The ultimate purpose of every service website is to get qualified leads through the door. Without leads, your business is dead in the water. However, most people mistakenly think that SEO, paid advertising, content marketing, or even their website design will increase their number of leads. In fact, all of those tools increase traffic, not leads. A lead is a visitor that has engaged with your brand in some way and the best way to increase engagement is by creating a killer offer for your service business.
Dean Jackson pioneered the idea of offering your prospects a cookie.
Imagine that we’ve never met yet I invite you to my home. Once there, I tell you to help yourself to anything in my refrigerator. I might even mention that there is a deliciously baked lasagna just sitting there. Chances are, you are going to be a little uncomfortable with the idea of helping yourself to my lasagna. So, you will probably politely pass on the offer.
However, if upon arrival, I tell you that I have baked some cookies just for you. Then I place them on a plate and hand them to you, chances are you are going to be too polite to NOT eat the cookies. In this case, it’s just easier to say yes than it is to say no.
In order to create a killer offer for your service website, you must offer your visitors some cookies. Give them something that they can’t easily refuse.
Sell the Offer – Not the Service
It’s much easier to gain a commitment from a prospect if their commitment is small and carries very little risk. For that reason, sell your offer and not your services. Once they commit to the offer, then they have moved from a cold prospect to a warm lead and you have a better chance of making the sale.
Try Before You Buy Offer for Your Service Business
Offering to let a prospect “try out” your service before they make a commitment makes a killer offer deal that most people cannot refuse.
For example, let’s consider Temper-Pedic. They offer clients FREE SHIPPING and a 90-Night Trial on their mattresses. If the client doesn’t love the product, then they can return it. This eliminates the prospect’s risks and makes them more likely to commit.
Free Is Even Better
FREE Shipping… FREE Gift… FREE Trial…
If your prospect thinks that they can get something for nothing, then they feel compelled to “take advantage.”
A carpet cleaner, Joe Polish, built a highly successful business around this idea of FREE. His offer included one free room of carpet cleaning for every customer. This offer turned his failing carpet cleaning business around and soon it was bringing in millions in gross sales. All he did was craft an offer people couldn’t refuse and then built his marketing strategy around that offer.
Risk Reversal
Another strategy for creating a killer offer for your service business is to fully eliminate the risk.
Go back to the Tempur-Pedic example. A money-back guarantee, plenty of time to make a decision, FREE shipping – where is the risk? About the only thing they have to worry about is that they might love the mattress. Mattress sales are highly competitive and purchasing a mattress is not cheap (especially the Temper-Pedic mattress). Without a compelling offer, it would be very hard to convince people to pay the extra money based solely on claims of comfort.
Why?
Because they have no way of being sure that it is comfortable until they have tried it out for themselves.
Name Your Offer
To “sell” an offer you should name it. Rather than push a “free consultation” you can offer a 5-Step Audit or a 10 Point Analysis. Once your offer for your service business has a name then it increases in perceived value. If you couple the idea of perceived value with risk reversal, you can even further increase your offer’s appeal.
The Law of Supply and Demand
According to Investopedia:
The law of supply and demand is a theory that explains the interaction between the supply of a resource and the demand for that resource. … Generally, low supply and high demand increase price. In contrast, the greater the supply and the lower the demand, the price tends to fall.
If you substitute the word “price” with the word “value,” then you can better understand how this applies to your service business offer.
Make your offer for a “limited time” or offer a “limited number” or make the prospects “qualify” for the privilege of receiving it. You will find that people cannot stand for the idea of “missing out” on something that someone else might receive. Scarcity compels people to act quickly.
How do we know this works?
We know selling an offer works because we have a no risk, hard-to-pass-up, offer which people love. We give prospective clients a FREE Mockup of their new site in just 7 days with no future obligation. That’s right… we allow you to “try before you buy.”
Ericks Webs Design builds high-converting websites that profitably generate leads for your service business. We can also guide you on the most lucrative marketing channels and how to create a killer offer for your service business. Contact us for either a Free Mockup of your new website or a free marketing consultation.
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