The Irresistible Offer — Small Business Strategies for Making More Sales
Small business owners are pretty smart people, on average. They usually work hard and spend a lot of time getting their business running smoothly. However, half will still fail within five years. The top four reasons are:
· Getting into business with unrealistic expectations.
· Lack of competent business management skills.
· Lack of sales.
· Lack of adequate capital.
If a small business owner got started for the right motives (the number one cause for failure is getting in for the wrong reasons) they can weather the storm. Sound management is a skill that is essential for long-term success, but knowing how to find the markets and servicing those segments with diligence will keep the lights on and the fridge well stocked.
Let’s talk about sales. One of the most important part of sales is finding the right people to pitch. Unfortunately, most small business owners gloss over marketing and leave the heavy lifting to advertising. In the end, this can be expensive. You’re buying leads, but not investing in them. Hear me out.
Wouldn’t it be great if there was a simple way to find out exactly what your target prospects want from your specific niche? What if you could collect future customers while collecting leads and keeping all your customers and prospects engaged in a buying loop? I’m going to convince you to focus on finding your specific target audience and developing a series of irresistible offers that they can’t refuse.
If You Must Spend Money on Advertising, Spend it On Lead Collection
The most successful small business owners develop their lists. That’s because it gives them the power to push a button and watch money come out the other end. Whether it’s a mailing list or email list, this is the actual power of marketing.
I go to an Italian restaurant in a nearby city with my family or just with my wife. Every week, I get an email from the restaurant about their specials. I get birthday greetings and holiday messages. If my wife and I are in the mood to eat Italian food, we know exactly where we’re going. This is the power of list building. The restaurant can send out an enticing offer to their list and bring back customers.
One of the most beneficial results of an email or mailing list is market testing. Before you put out an ad, you can test your offers on existing customers and prospects who signed up to get messages from you. If you’re new to email marketing, and don’t have a list, now is the time to get started. It doesn’t have to be a huge list.
The point is to build a bridge between you and your target audience in order to develop trust, credibility and, eventually, loyalty. When you have that kind of connection with a group of people, your ad dollars go much farther and marketing campaigns become more effective. Not only will your prospects and customers get to know your brand better, you’ll get to know what they want from your products or services.
In Order to Get Their Attention, Give Them What They Want
Let’s say you’re coming out with a new line of products in your health and wellness field. You have a new teeth whitening system that can do wonders for your patients. Are you going to just get on Facebook and begin advertising your new line? I hope not. You’ll want to first find out who has a strong desire for your solutions and the best way to offer it to them.
Now let’s talk about sales copy. Whether you write it yourself or hire someone to do the job, there’s one fundamental rule to copywriting. You must be able to build an emotional connection with your reader within seconds. If you can’t do that, they’ll move on.
Being able to write great sales copy will not cut it if no one notices. The process must start with an emotional connection. You’ll need to get their attention from across a crowded room. You might have to give it a few tries before it works, but this should be your first goal.
Develop Headlines that Connect with Your Audience
The headline is both the metaphorical wave and the handshake. The wave gets their attention, and the handshake brings them in for the message. Spend some time on this even if you hire a pro. Try for at least 20 solid headlines that touch on your prospect’s pain points and aspirations.
Be specific in the message. Don’t worry about isolating other prospects in your message. You want to home in on specific prospects in your campaign. Empathize with your prospect in your headlines. Emphasize your prospect’s point of view. Your headlines get their attention and invite them to discover a solution to their problem or situation. Your offer must be specific and focus on a definite need, problem, or situation.
The Mentalist Approach to Irresistible Offers
Have you ever seen a mentalist in action? Mind-reading tricks are extraordinary. A mentalist uses technical skill, misdirection, psychological subtleties, the power of suggestion, cold reading, and showmanship to amaze their audience. The person who gets their attention often feels that the mentalist knew exactly what they were thinking. These are specific tricks that get the audience to pay attention.
If you are in the dental field and are looking to promote your new teeth whitening system, take a moment to ask yourself which specific audience would absolutely benefit from brighter, whiter teeth on short notice. The mentalist doesn’t speak to the entire audience; they single out a specific individual. This is the key to building the connection. Speak to a very specific audience member.
A woman who is about to get married is likely to pay close attention to your message if she gets an email that specifically points out how a dull smile can ruin her wedding pictures. The message speaks directly to a woman who is conscious of her smile being perfect on that very special day. You are immediately answering three fundamental questions in her mind; what is this, who is it for and how do I benefit?
