"Your offer is the most important part of your sales letter. A great offer can overcome mediocre copy but great copy cannot overcome a mediocre offer. Your offer should be irresistible. You want your reader to say to themselves, 'I'd be stupid not to take advantage of this deal.'"
Excerpted and adapted from 12-Step Foolproof Sales Letter Template by David Frey
Somewhere in your website, you need to have an offer. At least one, and the more specific the better. You might even have multiple micro-offers that build up to one macro-offer.
Your offer might be one of the most difficult parts of your marketing to identify. You can do so many things. Your product is only limited by your imagination. Of all the infinite possibilities you could offer, what constitutes the best offer?
You need to determine that based on your research and feedback. It probably will take a few rounds of testing to find the right fit. Following are a few tools to help you think through this.
Product and Price
The "4Ps of marketing" are product, price, promotion, and place (distribution). Without implementing all four of these, your product or service will not fit your market. If it is not taking off like it could, it might be because one of these is not optimal.
Promotion got them here. Place helped them discover your solution. Product (or service) and price are two components of your offer.
Mind Tools has a pretty thorough write-up of the marketing mix and some questions for you to think about related to product and price:
Product
- What does the customer want from the product/service? What needs does it satisfy?
- What features does it have to meet these needs?
- Are there any features you've missed out?
- Are you including costly features that the customer won't actually use?
- How and where will the customer use it?
- What does it look like? How will customers experience it?
- What size(s), color(s), and so on, should it be?
- What is it to be called?
- How is it branded?
- How is it differentiated versus your competitors?
- What is the most it can cost to provide, and still be sold sufficiently profitably? (See also Price, below).
Price
- What is the value of the product or service to the buyer?
- Are there established price points for products or services in this area?
- Is the customer price sensitive? Will a small decrease in price gain you extra market share? Or will a small increase be indiscernible, and so gain you extra profit margin?
- What discounts should be offered to trade customers, or to other specific segments of your market?
- How will your price compare with your competitors?
The Whole Solution
Simply addressing a specific pain point with a solution is not enough. You need to package your solution within a total solution that addresses all challenges associated with implementing your solution. Geoffrey Moore summarizes this "whole product concept" in Crossing the Chasm:
There is a gap between the marketing promise made to the customer -- the compelling value proposition -- and the ability of the shipped product (or provided service) to fulfill that promise. For that gap to be overcome, the product (or service) must be augmented by a variety of services and ancillary products to become the whole product.
What you ship is your solution. Everything you provide your customer in order for them to be successful is the total solution. It is providing a product versus building a relationship.
Micro and Macro Offers
The 12-Step process is primarily about guiding your prospects through a purchasing process and get them to purchase your solution, your macro offer. There is a premise of this that I do not like. That is that it acts as if people are objects to funnel, rather than people who need your help.
Despite your wishes, and no matter how perfect your marketing is, not everyone is ready to purchase right now. People are not cattle. You don't (I assume) like to be forced into a decision. Neither will your customers. They like to be helped, not herded. Most will take in some information and think about it before making a transaction.
In Permission Marketing, Seth Godin discusses the idea of gaining new customers through a process providing them with anticipated, personal, and relevant information after first gaining and then continually earning more permission from them. A process of "turning strangers into friends, and friends into customers."
A key point here is about providing anticipated, personal, and relevant information. This is not about you shouting at them until they listen. This is about you listening to them and then proving them with helpful information. This is where micro offers come into play.
Micro offers are more informational in nature than transactional. Micro offers can be guides to download, social media channels to connect to, videos to view, or email or blog subscriptions. Essentially, any way that someone can connect with you to learn more about your solution that is not a purchase.
Make Your Offering
At this point, you have gained your prospect's attention, addressed their problem, and discussed the benefits of solving that problem. You have established credibility and built trust. Your prospect wants help. They are ready to take another step with you. Provide that for them. To offer is to "present or proffer (something) for (someone) to accept or reject as so desired." Give them the chance to connect with you at a level they are comfortable with.
Make Your Offer
Step 7
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