• Author: Robert W. Bly
  • Full Title: How to Create Irresistible Offers
  • Tags: #Inbox #books

I decided to give up on this book for two reasons:

First, the content felt thin to me. Not nearly as many examples as in Great Leads, and the examples that were there weren't super relevant to my use cases. Which leads to the next point.

Second, it was a little far removed from what I am currently working on day to day. I was hoping to improve my writing for ColorBliss, especially on landing pages and email marketing. But it's heavily leaning towards mail order marketing (you can see below that's exactly where I stopped reading.)

Highlights

Introduction What Albert Einstein Can Teach You About Improving Your Advertising Results

  • In this book, we will explore ways to dramatically improve response rates to your promotions anywhere from 10 percent to as much as 900 percent — just by creating and testing different offers. (Location 62)
  • As you know, an “offer” is simply what your prospects get when they respond to your ad or mailing — combined with what they have to do to get it. (Location 65)
  • As you know, an “offer” is simply what your prospects get when they respond to your ad or mailing — combined with what they have to do to get it. In its simplest form, an offer might be “Call us toll-free for a free booklet on adjustable beds.” The booklet is what prospects get. Making the phone call is what they have to do to get it. “Give your reader something to do and make it easy for him to do it,” writes G. Lynn Sumner in his book How I Learned the Secrets of Success in Advertising (North Audley Media). “Tell him where to get what you have to sell, how much it costs — and why he should do it now.” (Location 65)
  • An irresistible offer promises prospects something so compelling or desirable that they can’t help but call, write, or go online to get it. “The (Location 70)
  • Direct marketers focus on presenting compelling reasons why consumers should buy their products right then and there, as well as overcoming any objections the consumers may have. They are concerned with the action they want the consumer to take — and how to get him or her to take it. (Location 80)
  • The two areas in your promotional copy where you can get the most leverage — the greatest lift in responses and orders — are the opening and the closing. The opening is mainly the headline and lead of your copy, as well as its graphic design and presentation. In his book The Architecture of Persuasion, Michael Masterson shows you how to write compelling headlines and leads. (Location 99)
  • The closing of your copy is largely the offer and its presentation. In How to Create Irresistible Offers, I’ll show you how to craft strong offers that make your marketing make more money for you. (Location 102)

1 Offers That Bring in a Flood of New Leads

  • There are two major categories of direct marketing: lead generation and order generation. Order generation, also called “mail order,” seeks to generate an order for a product directly from the promotion. Mail order is “one-step marketing,” because you make the sale in a single step. (Location 117)
  • Lead generation seeks to produce an inquiry or sales lead — to get qualified prospects to metaphorically raise their hands and say, “Hey, I might be interested in this product. Tell me more.” Lead generation is “two-step marketing.” The first step is sending the promotion and generating the inquiry. The next step is following up on the inquiry and closing the sale. (Location 121)
  • As a rule, the more valuable and risk-free the offer seems to the reader, the better your response. The presentation of the offer — the copy used to describe it, the graphics, its position in the promotion — is also important. Usually, the more you emphasize and stress the offer in copy and graphics, the higher your response rate. Another rule of thumb: The clearer and more understandable your offer, the better your response. The lack of a clear, distinct offer can significantly depress response. (Location 131)
  • In lead generation, there are four fundamentally different types of offers: soft, hard, negative, and deferred. (Location 140)
  • For most promotions, the best strategy is actually to give the reader a choice of several offers, not just a soft offer or a hard offer. (Location 167)

Target Your Best Prospects With Hard Offers

  • The opposite of the soft offer is the hard offer. A hard offer in lead generation requires or results in face-to-face or other personal contact between buyer and seller. Whether in person or on the phone, the seller has the prospect “captive” for purposes of doing some selling. (Location 169)

Turn a “No” Into a “Maybe” With a Negative Offer

  • The negative offer reads as follows on the reply element: Not interested right now because: (Please give reason — thank you.) (Location 186)
  • A negative offer instructs the reader to respond even if she does not want to learn more about your product, which is disarming and unusual. By using a negative offer option, you can often get a response from a small portion of your prospects. (Location 195)
  • The negative offer should be used when you are testing a mailing on a new product, service, or offer you haven’t promoted before using direct mail. The reason you use the negative offer is that, without it, if you get a low or no response to your mailing, you don’t know whether it’s the mailing piece that’s ineffective or the product, service, or offer that isn’t right for the market. (Location 199)
  • With the negative option, people will tell you why they are not interested in your offer. Perhaps the price is too high. (Location 203)
  • it demonstrates that the mailing was unsuccessful for reasons other than ineffective copy and design (Location 205)
  • prospect who fills in the blank space on your reply card where it says “Please give a reason why you are not interested” has framed a specific objection, which can be overcome with the proper selling argument. (Location 216)
  • Use the negative offer when you are testing a new offer or when you think many prospects might not respond for specific reasons. Use the deferred offer when you think a significant number of prospects might need your services at some future date rather than right away. (Location 227)
  • A common mistake in lead-generating promotions is to have only one offer option. In most instances, you should have two or three options. In lead generation, the best results usually come from having three offers: a soft offer, a hard offer, and either a negative or a deferred offer. At minimum, (Location 231)
  • The primary offer is the one you hope your prospects will respond to and the one you emphasize in your copy and graphics. (Location 234)

