Stop 'Adding Value' To Your Offers (Do This Instead...)
“Come one, come all! Step right up and try your luck!”
You find yourself at the Marketing Bro Carnival of Desperation and Questionable Life Choices.
As you enter you see the bearded lady on break, sitting on a bench chain smoking Newport 100’s.
“You right there, come spin the wheel for your chance to become a billionaire!” a carny barks at you with an evil twinkle in his eyes.
Intrigued, you ask the rules of the game.
“The wheel has two colors - red and green. If you land on green, you win a billion dollars.”
But what about red?
“Oh, red. Yeah. That. Nothing major really.” the carny says. “Just Snarls gets to bite you on the privates.”
You glance behind the carny and see a caged raccoon foaming at the mouth eyeing your privates like a gas station burrito.
“It only cost $1 to try your luck!” the carny says and points at the wheel - a wheel that looks like this:
If you play there is about a 100% Snarls feasts tonight.
You start to leave.
“Wait!” the carny calls out. “Just for you, and just this once I’ll sweeten the deal. If you win, I’ll increase the jackpot from $1 billion… to $5 billion dollars!”
You head for the exit stat.
Next to this carnival is another - the Fladlien Carnival of Reason & Puppies.
It also has a wheel of fortune game. It costs $1 to spin and if you win…
You don’t bank a billion bucks - you only get two measly dollars.
If you lose… you get a lick on the cheek by Bella, the cutest darn golden retriever you’ve ever seen.
Half the wheel is green, half is red.
You play all night and leave with a small stack of money and a lot of Bella kisses.
10/10 experience. Would go again.
The point: people might buy when you increase the value… but people WILL buy when you remove the risk.
The biggest secret to my online success is I spent more time focusing on how to eliminate the risk my customers would have to take when they bought my stuff.
If marketers spent far more time on reducing the risk involved with buying their stuff - they could remove A LOT of their products benefits… and yet sell way more product.
At much higher prices.
The takeaways:
Big promises don’t matter much if the downside is too scary.
People will happily take smaller wins… if the worst case scenarios won’t keep them up at night.
Most marketers think pumping up the value is always the answer. (It’s isn’t).
The real money is in reducing risk.
When you remove risk, you offer less benefits, charge more money and somehow sell MORE units.
Here's a bonus insight:
Notice how the story itself proves the point...
By using a funny carnival metaphor with a rabid raccoon...
Instead of some boring corporate explanation about risk mitigation.
Making the lesson entertaining = removing the "risk" of the reader wasting their time.