Penney Fox
Connecting with your Customers
One of the best ways to take your customer connection to the next level is to give them an offer they can’t refuse.
{ Did you just read that in your best Godfather voice? }
We can throw our stuff up on a web page all day long but what’s really going to get people to click on it? What’s going to make them take that extra step and give you their email or better yet, buy something from your site?
It starts with that simple exercise that we walked through in the Secret to Get People to Buy Your Stuff post. It’s about knowing the the difference between the features and benefits of your products or services.
Most business owners confuse their list of their company’s facts with benefits. To find out your company’s benefits, you’ll need to answer this question for your customers, “What’s in it for me?”
To learn more about how to figure out your features and benefits, take a few moments to read and do the exercises in The Secret to Get People to Buy Your Stuff post.
How do you get people to click on your links?
Before you start trying to squeeze as many benefits as you can into one sentence, I want you to do the What’s In It For My Customers Test.
Your customers need to clearly understand what’s in it for them. Think about these questions before you start pulling your offer together:
1. Are you offering something that solves a problem for your customers?
2. Do they know how your product or service is the solution to their problem?
When you answer the above questions, don’t just give me a yes or no answer. Think about your answer, I mean, really think about it.
If your answer to any of these questions was yes, then ask yourself, “OK they get this but what information do they really know about my stuff?”
And if you answered no to the questions, then you need to do some work on understanding how your benefits help your customers. How can you can share this message with them if you don’t have a clear answer yourself?
The Next Step
After you’ve worked through your benefits, let’s look at the one thing that makes an offer so great that people click on the link and share it with their social circle.
Your offer needs to show them value. It’s just that simple.
Your offer needs to show that your product has more value than risk. For most people, the amount of risk is equal to a dollar amount. Everyone has their own number in their head about what’s too high and what’s the number that they’ll pay.
Think about ways you can offer them value and help ease their mind about the costs involved. Can you offer them free shipping? Bonus ‘if you act now’ products and money-back guarantees are great ways to relieve your customer’s mind about risk.
Try to word your offer with something like this: For the price of lunch at your favorite restaurant, you can get this resource-rich workbook to help you solve your XYZ problem.
When you compare your costs to something they’re already doing every week, it looks like they’re not paying more for something that they’ve already budgeted in as an expense.
What’s the Call to Action?
This is one of the biggest mistakes people make when they craft their marketing messages. They forget to tell you what to do next.
Most people are just as busy as you are and if you don’t tell them what action they need to take and when to do it, chances are, they’ll skip right past your offer.
Make sure your offer has a clear call to action:
- click here
- call now
- enter your email
And think of ways to add in a sense of urgency:
- deadline dates to buy before the rates go up
- early bird prices
- limited time offer
- special bonus for acting now
Just asking someone to sign up for your free newsletter isn’t a compelling offer anymore. People want to know why they should sign up. What kind of information are you going to give me?
Your offer will help you establish trust and show your readers what you know. You’ll show them what it’s like to buy your stuff. You’ll let them know how you can help them and ultimately, they’ll learn what it’s like to work with you and pay you for your services.
And I know what you’re going to ask me so let just say it – yes, the best place to start is to give them something FREE.
I don’t care how much money you make, everyone likes to get something of value for free. It’s just how we’re wired.
But the trick is to find that thing that makes people WANT to download your free thing.
If you want to connect with your customer, give them something that wraps up everything we talked about – provide them with they value, show them how this offer is helping them solve a problem and how when they buy/download/watch/whatever, it’ll inspire them to grow their business.
Here are some examples of free offers that don’t work anymore:
- Contact us forms
- Download our product specs
- Request a quote or free consultation
Here’s what falls into the great free offers category:
- Ebooks
- Step-by-step guidelines about how to do something
- Webinars
- Live and recorded podcasts
- Free printable cheat sheets and templates to help make their life easier
- Checklists to help them organize a project
- Free chapters from a paid ebook (to promote the purchase of the complete ebook)
- Videos with printable worksheets to help them work through the ideas in the videos
An offer they can’t refuse is more than a request for a quote. It has to inspire them, give them ideas to move past a block in their business or help them brainstorm their way to get the answers they’re looking for to keep moving forward.
Your offer needs to convince your customer that your product or service is something that they want and it’s worth giving up their email address to get it.
Photo credit: Mr. Corleone
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