Tom Monaghan started Dominos with one location in 1960. The business was hard, pizza was one of the most competitive businesses back then. In yellow pages, it was the only food item that had its own category.

There were local nearby pizza joints in average populated areas. This made penetrating the market a near-impossible task. In efforts to expand, Dominos almost went bankrupt. They were facing several franchise disputes.

In a nutshell, Dominos was on the verge of collapsing. Then one brilliant idea saved it and made it one of the most popular pizza vendors. The brilliant idea was an offer.

30 minutes or less… or it’s free.

The offer worked so well and placed Dominos in a dominant position.

What made the offer so successful is that it factored in a tired, hungry, time constraint employee or employer. A hungry American with not more than 30 minutes to wait for pizza.

Let us now look at different ways you can craft your offers.

1. Above a Certain Price Point Offers

These kinds of offers are great. They can be used to welcome new customers, encourage repeat buyers, or even encourage more spending by buyers.

In certain businesses, they can be a game-changer. They are applicable to both brink and mortar businesses as well as online businesses.

Examples

Free natural fruit juice for orders above $15—Restaurant.

Spend $25 to receive a $100 coupon—Google Ads.

2. Before Commitment Offers—Value in Advance

These offers can be very powerful. They have been a pillar in multi-billion dollar SaaS businesses.

They come in all shapes and forms, free trials, free forever packages, free courses, etc.

Examples

Get 3 months of Spotify Premium for free—Spotify

Free forever up to 2000 contacts—Mailchimp

Other examples include Convertkit, Skillshare, Youtube Premium, Coursera, Netflix, etc.

3. Membership Offers—Savings on Purchases and Exclusive Deals

These offers can totally change the dynamics of a business. These changes tend to be positive to both the consumer and the business.

They work on basis of yearly flat fees or monthly subscriptions. In exchange, buyers get exclusive deals and discounts.

It’s rumored that membership offers can totally change the eCommerce business model. If it happens, late adopters will suffer for it. Costco is at the forefront of it.

Examples

Costco membership—Huge savings when shopping, savings when using Costco services

Amazon Prime—Fast free shipping, exclusive deals, and entertainment.

4. Affiliate Offers — Invite Offers

Paypal heavily relied on invite offers to scale in its early years. When inviting a new user, both the inviter and invitee would earn $20 dollars.

This ensured PayPal growth was steady and its users kept increasing. The ripple effect from inviting users turned into an unstoppable force that strengthened its foundation. This also influenced mouth-to-mouth advertising which later strengthened PayPal’s positioning.

When used appropriately, invite offers can be very powerful in scaling a business.

An Insane affiliate program is one of the quickest ways to grow or scale a business. It attracts the attention of publishers and marketers. This can create a ripple effect and free mouth to mouth advertising.

Examples

Siteground invite offer

• 1–5 Sales /month — $50 /sale
• 6–10 Sales /month — $75 /sale
• 11–20 Sales /month — $100 /sale
• 21+ Sales /month — Custom Commissions

Mailchimp — Both the inviter and invitee earns a $30 bill credit. The more you invite the more you earn.

5. Joint Venture Offers—Partnerships Free Deals and Discounts

These offers can work as additional value or bonuses. They are mostly used to avail related products a specific buyer might require.

They are a good way for marketers to leverage each other's customer base. They can also be used to introduce new products into the market.

Examples

Course Hero discount exclusive for amazon prime student subscribers.

Skillshare annual subscription exclusive benefits.

6. Specific Day or Time Offers

These come in all shapes and forms. They are applicable in almost any kind of business.

Microsoft highly uses these offers. They happen during specific months of the year. Such offers massively boost sales. The best products go out of stock within hours.

The majority of e-commerce brands currently use them to boost sales. They are basically in the form of limited-time deals, sales promotions, deals of the day, etc. Some of these brands include Amazon, eBay, Best Buy, Walmart, among others.

Examples

Amazon limited-time deal and deal of the day.

Microsoft winter sales

7. Groups or Certain Demographic Offers

Most of the big brands have offers for certain groups or demographics. It’s a way for a brand to show concern or give back. These groups can include, students, kids, nurses, military, teachers, firefighters, etc.

Showing concern creates a bond between a brand and its customers.

These offers can also be used to create brand awareness and foster mouth-to-mouth advertising thereby increasing brand positioning.

Brink-and-mortar example

Let’s say a restaurant observes that there is a low turnout of couples on Mondays and Tuesdays. They then introduce an offer.

