One of the main reasons marketing campaigns fail is because the offer is lazy and poorly thought out.

It’s something crappy and unexciting like 10% or 20% off.

The offer is one of the most important parts of your marketing campaign and you need to spend much of your time and energy on structuring this correctly.

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‍‍What Irresistible Offer Do My People Want?

Putting the right stuff in front of the wrong people or the wrong stuff in front of the right people is one of the first marketing mistakes made by business owners.

That’s why a few articles back we talked about the importance of identifying a specific target market for our marketing efforts.

Now we want to structure an offer that will excite this target market. One that will have them ready to whip out their wallet and one that will stand out from all the boring, lazy offers from our competitors.

One of the easiest and most common methods of finding out what your prospects want is by asking them via a survey or similar market research technique.

Unfortunately this is also one of the most unreliable ways. Most people don’t know what they want until they’ve actually been presented with it. Also when people are doing survey’s or responding to market research, they do so with logic, however when it comes to actual purchasing, this is done with emotions and justified with logic after the fact. So you will typically get very inaccurate results.

Henry Ford put it well:

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”

One of the ways I’ve done and recommend doing market research is analyzing search engine queries.

Some tools you can use for this are Google’s Adwords Keyword Tool or Market Samurai. You can also see what topics are trending on social media and on search engines.

Analyzing search queries and volumes is almost like tapping into the global consciousness and seeing what is currently in demand and being talked or thought about.

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Eight Essential Elements Of An Irresistible Offer

Now that you know what your market wants, you need to package it up and present it as an irresistible offer. So you want to craft it.

There are eight essential elements of an irresistible offer. Let's check them out now.

Step 1: Deliver Value

Firstly you need to think, what is the most valuable thing you could do for your customer? That’s question #1.

What is the result which takes them from point A to point B that you can take them through while making a good profit?

This really is the crux of your offer.

Step 2: Talk Their Language

If you’re not a member of your target market, you need to learn the language and jargon used within your target market.

Take this BMX video as an example. If you’re selling BMX bike’s you need talk about Endos, Sick Wheelies and Bunny Hops not features, benefits and specifications. See for yourself:

Step 3: Give A Reason Why

Believe it or not when you have a really good offer, you need to justify why. People are so used to being shortchanged that when someone makes a strong, valued-filled offer, they become skeptical and look for the catch.

I personally experienced this in one of my businesses where we were offering a much better service at a price that was about half the price of our competitors. People kept ringing into the sales line to recap the offer that was on the website and to ask what the catch was.

I don’t suggest you fabricate reasons for your offer but be ready to have a solid reason why you are offering a great deal e. g. clearing old stock, damaged inventory, overstock, moving your office or warehouse, etc.

Step 4: Add A Bonus

Packing bonuses into your offer to make it more appealing is a very smart move. In fact, I advocate making the bonus more valuable than the main offer. Infomercials do this well with phrases like, “We’ll double your offer,” and “That’s not all..."

Step 5: Upsell

When your prospect is hot and in the buying frame of mind, this is the perfect time to offer them a complimentary product or service.

This is where you have the perfect opportunity to tack on a high margin item even if the primary product you are selling is low margin. It’s the fries with the burger, the extended warranty. It gives the customer added value and gives you more profit per transaction.

Step 6: Offer A Payment Plan

This one is absolutely critical for high ticket items and can mean the difference between the customer balking and walking away or making the sale.

If something is $5,000, presenting it as 12 easy payments of $497 makes it a much easier pill to swallow. People generally think of their expenses on a monthly basis and $497 per month feels much easier than $5,000 in one lump sum.

Also notice that 12 x $497 adds up to more than $5,000. In fact, it makes it almost $6,000. The reason you want to do this is firstly to cover your finance costs if you are financing the sale.

Secondly, you want to incentivize the people who can pay in a lump sum to receive a “discount” by paying upfront.

Step 7: Choose An Outrageous Guarantee

As discussed in this article you need an outrageous guarantee. One that totally reverses the risk of doing business with you.

People have been disappointed so many times that they don’t trust any of the claims you make. It’s nothing personal, just the way it is. You need to make dealing with you a risk-free transaction. In fact, one where the risk is on you should you fail to deliver on your promises. “Satisfaction guaranteed” is weak and ineffective.

Step 8: Play On Scarcity

Your offer needs to have an element of scarcity. A reason why people need to respond immediately. People respond much more to a fear of loss than the prospect of gain.

However again you need a good “reason why” the scarcity exists as you don’t want to be disingenuous with your scarcity claims.

You have a limited supply, limited time, limited resources. Use this to your advantage in your marketing. If you can have a running countdown of time or available stock this can further turn up the heat on the fear of loss emotion.

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No More Lazy Offers. Make It Irresistible.

As you’ve seen there are many components to crafting a compelling offer. Taking the lazy, ill-thought-out road of “10% off” or similar crappy offers is akin to throwing your marketing dollars in the trash.

Take the time to craft a compelling, well-thought-out offer. Your conversion rate will skyrocket, and so will your bottom line.

If you enjoyed this article, you may also find great value in this piece How To Create A Sophisticated Marketing Plan in 9 Steps. As a small business owner, it’s the first step to effectively marketing your business.