How to drive your ideal customer to you
in 5 straight forward steps
By Coach Jeff Earlywine
Powerful offers that drive your audience to take action can be used in your business to do a myriad of things. They're great for moving old or overstocked product, overcoming buyer objections, eliminating purchase risk, or even just building your customer database.
Offers designed to be lead generators drive more qualified prospects to your business. They weed out the buyers who would take advantage of your offer, but who are not otherwise a part of your target market. In simple terms, a powerful offer gets people to respond, or take action.
Often, powerful offers are called irresistible offers because they seem too good to pass up. They make your target audience think, "Wow! This is the chance I've been waiting for!" or, "I'd be nuts not to take advantage of this opportunity!"
A powerful offer will feature an element of urgency or scarcity as a key motivator for action. If I offered "2 for 1 Mother Daughter haircuts" every day of the year, chances are I wouldn't have a stampede of prospects at my door. I would likely draw a few new clients a week, but the majority of those who saw the offer - even if they were interested - would probably put it off for later. When you create an offer for lead generation, you want your prospect to take action as soon as possible. Now, let's face it, we're all procrastinators at heart, so you have to give your audience a reason to take action without delay.
So, instead of just "2 for 1 Mother Daughter haircuts," I could offer, "2 for 1 Mother Daughter haircuts, Mother's Day weekend - 20 spots available, book your appointment today!" This offer has an element of urgency - the offer is only valid for a two-day period - and scarcity - there are a limited number of appointments during those two days.
Let's walk through an easy step-by-step process for creating powerful marketing offers that will generate qualified leads for your business.
1. Establish who you are trying to target, and what you want them to do.
First, like all of your lead generation efforts, you need to establish who your target market or audience is before you can attempt to reach them. In most cases, this will be the target market you originally identified.
Secondly, you must be clear about what you want your prospects to do, and ask them to do it in your offer. Since you're creating an offer to generate leads, in this case you want readers to identify themselves in some way, and make contact with you.
2. Identify the emotional motivators or "hot buttons" that will get your target to take action.
Using the categories below, decide why your target market needs or wants what you have to offer. How do they feel in general about your product or service? What problem does your offer provide the solution to?
· Safety and financial security for self and family
· Convenience and time management
· Freedom from worry
· Self-improvement
· Acceptance and recognition from others
· Basic needs, including food, shelter, love, personal maintenance, etc.
In my example, I'm targeting the emotions associated with the bond between mothers and daughters, especially on Mother's Day, and their common interest in beauty services. The offer alludes to an opportunity to spend time with each other, an activity for Mother's Day, and a way to save money while doing so.
3. Once you have identified the emotions you will try to target, determine which type of offer will work best.
Such as:
· A Free Offer
· Guarantee Offer
· Free Trial or Demonstration Offer
· Premium Offer
4. Draft several hard-to-refuse offers based on these motivators.
Brainstorm as many different types of offers as you can, using emotional keywords or hot buttons. Depending on the type of business you have, and the products or services you offer, you may wish to focus on a single product or service, or open up the offer to all the items you have in store.
Are there any freebies you can throw in? Any overstock that can be handed out as a free gift, packaged with a complementary product? What about bonus services that you can add on to products for a limited time (with limited costs)? Will a simple guarantee make a big difference?
5. Select two of your financially viable offers, then test them to measure which works best.
I like to test two offers at a time when I first start to use this lead generation strategy. This will tell me what emotional motivators really work with my target audience, and then I can continue to build on that knowledge.
Remember, testing and measuring is a vital component of your lead generation efforts, and it elicits some really valuable information. Once you know what works with your audience, you can use that information on emotional motivators to influence decisions you make when writing headlines and other copy.