How to Craft Creative Offers in Your Sales Copy

All about Offers

Whether you sell baby clothes or funeral services, whale watching trips or computer backup systems, you face the task of persuading buyers to commit themselves monetarily to your product or service now. The offer is a key powerful marketing tool slighted or overlooked by many businesses. If you merely tell prospective customers or clients about your price and terms of sale, you’re not crafting a compelling, motivating offer. With a more specific proposition for the buyer – a creative one – you can make a purchase nearly irresistible.

Compare the difference between a mere recital of prices and services in a brochure or Web page and this:

Sign up for six months service by November 15 and we’ll give you two more months free.

Compare the difference between a here’s-what-I-do sales letter and this:

Call before April 10 for your free, no-obligation, 22-point executive security assessment.

Compare the difference between just a catalog of offerings and this:

Until February 28, take advantage of our “Chinese menu sale” – select one item from Column A and one from Column B and get any item of your choice in Column C absolutely free.

Consider the appeal of this offer for basketball enthusiasts:

A distant uncle left us five signed Michael Jordan basketballs. Spend more than $1,000 this month on any sports memorabilia in our catalog and we’ll toss in one of these invaluable collector’s items. First come, first served until they’re gone. So act fast!

Or this offer for training managers:

Ever have an employee who needs to train several times before he or she “gets it”? Send more than five of your people to any one-afternoon seminar and we’ll give you a video of that training session so that those folks can review the material as many times as they need, at their leisure.

Criteria for Offers

Ideas for tantalizing offers are as close as your newspaper or your radio dial. Borrow, adapt and test inducements that you read and hear from other kinds of businesses. Before finalizing any offer in an ad, brochure, telemarketing pitch or sales letter, make sure it meets these criteria:

1. Is it clear?

Show your copy to people who will be honest with you, and ask if they understand what they’d be getting, on what terms. You may think the offer couldn’t possibly be any more black and white, but if your way of stating the payment and delivery terms gets misinterpreted on the other end, you must clarify it further.

This is more difficult than it seems, and it requires your attention every time you put forward an offer. Once I ran a popular offer for a second time in my weekly email newsletter, and neglected to specify in the repeat version exactly what to do to get the special free bonus. A subscriber ordered both a regular item and the bonus item through my online shopping cart, and got upset that he was charged for both. The previous week, I’d explained more clearly that they were to order to first item and I’d “toss in” the second item free. It took two weeks of phone tag to straighten out the problem.

2. Does it have high perceived value?

Sometimes, as when you’re offering information people absolutely can’t find anywhere else, a tape, booklet or manual, or consultation can feel almost priceless to your market, even though it costs you next to nothing to make it available. Consider adding this kind of sweetener to your deal.

Dottie Walters, publisher of a magazine for the speaking industry, offers a directory of speakers’ bureaus – obtainable from no other source – only as what she calls a “gift” when you subscribe to her publication. You can’t buy it. I once renewed my subscription mainly to get that directory.

3. Does it carry a low risk for the buyer?

Guarantees make a tremendous difference. Contrary to what you might expect, the longer the time stated in the guarantee, the fewer returns and refund requests you’ll usually get. Providing you have a quality offering, you’ll sell more with a reassuring guarantee.

Guarantees come in many varieties. Consider those listed below and others you encounter in industries similar to or different from yours. Many marketers find that a certain guarantee galvanizes response while similar ones leave their prospects indifferent.

4. Is the offer believable?

If you’re in the position to sell something for an incredibly low price or astonishingly generous payment terms, explain why. For instance: “Our supplier sold his business at a loss to join a religious cult.”
Or: “We’re running out of space in our warehouse.”
Or: “We have so many hundreds of years of experience at our disposal that we’re confident we can solve your problem quickly.”
Or: “We figure that once you experience our weegies free for a month, you won’t ever want to be without them again.”

One direct mail maverick offered to send free five-dollar bills to readers. He provided no logical reason for doing so, and the offer was completely ignored. No one believed it enough to even determine whether or not it was true. Had he written something like this, however, there would surely have been takers:
“Please help me settle a bet with a friend. He says no one reads sales letters any more. I say they do. Just drop me a postcard with your name and address and the code word ‘snowflake,’ and I’ll send you a crisp new five-dollar bill for your trouble.”

5. Have you provided an inducement to act now?

Human beings procrastinate. But fewer do so when you toss in a special reason to pick up the phone or the pen right now. “Order before July 31 and receive an extra dozen parachute rings free.” “Come in to arrange your own will before October 19 and get another for a second member of your family at half-price.” “This offer expires March 15 or when we run out of stock, whichever comes sooner, so pick up the phone now!”

I’ve had people call and email shortly after an announced deadline, abjectly pleading to be let in on the deal even though they were a few hours late. It’s amusing and eye-opening how seriously people take a cut-off date and time for special offers. Beware of using an automatically extended deadline, as has become common at some Web sites; the copy says “Order by midnight October 29 to get 20% off!” But if you visit the site on October 30 it says, “Order by midnight October 29 to get 20% off!” People aren’t stupid, and this programming trick undermines your credibility.

Below are just a few dozen of the kinds of offers businesses have used profitably. Remember, consider how you can adapt strategies that you notice working for a very different kind of product or service to your own. Don’t dismiss an item on the list just because you haven’t heard of it being applied to your kind of business.

Offers Using Pricing

Offers Using Bonuses

Offers Using Payment Terms

Offers Using Guarantees

Offers using Package Deals

One of the most powerful kinds of offers involves creating an attractive bundle of products and/or services at a set price. The trick lies in assembling a package that appeals to your clientele, encourages them to spend more than they might otherwise and provides them with a high amount of perceived value. Consultants, attorneys, accountants, retail merchants, mail-order merchandisers and many other kind of enterprises should consider devising these kinds of offers. Give the program a special name.

For example, “Carefree Cancun” might include six nights at hotels, two meals a day, coach air fare, two helicopter tours, one bus tour, two travel books, a free “Cancun Hotline” subscription and two complimentary massages.

I’ve found that people really like it when there’s a name for a package deal that rolls nicely on the tongue. For years I did well with something called “The Fame & Fortune Program,” which included the writing of one press release, a media database on disk to use for its distribution and a guarantee that if the release didn’t get any results, I’d write another one at no extra charge.

It also works well to tie a package deal to current events or the season of the year. An estate-planning attorney could offer a low-cost “Tax Reform Checkup” – find out whether the new tax regulations necessitate changes in your will or trusts. Staying on the tax theme, a spa could run a special called “Post-Tax Day Pampering.”

Sometimes a package has special appeal as a gift, although the product or service is not normally considered in the gift category. For instance, in August a car repair shop could offer a mechanical checkup and a one-on-one lesson in basic automotive care for parents to give their kids who were going off to college with a car.

My Most Successful Offers

I’ve been running special offers in my weekly Marketing Minute email newsletter for more than nine years.