Today we will focus on special offers and discounts. You already have your product portfolio and you know how much you can charge for what you are offering.
As we mentioned in other posts, you will have to set the prices carefully so as not to make mistakes that could affect your profit margin.
And today’s topic is closely related to your pricing policy. I will explain how I organize and plan promotions and discounts in my marketing campaigns, because I don’t want to lose money when I’m creating an attractive promotion for my customers.
The main goal of a small business, such as mine is not to sell to get rich, but to help my ideal clients, to make them happy, improve their quality of life so that they accept to pay for it without any doubt that they are getting something valuable in return for the money they are spending with me.
We are not sellers; our mission is not to sell. We want to help our customers to achieve their goal. For example, in my case, I help women who want to turn ideas into actions that will help them to improve their quality of life and they pay me for advice. They accept to pay me because they trust me and they know I’m going to do my best to help them.
Therefore, selling is the tool to fulfill my mission and transform the lives of my ideal customer. Once you understand that you are not just trying to make money, we can move forward with today’s theme.
Your sales strategy should be aligned with your marketing strategy. Only by finding the balance between the two will you be able to show how special, different, and useful is the solution you are offering.
If at this time you still don’t know clearly who your ideal customer is, the problem you can help solve and how you will help him, I advise you to take some time to work on these points. You will need to have these concepts well defined to develop the theme we will see today.
Now that you already know what you have to offer, for whom your product is directed, it’s time to work on promotions to catch these leads.
No matter how good your value proposition is, if you are not able to convince your customers to trust you, you will not sell anything. Or maybe yes, but not enough to turn your business into your primary source of income.
How to demonstrate credibility and convince your buyer persona to trust you?
> Prove you know what you’re talking about: share quality content for free on your blog. It is the most effective way to show that you are an expert within your niche.
> Collaborate with other entrepreneurs from related niches: Together we are stronger. Forget the word competition, on the internet, there is room for everyone, and it is easier to work in groups than separately.
> Offer a welcome gift to your subscribers and send only unique content with valuable information that will help them take their first steps. An ebook with the key points to start, a mini-course with videos or manual, a list of tools you use to manage your business, or anything else that you believe will be vital to helping your new subscribers to start in the right direction.
> Collect testimonials from happy customers who worked with you and are satisfied with your solution. These users will probably accept to tell their history to the world.
And this last point is what creates more confidence. The opinions of people who have tried your solution and are happy with the result.
That generates confidence, but it is something difficult to achieve, at least in the beginning, not because your solution is not good, but because to get real testimonials, you will need to sell to someone, that is, you will need to convince somebody to trust in your project. Donating your product to a friend in exchange for a testimonial is not the best option.
That’s not fair. Here we want to show that we are professionals, we want to help our ideal client. Your friend, unless he really is your buyer persona, doesn’t serve as proof that your solution works. Falsifying testimonials is cheating and believe me, that could have terrible consequences for the reputation of your business.
► The first sales
Therefore, to generate your first sales without having to rely on real testimonials, you need to offer a good product or service, but with a promotion, a deal so fantastic and with enough guarantees that your first customers will be able to rely on you. You need to create a perfect match between low price and an irresistible deal.
I know you don’t want to sell your product for a very low price, but don’t worry, we’re just talking about temporary campaigns. Remember that you don’t want just to sell, you want to help your customers and demonstrate that you really know what you’re doing, that your solution works.
But in the beginning, the value of the product will be one of the main factors that your customers will consider. To resolve this issue, you will need to create an irresistible offering with a structured marketing campaign so that you will be able to sell more than usual and collect many testimonials that you will include in your sales page. After you have several reviews, you can increase the value of your product and start charging a fair price.
And how to start? Well, I’ll tell you a bit about my experience so you can adapt it to your own idea.
Remember that even if your niche is different from mine, the steps you should follow if you want to succeed are always similar. You only need to sit in a quiet place, think about your project, and adapt the ideas to the reality of your business.
You certainly already have a blog, you are sending a newsletter and have created your social profiles. If you have not already done so, you should not even be reading this article.
Well, let’s start working on promoting our product, but first, we need to define our goal and the steps we have to take to reach it. At this time, we will work with a single product or service.
For example, I offer basic programs starting from $25 up to personalized mentoring services for $997. If I had to start today, I should create a promotion to advertise my basic program, to attract more customers and get many reviews.
And how to do that?
We can use several options according to the means of promotion that you choose. I’m going to give you some ideas so that you will be able to select the best option for your business.
► Promotional campaign on your blog
For this first campaign, we are going to publish a series of three quality articles on our blog. This content will be written to arouse curiosity, attract attention, and connect emotionally with our ideal client.
First entry: Here, you should focus on the main problem that the product or service you are promoting can solve. This is not an excellent article, but rather a basic post with relevant information to new visitors.
