How to Craft an Irresistible Offer that your Prospects Can’t Refuse
All business growth is driven by marketing and sales.
And to succeed in marketing and sales, it’s important to master the art of creating irresistible offers. A single irresistible offer can significantly increase your sales and revenue by increasing the conversion of your prospects into paying customers.
If you’re driving visitors to your website via your marketing efforts, then it’s imperative that you have an irresistible offer clearly showcased so that your visitors are compelled to take action, engage with you, and spend money with you.
What is an irresistible offer?
An irresistible offer is simply a strategic structuring of your products and/or services where the value-to-cost ratio is value-heavy. Which means that the value of your offer far exceeds the cost to access the value (Michael Hunter, 2019). The offer seems so good that it’s an easy “yes” for those who need it. It feels like a ‘no-brainer’ and your prospect feels compelled to buy now.
In this article I’m assuming that you already intimately know and understand your ideal client and that you know what their most pressing challenges and pain points are — and the solution you provide solves those challenges.
Your irresistible offer needs to solve one of your ideal client’s most pressing ‘hair on fire’ issues with a bulletproof solution.
Once you know that your offer is going to solve a critical and high-pain problem that your client is currently experiencing, you can get busy crafting your irresistible offer that will make them want to say ‘yes’ to you right now.
There are 12 ingredients to crafting an irresistible offer. Not all 12 ingredients are necessary at all times, but try to include as many as you can where possible to maximise your chances of people engaging with your offer.
The 12 Ingredients of an Irresistible Offer
1. Emotion. Emotion. Emotion.
Powerful marketing is all about connecting your prospects to the emotion or feeling that they’ll experience through engaging with your product or service.
As I’m sure you already know, humans are driven by feelings. You might have heard the saying:
“People buy with emotion and then justify their decision with logic.” This is 100% true.
How will your customer feel when they’ve consumed your product or service? How can you describe that in your offer?
Here’s an example from a client of ours who’s a Health Coach. See how she’s focused on the feelings of “lighter, brighter and beautiful” after engaging with her 12-week health coaching program. The imagery she’s chosen also helps the customer to tune into those feelings of freedom and lightness. This client filled her program quickly using this irresistible offer.
2. Clearly Define Who it is For, the Problem they Have and the Solution You Provide
When it comes to making an offer, the more specific you can be, the better.
- Clearly express WHO your offer is for: Spell it out as specifically as possible. For example, my Profit Accelerator program is specifically for the “success-obsessed business owner in the first 1-5 years of business”.
- What are the specific problems your target clients are dealing with? List 3-5 bullet points. For example, the specific pain points I’m targeting in the Profit Accelerator program are: 1. “You’re amazing at what you do and yet you struggle to attract a steady stream of paying clients.” and 2. “You’re savvy and resourceful but you’re struggling to make sense out of all the conflicting information out there about how to best grow your business.”, and 3. “You’re not sure what to focus your time and energy on to get the best results.” and 4. “You want to generate consistent revenue and profits as quickly as possible.”
- What is the solution you provide? Clearly outline how you solve their pain points in your offering. What are the results your clients will achieve through working with you? Summarise them in 3-5 bullet points.
3. Sell the Destination, not the Aeroplane
Many business owners fall into the trap of selling their process instead of the results that their process will generate. Once people understand the transformation you create, the money becomes insignificant and they will pay you to help them achieve the transformation. In marketing, the term ‘transformation’ refers to the process of you taking them from point A (where they are now) to point B (where they will be after working with you). Being able to clearly articulate the transformation is THE KEY to effective marketing.
To help you understand the difference between the destination and the aeroplane…
Imagine you’re run down and tired and you desperately need a holiday in the sunshine. You go to the travel agent and they recommend Fiji as a good destination. Then they start telling you all about the Boeing 737 that will get you to Fiji. “It has in flight streaming, reclinable chairs and in-flight meals”. The truth is, you don’t care how you’re going to get to Fiji. You only care about what you’ll find when you get to Fiji: i.e. the poolside cocktails, easy beach access, consistent thirty-degree sunshine and warmth etc.
You need to sell the destination, not the aeroplane!
You can do this by moving from speaking in feature-based language (the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of your product or service) and instead speak in results-based language (describe the impact or effect of working with you).
Check out the following two examples and see for yourself which one feels more compelling.
You can easily see which one feels more compelling, right?
Wherever possible, define the feelings and emotion of the end destination that you take your clients to, and always speak in results-based language to maximise your chances of your offer engagement.
4. Clarity
You might have heard the marketing statement “The confused person never buys.”
In marketing, clarity is everything. The clearer you can be the better. If your prospect ends up confused about what you’re offering, what’s included and what’s not and how much they need to invest, they’ll simply click away and you’ll lose them.
Be crystal clear about what your offer entails and what the outcomes will be for your customer. Below is an example of one of my offers called “Fast-Track Your Funnel”, clearly showing what they’ll get and for how much, including emotive imagery to capture their imagination and emotion. How could you represent your offers graphically?