2 Hook More Prospects With a “Bait Piece” — and Double Your Response

  • The most effective method of increasing the response rate of a lead-generation campaign is to use a “bait piece.” The term bait piece refers to free information the advertiser offers in a mailing piece or e-mail to generate a higher number of inquiries. (Location 339)
  • Where does the free bait piece fit into the sales cycle? The diagram above tells the story. Your initial e-mail, direct mail, or other promotion offers the bait piece. Some of those who read your promotion respond by asking for the bait piece. You fulfill these inquiries by sending the bait piece along with sales materials (e.g., a brochure) on your product or services. Then you follow up. Depending on the nature and cost of your product or service, anywhere from 10 to 35 percent or more of those requesting the free bait piece will ultimately do business with you. (Location 348)

7 Steps to Creating Winning Free Content Offers

  • Pick an appropriate topic for your free booklet, report, or white paper. (Location 386)
  • The topic should be something that interests the reader while helping to sell the reader on your system, product, service, or idea. (Location 388)
  • While a product selection guide must appear unbiased and editorially neutral, you will slant it so the reader comes away favoring your approach to doing the thing, solving the problem, or selecting the product. (Location 408)
  • After selecting a topic, you need a catchy title. (Location 419)
  • A title with the words “how to” in it (e.g., “How to Reduce Costs and Increase Productivity by Implementing Electronic Data Interchange”) can be effective. (Location 421)
  • Number titles (e.g., “7 Ways,” “6 Steps,” “14 Winning Methods”) also make your booklet more attractive to the reader because they arouse curiosity. People want to know what the 7 ways, 6 steps, or 14 methods are. (Location 422)
  • Here are some conventions for titling bait pieces: (Location 446)
  • Here are some suggestions on how to label your premium in your offer copy: (Location 485)
  • Even though you intend to give away your booklet or report for free, put a price on the front cover in the upper right-hand corner. (Location 490)
  • People are more interested in getting a $29 item for free than they are in getting a free item for free. (Location 492)
  • What should the pricing be? I suggest $1 or $2 for a tip sheet, $3 to $10 for a booklet, $7 to $29 for a special report (depending on length), $15 to $25 for a book, $15 to $25 for a manual. These prices seem credible and fair. (Location 496)
  • Quick Tip: Post all your bait pieces on a page on your website so that visitors can order them online, for the full cover price, through your shopping cart. (Location 500)
  • A small paperback can contain as few as 60 to 80 pages with as little as 15,000 words of text (the equivalent of 60 double-spaced typewritten pages). (Location 529)
  • In virtually every campaign where I have added a free booklet offer to the marketing program, sales lead generation has increased substantially and marketing costs were reduced. (Location 672)
  • This argument makes sense but is refuted by experience. While there are some marketing techniques that do lose effectiveness in the face of clutter and overuse, the free booklet offer is not one of them. In fact, the opposite is often true: Prospects in a particular industry become accustomed to seeing ads with free booklet offers and eagerly seek out such ads in their trade publications. (Location 688)
  • “If we give away free content, we’ll generate a large volume of poor-quality leads from freebie seekers.” If this is a concern, you can qualify the leads more up front and generate a better quality lead using some or all of the following techniques: Charge a nominal fee for your catalog, brochure, or other literature. (Location 721)
  • Make them fill out a survey or complete a questionnaire. Make the prospects pay the postage on the return envelope or postcard. (Location 726)

3 Using Hard Offers to Capture Hot Prospects

  • A marketing manager once told me that prospects are like submarines: They are submerged most of the time and surface only occasionally. The soft offer ferrets out prospects who are submerged by getting them to raise their hands and say, “I might be interested. (Location 775)
  • The hard offer is the weapon that helps us spot hot prospects “swimming on the surface” and reel them in. In this chapter, we’ll review five time-tested rules for creating winning hard offers that capture more hot prospects that you can meet with and convert into sales. (Location 779)
  • Rule 1: Do Not Involve “Salespeople.” (Location 781)
  • To start with, do not use the term salesperson when referring to the person who will contact or follow up with the prospect. (Location 795)
  • Replace salesperson with any of the following (or create your own title, as appropriate): Account Representative Senior Consultant Technical Specialist Account Manager Account Supervisor Industry Specialist Program Manager (Location 796)
  • Program Planner [name of product] Specialist [description of application] Specialist (Location 802)
  • Rule 2: Do Not Offer to Do a “Sales Presentation.” (Location 808)
  • The strategy of offering a “free consultation by our expert,” as opposed to the traditional “sales presentation by our salesperson,” simply recognizes this inherent value — and it increases response by highlighting the value of the initial meeting or contact itself, rather than asking for a sales opportunity. (Location 834)
  • Rule 3: Do Not Charge for the First Meeting. (Location 837)
  • If you are in a field where it is not unusual for some vendors to charge for initial meetings, estimates, or preliminary recommendations, your prospects may assume you charge too. So your marketing copy must make it clear that you do not charge, as this gives you an advantage over your competitors. (Location 853)
  • Rule 4: Add Value to the Initial Meeting. (Location 858)
  • If you convince them that you are giving away an exclusive and valuable service worth $100 or $1,000 for free, they become much more eager to acquire it. (Location 861)
  • Rule 5: State That There Is No Obligation to Buy. (Location 871)

4 Offers That Make You More Money in Mail Order Marketing

  • In mail order selling, a hard offer is an offer that requires the prospect to pay for the product in advance. (Location 892)