Most offers fail because they never get made. I get it. I would be reluctant to pitch something if I knew it wasn't world-class. The stronger your offer, the easier it is to create everything else needed to lead someone to that offer.
So, how do you make an offer irresistible? I could spend hours on the topic. But are there some simple hacks to easily uplevel the power of your offers? Yes, specifically:
Discounted dollars.
Not buying = More expensive.
Hyper-specificity.
Master these three elements and it can pluck you from obscurity and turn you into a market leader. Those who lead their markets get the most exposure, referrals, and opportunities.
If you're up for that, here's where you start.
Discounted Dollars
Price on its own is meaningless. You can only determine if something is a good deal based on the value you receive in exchange for the price you pay.
Is a million dollars a lot? For a used Toyota Camry, sure. But for a new Bugatti? It's a steal. You'd move heaven and earth to raise a million bucks for a Bugatti because you could easily flip it for a profit.
In fact, my aim is to make customers feel almost guilty when they buy from me because they feel they are taking advantage of how naive I am to the value I provide. Note: this doesn't mean selling stuff for cheap. Cheap is often not a good offer because you sacrifice quality and shortcut support for the sake of a lower number on a price tag. We want everything we sell to always be a good deal but never be cheap.
Your goal for creating an irresistible offer is to find or engineer things your customers would normally have to pay a lot more for and offer them for far less than what your audience expects to pay.
Not Buying = More Expensive
Our brains are not good at processing what isn't there. We are biased to only see what is in front of us, which is, at best, half the story. For offers, this means only seeing the cost to buy, but missing the cost for NOT buying. For certain customers, not buying will cost more.
How do you value your time? If you could skip buying a product and do it on your own but it took you 10 hours, did you really save money? For years, I used to shop for clothes at Walmart, wear glasses with crooked frames, and not even comb my hair or shave my beard. When I threw on a bit of designer clothing and cleaned up my appearance, I discovered I closed more deals easier and for higher stakes. It was more expensive for me NOT to buy Tom Ford.
An even greater cost to some of your customers is the psychic and emotional toll of uncertainty. If you walk around with an unsolved problem, the longer it remains unsolved, the more it wears you down emotionally and depletes your energy. The less energy you have, the less you can do.
The better you can help your audience realize the time and emotional cost of NOT buying your offer, the better they'll be able to evaluate the quality of your offer, and the sooner they can decide whether or not they should buy your offer.
Imagine then, if you made it your duty to create offers that evaporate the psychic energetic leaks and unburden the customer of the emotional baggage related to what you sell? That can only work to your benefit EVERY time.
Hyper Specific
Too many customers settle for second or third-rate offers because no one is catering to their specific needs. I like these buyers because they’re motivated to spend money already, and the bar is set low for exceeding their expectations.
For example, take this Hare Krsna cookbook. It’s not enough for Hare Krsnas to eat vegetarian. Certain ingredients such as garlic, onions, and yeast can’t be used. How you prepare the food itself is also important - cleanliness, not tasting it at all while you cook - need to be taken into consideration.
While there are thousands of vegetarian cookbooks out there, only a tiny few cater specifically to Hare Krsnas, even though there are millions of Krsna devotees all over the world.
By being hyper-specific, you create the perfect offer for a very narrow audience. Not only does this allow your customers to feel "Wow, you made this exactly with me in mind!" but it also eliminates your competition and opens up additional distribution for your offer.
I bought my Krsna cookbook at the Los Angeles Hare Krsna temple, not at a bookstore or in a cooking class.
The more you actively seek out audiences who are settling for products not exactly made for them, and unburden them of having to make their own adjustments to better use those existing products, the more you’ll sell. Show them the work you’ve done on their behalf, and they’ll reward you with their business.
Putting it together
Fortunes can be made if you only do the following: scout out existing, winning offers and ask yourself - “what could make this better?”
How can you further extend the "dollars at a discount" aspect of the offer? Or show the cost of not buying the offer? Or could you make it more specific, to resonate deeper with a certain audience or to open up a new marketing channel?
Practice this enough and soon you’ll spot opportunities so obvious you can’t resist taking advantage of them, hopping in excited and eager to serve and sell.
The offer is 80% of the success of a marketing campaign, so if you just double down on what I shared with you today, you’ll more easily create better offers and win more customers.
राधे राधे. This narrow audience thing is a huge huge help.