Before writing this text, you will need to answer some questions that will help you to focus on the goal of the post.
- What does your ideal client want?
- What is he worried about?
- What does he feel like when trying to tackle the problem you want to help him solve?
- How does this problem affect his life?
In this first entry, you will describe the problem, showing that you understand how he feels, what he thinks every time he is affected by it and what he wishes he could change in his life. We are getting the user’s attention so that we can show him that he has a problem and that he will have to solve it.
– Second entry:
your ideal client has already thought about the problem; he is already interested and will want more information. The next post will talk in-depth about the problem, about how his life would change if he decided to find a solution for the issue.
- How does this problem affect his quality of life?
- How does this problem affect his relationship with his family?
- How does it affect his work performance?
- How does it affect his happiness?
- How does it affect his financial situation?
If you approach these five points, you can certainly convince him to keep reading. You can’t overdo it, or your customer would become so desperate that he probably would end up looking for a psychologist.
No need to scare your reader too much, be discreet in the way you talk about the problem he is facing.
– Third Entry:
We are now preparing the way for your customer to buy your product. In the last entry, you will summarize the problem, showing how it affects the different areas of the daily life of the buyer persona and how your product will help to solve the problem.
But be careful. Remember that the sale is a tool to help your ideal customer; it is not the ultimate goal of your strategy. In this post you will have to present real solutions, to show that you are not exaggerating and that your product will really help him. If at this point, your customer is not convinced, your product is not the best solution, or you didn’t do your job correctly.
If you are sure your lead is ready to take the next step, you can include a link to your sales page.
Your customer should be able to follow the first steps before paying for your product so that he can see your solution works, and finally you will be able to convince him to trust you.
We are starting; we want to get testimonials and comments if we are not willing to offer our product to the people who are visiting our site, they will never accept to buy it.
And finally, we can work with our irresistible promo. But before you start planning your promotions and discounts, you will have to create a useful landing page. This page is a necessary tool for boosting your conversion rate.
Your irresistible promotions and discounts
You should offer a discount that they can’t refuse. For example, for 48 hours, I offered my ebook on emotional marketing for only $7. The regular price is $27, but I just wanted to collect testimonials and reviews. I’ve sold almost 100 copies in about two weeks.
What do you think? My goal was not to sell and make lots of money, my promotional strategy was just a tool for collecting real testimonials from my readers to show that my product really works.
And several users accepted to write a few lines about the product. But of course, I could offer it at that price for a limited time. In fact, this ebook is not for sale individually, which made the offer even more attractive to those who were really interested in learning to work with emotional marketing strategies.
You can offer lightning-quick promotions and discounts of over 50% for a limited time or work with a fixed number of sales. You could also sell related products in a bundle; we love buying several products at once, as long as the discount is really good.
Make it clear that you want to collect testimonials and reviews; they should understand that they are getting a good price, but that you expect them to take a few minutes to write a review about it. It is a promotional strategy where your goal is to increase your authority as an expert in your niche. In this life, not everything is about money; you must first build branding and convince people to trust you.
► Strategy for your Social media profiles and your Newsletter
As we have repeatedly commented here: publishing an article in your blog isn’t enough. You will have to promote it, to share it with your followers and subscribers.
For instance, you could share the series of three entries in your social profiles and when you publish the last article, add a small text on the cover of your profile, so that your followers may see the post and check it out.
Send the articles to your subscribers, to prepare the way before presenting your final solution. You should send a newsletter after publishing each post, because if you just send a message with several links, many subscribers will never read all the posts and this could affect your sales strategy.
A few days before your irresistible offer ends, filter the subscribers who clicked on the third newsletter, where you presented your solution. After filtering these contacts, you can create a new group with only those subscribers and send them an exclusive campaign.
Mailrelay offers a subscriber targeting filter to automate this process with a free autoresponders system.
You will have to take care of all the details to achieve your ultimate goal.
► Collecting testimonials that add value
A week or two after the purchase, contact the customers who bought it to know their level of satisfaction. You don’t have to ask many of questions; you just need to create a short questionnaire or form to identify people who would be willing to leave their testimonial on your site:
- What problem did he want to solve when he bought the product?
- What has changed after buying the product or solution?
- Would he recommend your solution to other people with the same problem?
Also, you could request a photo or link from the client’s website, explaining that you will post the URL with the testimonials, as this would show to your visitors that the reviews are real, from people who purchased and tried the product.
And that’s all you need to know to launch your first campaign and get real testimonials to increase your authority within your niche. It’s not that complicated, is it?
You just have to do things little by little, taking care of every little detail, until you reach your ultimate goal.
And always remember that selling is not your ultimate goal, but the tool you will use to get the results you want to achieve.