By Adam Robinson, Cofounder/CEO, Robly Email Marketing
Communicating your value proposition to potential customers through a clear, concise message is pivotal for any business.
The best advice I have ever heard on constructing and communicating a razor sharp value proposition was from a book called “The Irresistible Offer” by Mark Joyner.
Construct an Irresistible Offer
Joyner contends that the irresistible offer is composed of three elements:
- A High ROI Offer
- A Touchstone
- Believability
A truly high ROI offer (in terms of both the time and money spent on your product) is the key starting point for selling anything to anybody. A genuinely high ROI offer makes the rest of the process of constructing the irresistible offer easy.
Think about ways you can add perceived value of your offer in other ways than just lowering your prices, which can be deadly. Can you bundle? Can you add some sort of personal touch? Can you package some valuable content with your product? Or add a free gift of some sort? Can you offer an extended trial period to a segment of customers?
A touchstone (or tagline) is a brand-identifying message that communicates who you are to your potential customers. It’s usually the secret to making the sale. The touchstone is separate from the high ROI offer, and it’s what will pique your potential customers’ interest so that you can get to the point of making the high ROI offer.
A touchstone should be under three seconds long, and should communicate:
- What you’re selling
- How much it will cost
- What’s in it for the potential customer
- Why your potential customer should trust you
Touchstones should be clear, as simple and brief as possible, and should cut right to the chase. Most of the time they are separate from your high ROI value proposition.
Here are some of the greatest touchstones of all time:
- “Pizza hot and fresh to your door in 30 minutes or less, or it’s free”
- Dominoes Pizza
- “When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight”
- FedEx
My personal favorite, and one that Robly “swiped” to use as our touchstone:
- “Fifteen minutes can save you 15% or more on car insurance.”
- Geico
- Robly’s iteration: “Switch to Robly. Five minutes will save you 50% on email marketing”.
Believability is the last element of constructing the irresistible offer. If you hear of someone giving away $100 bills outside your front door with no strings attached, that’s incredibly high ROI, but probably not true. Bolster the believability of your offer through:
- Proof – social, technical, or factual
- Credibility – make sure you sound like you’re for real
- Endorsements – Can you get your product backed by someone people know?
- High Profile Customers
- Qualifications – Memberships in industry organizations, degrees, credits
- Awards and Recognition
- Logic – At Robly, people ask us all the time how our prices can be so low. We have a quick discussion about how cloud computing allowed us to get up and running for pennies on the dollar when compared to our more mature competitors, and all of a sudden email marketing for 50% less makes sense to people.
Robly’s Irresistible Offer
Here’s how we constructed our irresistible offer at Robly. First, the Touchstone:
“Switch to Robly. Five minutes will save you 50% on email marketing.”
Then, the High ROI Offer:
“Robly will have a professional designer re-build and upgrade your email template for you, and migrate all of your contacts over, free of charge.”
Third, we build believability through:
- Before-and-after template gallery that our customers can see
- Testimonials on our homepage
- A homepage that looks and feels like a premium product
Sell Anything in Under Three Seconds
Your potential customers are overwhelmed with marketing messages all day long, from every imaginable source, about every imaginable topic. Create a sharp touchstone that gets your customer’s attention amid all the noise, follow it up with a high ROI offer, and make it believable.
Adam Robinson is cofounder and CEO of Robly (Switch to Robly – Five Minutes Will Save You 50% on Email Marketing). Follow him at @Adam_L_Robinson.
