One Coach

You already know that the offer is the second most important success factor of any direct marketing campaign, either online or offline. (The most important factor? Your potential or existing client list.)

What you may not know is that the difference between an “OK” offer and a “killer” offer can translate to many thousands of revenue dollars. The best use of your marketing time and money, therefore, is to develop a killer offer and make sure you have a great list.

Here are six tips that will raise your offer to “killer” status:

• Figure out exactly who you are going to send the offer to. Follow just this one tip, and your campaign will be more successful than at least 90 percent of your competitors. Most businesses come up with the offer first, then decide who to send it to. This is no where near as effective as deciding who you want to attract, then fashioning an offer that will appeal to that particular group of people.

• Make the value of your offer a no-brainer. Consumers today, whether businesses or individuals, are inundated with all kinds of sales pitches that include a multitude of offers. As a result, they are fairly suspicious and short on patience. Your offer must be so clear that your recipients understand it instantly. If your offer is some kind of discount for example, half off is easier to understand than 50 percent off, which in turn is a heck of a lot easier than 35 percent or even 60 percent off.
• The offer should involve either a discount or a bonus or, even better, both. A bonus is something you will give free to someone who takes the action you are asking them to take. Offering a bonus will increase your response rate by as much as 30 percent.
• Have a reason for the offer and make sure you say what it is. If you make a great offer for no reason, you will raise suspicion flags in your readers’ minds. After all, we’ve all been told that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Therefore, you need a reason for your offer -— we are new to the neighborhood, it’s our business’s anniversary, it’s customer appreciation week at our company. Be as creative as you want, but be sure to have a reason.
• Create urgency. There must be a reason for your readers to take immediate action. This could be an expiration date on the offer, an extra bonus for fast response, or some other element that will cause your client or prospect to take action.
• Make the call to action another no-brainer. In the same way that the value of your offer needs to be crystal clear, so does that call to action. Tell your prospects exactly what you want them to do. Ask them to go to your Web site and click on a particular word, come in to your store on a particular date or in a certain time range, whatever action you want them to take. Be very clear.

Incorporate these six tips into your next direct marketing campaign and watch the results. You will see killer-level improvement!