Brides are just one highly targeted segment. If you came up with a list of people who’re about to appear in public or have their pictures taken, that’s a start. You can narrow the list to entertainers, wedding parties, corporate job seekers, etc. The point here is, be sure to narrow your focus in order to reach a small, but highly receptive segment of the population. These are the people who will take notice and relate to your offer.
Easy Small Business Market Research
Don’t be afraid to find out what people want from your service or product. This is how you save money on your message and make your offer more effective. You can ask people who are (or were) in these specific situations what having brighter, white smiles meant to them. What benefits and drawbacks were there to their experiences? What was important in the situations where having a brilliant smile was essential to them? It’s not enough to sit back and imagine your prospects benefitting from your teeth-whitening system. You need to press those specific emotional buttons to get them to pay attention for a few seconds.
The following websites can offer a lot of insights into what your target audience is looking for.
· Quora.Com
· Facebook groups
· Reddit.Com
· Answers Com
· Ask.Com
· Informationvine.Com
· Ehow.Com
· Gotquestions.Org
You can create an ad to get prospects to take a quick survey. Sites like SurveyMonkey.com can get you valuable information as well. This means that you will get free or low-cost research quickly, once you go over your responses to a few quick tests. There’s no need to launch a full advertising campaign until you know your plan works.
Try out your offer in a dress rehearsal. You’ll want your test headlines to cover most of these top 5 points.
· Get the prospect’s attention with a hook.
· Call them out to show that you recognize them.
· Show them you understand their situation.
· Highlight their problem up front.
· Persuade them with benefits.
When you craft your copy, remember to speak to the person, not the group. Mentalists pick a person in the audience. They speak directly to that person. They will usually start with “What’s your name?” Then, they’ll inject their subject’s name throughout the presentation.
Create the Hook to Get Their Attention
The key to getting noticed is to hit them over the head. Ok, not literally. You need to give them a quick jolt, a virtual tap on the shoulder. Susan’s wedding is in three months and she’s still trying to get all the various components to fit together. Now you mention to her she’s overlooking something really important; her lasting image; her smile.
She may connect with your pitch now, or it may take seven or eight tries. No problem. There will be variations on your offer coming up. She will realize, through repetition, that this is important enough to take action before the wedding day. We already know that less than 3% of conversions happen on the first try. Our goal is to connect our message to our prospect. It will often take multiple visits.
Don’t rely on one version of your offer to hit the jackpot. Test variations and keep on testing. Relationships aren’t based on just one meeting. Sales work the same way. Craft your pitch and keep testing with the same demographic.
Your Irresistible Offer Pitch
Go back to what you researched about your audience. Focus on what people who’re interested in your niche would want or aspire to. What are their grievance against the subject? What do they value? How passionate is the core audience? What insecurities do they have? What crazy theories or solutions do they consider?
What promises can you ethically make that touch their pain points and how can they find value in your solutions? Is there a way to disarm their initial objections in the process? Can your sales copy inspire them? These are elements to consider when you craft your offer.
A sample pitch would be; “How to get [aspiration or solution] while [taking specific action] without [the expected obstacles] in [optimistic time frame].
So, for example, “How to get a picture-perfect smile in the middle of planning your wedding without expensive dentist visits in less than 10 days.”
Two rules to abide by when crafting your offer; make your pitch based on a person’s emotional state and leave them with hope in your options. It’s no secret that fear is a potent motivator. People who are experts at manipulation will home in on that emotion and feed it because, for many people, fear leads to impulsive action.
Instead of using fear, show concern for their situation (the wave) and offer to show them (the handshake) how working with you, convince them they can overcome their situation. I stress this approach because it’s ethical and builds long-term trust.
Timing Your Irresistible Offer Pitch
Following up on your offer will pay off if you persevere. Sales conversion is partly a matter of timing. Don’t stop with one or two attempts; keep going. You may try altering your pitch a little to focus in tighter on your specific target audience. Remember the 20 headlines that we started with? Some of those will come in handy during split testing. People make the buying decision on their own schedule.
As I mentioned earlier, small business owners are usually pretty smart people. The problem is that working hard isn’t enough to keep the lights on. Having a marketing mindset is just as important to business growth as managing the business. Learning how to harvest and promote specific offers to a growing list of prospects can be one of the best investments a business can make.
That’s why I recommend focusing on building a prospect and customer list. Use advertising to bring your prospects to a marketing funnel. Build your prospect list. Being able to keep your finger on the pulse of the consumers most likely to buy your product or service is a golden opportunity. You can make that happen by knowing what they want and crafting irresistible offers that they won’t refuse.
