Now that is an offer

Posted by Josef Katz on 3/9/2008 at 5:22 PM
Posted in Marketing

Last week I was directed to Stephen Kimball's website by a coworker. It was perfect timing since I had just written my hire a copywriter post. Stephen has a great offer on his site (he actually calls it amazing). In this case you can get a free trip to Utah to spend the day with Stephen (if you take him up on his offer - read the details since the offer is more then just a day with Stephen).

As a marketer I am always in awe of a great offer. An offer can dramatically improve the results of your marketing effort. The best part of including an incentive of some sort is that you will get responses from people who don't even want (or remember) to take you up on the offer. The fact you included the offer is enough for many people to pick up the phone or visit your site to get more info and to buy.

Here are some of the offers I have used in my career:

Free upgrade in services
Bonus materials included with purchase
Additional material with purchase (bundled products)
Save X%
Rebate when you buy before X date
Buy one and get a second at X% off (or free)
Free consultations

Successful direct response marketing includes an offer of some sort to help push the reader/watcher/listener along to take action. As long as you read your marketing results and you are making money why not include an offer? After all who doesn't like a little something extra with their purchase?

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5 Comments Post a comment

Posted by member1729728 on 03/11/2008 7:22 AM

I've struggled with offers in the past. I often find that those that respond to offers like that are the ones that continue to haggle my price down the line. They figure since I'm putting a discount out there, my prices must be negotiable. What is the best way to offer something without saying that your prices are negotiable?

Darcie King
E Video Productions
www.evideoproductions.net

Posted by Josef Katz

on 03/11/2008 11:27 AM

Darcie,

Offers don't have to be financial. I agree if you start down the road of financial offers you might be going down a slippery slop. What have you tried other then price promotions?

Posted by Trent Stainbrook on 03/21/2008 3:35 PM

An interesting true story demonstrating how deals don't always need to involve money at all:

I never realized this before until I read the copy in a recent catalog I work on, where the owner of a large retailer and distributor described how he obtained a large quantity of really nice quality glass jars to use as giveaways with purchase. Essentially, A company had these specially made for a product launch, but didn't come anywhere close to distributing them as much as hoped, leaving them with palettes and palettes of them in their warehouse. In their line of business, their warehouse space is costly and storing these expensive items there was ending up costing them money because they couldn't store anything else. So this guy visited the warehouse and saw these rows and rows of glass jars and asked what they were for and was told, they aren't for anything any more and are just taking up valuable space. To which he wisely said, I'll take them all off of your hands if you give me "X" amount of your products... to which he agreed.

So he actually made a business deal without money at all... he simply had enough warehouse space and a consumer base large enough to get rid of all these jars where the company that produced the jars did not and were in a costly jam. Therefore when the opportunity came, they were willing to take a hit to right their costly and potentially more costly wrong.

Posted by Josef Katz

on 03/21/2008 4:54 PM

Trent,
Thanks for sharing the story. You make a good point.

When you are involved in marketing you always have to think creatively and in this case it paid off for everyone.

Posted by Cheryle on 03/31/2008 10:02 AM

I liked the story too. It made me wonder if there are any businesses in my area
with this problem... Hmmm!

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