One person charges for couples on Mondays and Tuesdays — Restaurant

With time, you can tell such a restaurant will be flocking with couples on Mondays and Tuesdays. This has the advantage of more sales, increasing brand awareness, and fostering free mouth to mouth advertising. Ultimately, this increases brand positioning and pushes the brand to a higher height.

From such an offer, the restaurant is unlikely to make profits on Mondays and Tuesdays. Despite this, the long term advantages of such an offer by far outweigh the benefit of making profits on Mondays and Tuesdays.

When used appropriately, demographic offers can push a brand to greater heights.

Examples

Heroes get 30% off—Adidas

Students and teachers save over 60%—Adobe Creative Cloud

8. Above a Certain Number of Orders Offer

These are applicable to both consumer goods and online businesses. They act as an incentive to buy more. The incentive can be in form of an additional free item, discount on the next item purchase, etc.

In consumer goods and e-commerce, they can be used to introduce a new brand into the market. In some instances, they can be used to get rid of old products to give room for newer products.

With SaaS, you are billed the time you use a service. In such a situation, these kinds of offers tend to have huge discounts on the length of subscription you purchase upfront.

A monthly subscription will cost you more in a year compared to purchasing a yearly subscription upfront. Subsequently, a two-year subscription bought upfront might be cheaper compared to buying two one-year subscriptions upfront.

Examples

Grammarly — Purchasing one-year subscription upfront gets you 61% off.

Staples — Buy 4, get one free

9. Launch and Early Bird Offers

Their main purpose is to get the very first users of a product or a service. Depending on the goals of a company, they can be offered to the first 2000 users or the first 100,000 users.

They come in all shapes and forms. The below two forms are far more common.

• One time subscription fee
• Completely free—Later to be converted to pay to use service

Appsumo is one of the best places to find one-time subscription fee software. On the other hand, product hunt is among the best places to get completely free software.

One-time subscription software and completely free software can also exist independently without being on the two platforms.

Examples

Rank Math (WordPress SEO plugin)—The official plugin release date was on 19th November 2018. The plugin was completely free. On 12th November 2020, two years later, they introduced Rank Math Pro. A subscription-based software.

Other examples include Keywords Everywhere and Ubersuggest. These were previously completely free tools but now they are subscription-based software.

Offers can be a really powerful way of introducing new products into the market. You need to craft offers that are in line with your current situation. They should also align with your goals and principles as a company.

In the case of Rank Math, instead of having a free trial or an insane invite system. Going completely free was their strategy and it worked. For a start-up with limited funds, going free for two years while maintaining a development team may not be feasible.

Having a diversified approach when looking at problems to finding solutions is the way to follow.

10. New Customers or Sign Up Offers

Namecheap is one of the most popular hosting providers. How did they come to the limelight? Offers. They were known for their cheap domain names. This was also reflected in their name — Namecheap.

This helped them start a relationship with a customer. The power lies in that once a customer uses your services, they are more likely to buy from you. The trust is there. At that point, they have already felt your value.

They carried the same philosophy to their hosting and the other services they provide. Their main aim is to get you in.

Grammarly is another good example. Having hooked you with a free forever package, the driver of sales in the backend are their offers.

They have very high conversion rates, 20–30%. The dynamic of it is brilliant. A free forever plan, and insane offers in their email sequences or Newsletters.

Examples

Namecheap new customer offers.

Grammarly new customer offers. Backend offers from their newsletters.

Bonus: Loyalty Program Offers—Reward Your Customers

Loyalty programs act as an incentive to both new customers and existing customers. They can be very handy to keep customers coming back. They motivate existing customers to keep shopping.

Basically, they build a loyal fan base and improve customer retention.

They come in many shapes and forms. Loyalty punch cards, double or triple loyalty points during a specific period, sign up points for new customers, personalized offers from purchase history, etc.

Examples

Sephora—Loyalty points

Uber—Loyalty points

Uber loyalty points benefits.

An offer can be created in more than one way. i.e. an offer can be above price point offer at the same time be a new customer's offer only. You can be as creative as you want. What is important is that the offer works.

Brilliant offers can be very powerful. A single offer can single-handedly transform a business from a struggling company to a multi-billion dollar company.

For an offer to work so well, it needs to be what your customers want to hear. This elicits a natural response from your customers.

Uber marketer Mark Joyner has written a whole book on the topic of offers. The book is called The Irresistible Offer. He demonstrates that irresistible offers build hugely successful businesses.

When creating offers it’s good to know where they fall. An offer created on the main offering is likely to have a huge impact compared to offers created on additional secondary offerings.

The information shared here will help fast-track you to creating great offers. All the best.