5. Easy Payment Solutions
People don’t generally like to make large payments at one time. To lower your buyer’s resistance and to make it an easier “yes”, always provide an option for a payment plan
Generally speaking, I recommend that you offer an incentive (typically a 10-15% discount) to pay up front because it makes your life easier when people pay up front (there’s no administrative burden or chasing payments). But always provide a way for people to pay-as-they-go and offer all payment options (e.g. credit card, PayPal or direct debit).
You don’t want to lose a customer because you make it difficult for them to pay you.
6. Offer a Time-Sensitive Discount
As you saw in the health coaching offer above, The Wholesome Health Coach offered a 50% reduction on normal prices for her ‘Winter Special’. In the terms and conditions for her offer, she specified a strict cut off date for the end of the offer to give people the incentive to buy now while the price is so heavily discounted.
A time-sensitive discount gives people the motivation they need to take action now, rather than delaying their action any further.
And be sure to raise your prices again at the end of the offer period. Always act with integrity and stick to your terms and conditions of your own offers otherwise you’ll lose the trust and confidence of your client base.
7. Add a Bonus or a Premium
A great way to give your prospect extra motivation to engage with your offer (and to make it extra irresistible!) is to offer a bonus in their package. For example, if you’re a personal trainer, you could include a customised meal plan with their personal training package. Or if you’re a Book Coach, you could offer a home study course on how to publish your book with Amazon, for example.
What’s a bonus you could include or create to make your offer extra irresistible?
8. Create a Bundle of High Value
Which products or services could you bundle together in order to give your client the incentive to buy more?
Which things could you package together that provide massive value?
For example, when my clients join my Profit Accelerator Private Coaching Package, they get access to my Inspired Business Collective and my Business Start-Up eBook Bundle for FREE.
9. Can You Reverse the Risk?
A great way to make your offer irresistible is to make it risk-free for your customer. How can you shoulder the risk instead of your client (reverse the risk)?
Ask yourself the question:
“What would you do if you only got paid when your client got the desired result?”
Asking yourself this question forces you to focus on how to best get your client the desired result, as fast as possible. For example, as a Sales Coach, you could promise your client that they’ll make their invested money back by the end of your program, and if not, you’ll work with them until they do. This is a type of ‘value-first’ offer which makes it an easy “yes” for the prospect.
Here’s another example of how you could shoulder the risk:
“Try us for your first month, at zero risk or obligation. If you’re not totally satisfied for any reason, let us know. You’ll get a prompt and courteous full refund of your first month’s fee. After your first month, cancel anytime, and you won’t be billed a penny more.”
This is a softer version of the value-first offer. If you try and aren’t satisfied, you’re get your money back. The risk of the transaction is not on you, the client, but on you, the seller.
The point is to take on as much of the risk as possible, so the client feels like they’ve got nothing to lose. But everything to gain.
How could you integrate this concept into your offers?
10. Provide Urgency or Scarcity
So far we’ve explored various ways you can give your prospects several compelling reasons why they should take your offer.
But you still have to explain why they need to take your offer right NOW.
As you’ve probably experienced, in the world of sales, “later” usually means “no”. If a prospect visits your sales page and decides to “come back later”… you’ve most likely lost that sale.
This is where urgency comes into play. Urgency gives people a reason to buy right now, today, rather than putting it off for tomorrow.
How can you inject some urgency into your offer?
The easiest way to do this is through a combination of scarcity and/or a deadline.
Scarcity is when you have only a certain number of products available, or spaces left in a workshop or program.
A deadline is similar to your time-sensitive offer: Your product is only available for a limited time. If you decide to offer a price reduction, be sure to only offer it for a limited time. Be sure to stick to your own word to maintain the trust and confidence with your client base.
11. Champion a Cause
People are becoming more and more socially conscious and want their buying choices to have a positive impact somehow. Can you give a percentage of your profit to a charity you care about? This demonstrates a level of social consciousness that lowers your buyer’s resistance even more.
What can you contribute to through your product or service that will provide an extra incentive for your customers to say “yes”. Which causes does your target market care about?
12. Social Proof
When you’re making an offer, show the social proof that your offer works through testimonials or other credibility boosting things like awards or affiliations.
Wherever you can, try to get testimonials or social proof that your product or service actually works. This is yet another quality that makes your offer irresistible. Because if others have gotten results, they should be able to too!
Bringing it All Together
To see what a sales page looks like for an Irresistible Offer, check out the sales page for my Profit Accelerator program by going to this link: The Profit Accelerator: 90-Day Program.
I hope you’ve found this information super helpful and it enables you to go and create your irresistible offers.
If you enjoyed this article, you might also like:
Why You Need to Know Your Business ‘Why’, Vision and Mission.
How to Quickly Grow Your Business with 90 Day Goals
The Art of Content Marketing: How to Build Your Brand Credibility and Easily Win New Clients
10 Reasons Why Your Business Needs a Blog