlendJet — it’s simple, effective, and blends just about anything
2. Loom — I have completely changed my workstyle to fit Loom…and it costs $10/month
3. YouTube TV — It works, it has unlimited DVR, I can watch football anywhere

The key thing about these products is that they are so well designed and effective that they have completely changed the way I do things in my life.

And I tell EVERYONE about them.

These companies spent a ton of time and money figuring out the best way to serve their customers and created a product that’s so good that if they increased the price, they’d still keep most of them.

I realize not everyone can deliver a life-changing product…but I can tell you that there’s a lot of crap out there.

People are now accustomed to getting some poor quality stuff so if you put the time and money into making something that’s a cut above the market, it will be a strong start to your offer.

Price/Payment Options Champions

There are a million and one examples of strong offers that exist during Black Friday season that show you how discounting products allows you to sell more of them…so I’m not going to show you that.

Instead, I want to show you how a few companies leverage price and/or payment options to get people to say yes.

1. Truebill — Allows for a pay-what-you-want subscription (Just got acquired by Rocket Companies for $1.25B)
2. Apple Card Monthly Payments — Open a credit card, get on a payment plan, and get cash back
3. Coding Bootcamps — These bootcamps found creative ways to help people not have to fork over tuition at the beginning of the bootcamp (note: I believe some of their payment plans are predatory on students…but just because I don’t like the result doesn’t mean the approach wasn’t innovative)

Each of these companies has figured out how to layer a flexible price and/or payment schedule to make it easier for their customers to say yes.

I’m a particularly big fan of Apple’s because it allows them to increase LTV in multiple ways. I know we all don’t print money like Apple but it’s important to take note that some of the most valuable companies in the world focus on perfecting the offer.

As we move into what I believe will be a cooler economic climate over the next few years, I believe that creativity in this area will be key to companies succeeding.

It seems that consumers are nervous about what is around the corner so they are holding onto their money tighter than ever.

If you can find a way to give creative pricing and/or payment options, I imagine you will win customers when others are losing them.

Bonus Champions:

If you’ve been in Internet Marketing for any extended period of time, you’ve undoubtedly heard of people talking about “value stacks.”

These are all of the extras that come with a purchase to try to make your offer seem like it’s an incredible deal (“Get my $15,000 value for just $47”).

Well, most people now realize that value stacks are just a long list of items that aren’t that valuable to them…but the premise behind them still applies.

If you can tack on some ACTUAL bonus value to people’s purchases WITHOUT crushing your margin, you have a really good chance to get (and keep) them as customers.

There are a few companies that stand out to me as being masters at this:

1. Airlines (Delta for me) — Their frequent flier programs provide real value and produces loyalty
2. Crypto.com — The idea of picking up people’s tabs for Netflix and Spotify was GENIUS.
3. Costco — My wife and I used to rotate credit cards to ensure we maxed out our airline points and bonus miles. But once we got a Costco credit card, we put EVERYTHING on it because the deals are insane. Plus, every year we get to do a Supermarket Sweep type dash with all the cash we got back.

Now you probably don’t have the ability to start your own credit card…but you DO have the ability to think about what is a little something extra you could add that would get people to come and STAY as your customer.

Let’s use a roofing company as an example.

If you wanted to add a bonus to your offer when people buy a new roof from you, why not thrown in a gutter cleaning once per year?

It would be very low cost to you, would allow you to build a relationship with a customer (do you know YOUR roofer?), and would undoubtedly result in their business (and likely many referrals), next time a roof repair came up.

The bonus doesn’t have to be ridiculous, it just needs to be USEFUL.

Guarantee Champions:

There are a lot of people out there just slinging some bull.

There’s more scams than ever, people are constantly bombarded by spam calls and texts, and they’ve been let down by a lot of people who are long on sales but short on results.

There’s also a ton of fake testimonials and social proof that makes it hard for people to believe what third party validation has to say.

Because of that, I’ve found the most powerful weapon is a not-so-average guarantee.

When I say that, most people expect to have a 30 day money back guarantee so having that doesn’t separate your offer.

You need something that shows them how confident you are that your product/service will deliver the result you’ve promised.

You can separate yourself by using creative terms and conditions OR sometimes just by advertising your guarantee (because your competition won’t because they don’t want people to use it).

Here are a few of my favorite guarantees:

1. Hyros — Alex Becker knows that people need time to ensure that tracking tools are helping them which is why he allows for a 90 day money back guarantee.
2. Dugout Mugs — The guys at Dugout Mugs are so confident the people you buy their product for will love it that they’ll buy it back from you if the receiver doesn’t love it (money back guarantee…but stronger)
3. Agora — Agora Financial is amazing at their guarantees because they know how important it is to success in the financial world. I remember for their Mega Bitcoin webinar a few years ago they made an insane guarantee that you would see a certain level of returns or they’d give you something like 10x your money back

At the end of the day, you could make an insane guarantee…but I actually don’t recommend you do that.

Extreme guarantees can put your business at risk and no one wants that for you.

Instead, just make a simple, strong guarantee and put it on all of your marketing.

Let people know that you stand by your work and that if it doesn’t go the way you’d discussed, they’ll get their money back.

I do that for all of my consulting clients and I’ve only ever had to use it ONCE…my ROI on that guarantee is INSANE.

Take it from me, keep it simple and make sure everyone knows about it.

Intangible Benefits Champions:

Over the past five years or so, lots of companies have rolled out the promise to plant a tree for every transaction or something like that.

It gives people a secondary reason to want to do business with your company…which is very powerful if you know what your customer base supports.

The best example (but certainly not the only one) is Tom’s shoes original Buy One, Give One offer.

From 2006–2019, for every pair of shoes a customer purchased, Tom’s gave a pair to someone in need.

This offer flooded the company with customers who wanted to make an impact on the world without having to directly take action themselves.

These types of intangible benefits have the POTENTIAL to be extremely strong influences IF you know what motivates your customer base.

Typically what you have to do is find alignment between your values and theirs and build an offer based on it.

There is potential, however, for customers or potential customers to not like the cause you are supporting so it’s important to think this through.

The question you should ask yourself is “how can I create something that will help a customer be looked upon favorably if they were to share their purchase on social media?”

Perhaps by buying services from you, they are indirectly contributing to the education of orphans in your local community.

Or maybe you allow them a “buddy pass” so that their purchase allows them to invite someone they think highly of to receive the same benefits they’re getting for free.

Whatever it is, find a way to help them look good and/or feel good about themselves by making a purchase with you.

Summary:

If you take the five components above and do some serious thinking about how to utilize them to stand out in your marketplace, you have the ability to completely dominate.

It’s not usually feasible to be the best product at the lowest price with the most bonuses, the best guarantee, and the most noble cause…but you can be a few of these things.

I personally would strive to be:

1. The highest quality product
2. That offers creative financial terms to allow people to access it (because it won’t be cheap)
3. That would have an iron clad guarantee
4. And probably a buddy pass so more people could experience my product so long as the cost to service them was low

That fits the type of products and services I want to provide…but what about you?

But Wait, There’s More:

So what you learned in this post was about how to create a compelling CORE offer.

This should be the offer that gets new customers into your business…but there are other ways for you to create offers to drive customer lifetime value (LTV), move stale products and/or hit revenue targets, and to allow you to monetize different traffic channels.

I’ll be following up with the additional steps shortly.

If you’d like to be notified when I release them, make sure to follow me and request new posts to go to your inbox!

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