Making Offers They Can’t Refuse

By Richard Parkin

When used correctly, an offer is one of the most effective sales strategies imaginable, vastly improving your conversion rate, while convincing your customer that they’re taking advantage of your business, resulting in increased loyalty and satisfaction. However, not every offer can be successful.

In some cases, providing an offer can negatively impact overall sales, with offer providers seriously losing out. Understanding what it takes to make an offer successful is a vital skill for any entrepreneur, particularly in the Direct Response sector. 

While there’s an incredible range of variables that can determine whether or not an offer is successful, there are some that you absolutely need to be aware of. This blog is all about covering those key points, showing you how to build offers that none of your visitors will want to pass up.

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Establishing Offer Value

For an offer to be successful, it needs to be worth something (or, at least, to seem that way). If you don’t talk about a product’s price before offering your reader a 50% discount, you’re essentially undermining yourself. 

You’ve told the reader that the product is worth 50% of what you’re saying it’s worth – don’t be surprised if you see a lower-than-expected conversion rate. At very least, take the time to set out what the product could be worth, before explaining why you’re offering the product below that established value.

Similarly, it’s worth considering the psychological effect that a discount creates. You may think that a higher discount offers better value for a customer – in reality, this is often very different. Past a certain point, discounts tend to have diminishing returns, again because they undermine the value of the product/ service. 

If someone offered you a 90% discount on an iPhone (or a similarly high-ticket item), you’d assume that something was off about the deal. While a 10% discount is obviously less, it’s far more realistic, making the offer more impressive, maintaining value for both the product and the offer itself. 

Because your product/ service is nowhere near as established as an iPhone, it’s even more important to consider what your discount says about your product’s value. Test different levels of discount – depending on your business, the ideal discount may be far lower than you think.

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Limiting Offer Availability  

Another essential part of creating value for your offer is creating the perception of exclusivity. Even if your offer is available for anyone who ever checks out your website, you don’t want to tell your customers that. 

Showing someone that an offer is always available virtually always diminishes conversions. People like the idea that they’re getting something that others can’t have – it virtually always makes them more likely to buy. 

Depending on how your business operates, there are several different ways in which you can establish exclusivity. If you’re offering a seasonal discount, make it clear that the offer will only be available for a limited amount of time.

For set, long-term offers, it’s often worth pointing out to customers that the offer is exclusively available through your landing page. Use a countdown timer to make the point even clearer – and your offer even more unmissable. 

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Building Consumer Confidence

Getting a potential buyer to trust you is an exceptionally difficult task, especially if you’re coming in cold. You don’t just need to convince the visitor that your product/ service is worth the money – you also need to convince them that your company is legitimate.

Regardless of what your product or service features, there are a few confidence-boosting options no business should overlook:

• Customer Reviews: What do your customers have to say about you? Unless there’s a serious issue with your reviews, it’s generally worth incorporating them into your site. Ideally, this should usually be a live review panel, but even including a few quotes can make a difference.
• Buyer Protection Guarantee: Offering a satisfaction guarantee of some kind is an ideal way to assure customers that they can trust you with their money. It’s also a near-essential step for reducing chargebacks, and improving your overall financial stability and flexibility. 
• Trust Icons: These are short snippets of code demonstrating that your site is vouched for by a certain organization, from hosting providers to payment-processing companies and security firms. Statistically, trust icons are far more important for conversions than you may think – don’t ignore them.

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