Are You Setting Your Offers Up for Failure?
Imagine this scenario: You plant sunflower seeds in two different pots. Everything–the seeds, the pots, the soil, the temperature and amount of sunlight are the same.
The only difference is this:
- You water the seeds in one pot two times over a period of three months
- You water the seeds in the other pot once a week over the same period
Question: which seeds are most likely to sprout and turn into healthy sunflowers? The ones you watered a couple times or the ones you watered regularly?
Even if you're not an avid gardener I'm guessing you said "the one you watered regularly."
So what the heck does this have to do with marketing products and services? Quite a bit actually.
How Offers that Get Results are Like Growing Sunflowers
To turn sunflower seeds into beautiful, healthy sunflowers, you need to plant the seeds in good soil and you need to make sure your seeds get plenty of sunshine and water over a period of weeks.
If your seeds don't get enough water and sun they may never sprout and even if they do, the fragile little seedling will wither and die.
To make sure customers say "yes" to your product offers, you need to support your offers properly otherwise you will end up with marketing that seems to go nowhere in terms of customer response.
How to Care for Offers So They Produce Results
To make sure the offers you promote lead to prospects and customers saying "yes" and taking the next step, you need to make sure your offers are getting the sunflower equivalent of water and sunshine.
Offers need:
- to be repeated to the same audience at least six to seven times over a period of at least two months
- to be the one, primary offer you make to that audience
If this seems simple to you—it is. However I also know we entrepreneur have a bad habit of ignoring this seemingly simple advice.
How Entrepreneurs Set Their Marketing Up for Failure
I'm an entrepreneur and most of my clients are entrepreneurs.It's lots of fun being an entrepreneur and working with entrepreneurs.
Why? Because we're always excited about some cool new thing we're doing and it's fun being with people who are doing cool, interesting things. BUT the quality that makes it so fun to be an entrepreneur: an attraction to cool, new things, is the very quality that dooms our marketing efforts to failure.
Here's a typical situation when I'm working with an entrepreneurial client and they've just completed a terrific new information product and we've created a strong sales page for their website and have the first couple promotional emails ready to go.
So far so good.
And my entrepreneur client says, "Hey, I've got another great new product idea, I'd like you to help me with!"
They then turn their attention to the cool, new thing they want to work on and ignore marketing for the already completed product which is barely a little seedling peeping out above the soil.
Typically then two things happen, both of which, are deadly to the success of the first offer:
- They stop promoting the first product altogether so that prospects who were interested but not quite ready to buy that product will forget their intention to purchase
- They'll add the second offer on top of the first and effectively "bury" the first product offer. Prospects and customers end up seeing a mish-mosh of offers and may be so confused they don't do anything.
The result for our business is the equivalent of having pots full of dirt and no sunflowers: we work really hard on developing products and offers but aren't getting much back in the way of new customers and cash flow.
How to Set Your Offers Up for Success (and Still Have Fun)
So how do we entrepreneurial-types who are constantly inspired to start new promotions make sure we give our current offers every opportunity to succeed?
Here are five strategies I highly recommend.
1. Acknowledge that you're an entrepreneur and that wanting to try new things is in your DNA.
2. Label a file or binder (I'm uber geeky and use a spreadsheet) "product ideas" and when you get a great product idea or promotion idea, jot it down on a piece of paper and put it in your idea binder.
When my ideas have a home, I'm less likely to feel compelled to start working on them because I know I can return to the ones I saved.
3. Commit to supporting no more than two offers at any given time. This means the marketing and promotions you create to support these offers get my full time and focus.
4. Run promotions for your current offer for at least seven weeks. This gives people who are interested in the offers but not yet ready to take the next step several opportunities to take action.
5. Only promote products that clearly fit your brand and fit within the products and services you offer. Customers need context to understand how your offer fits what they already know how your business helps them.
Bottom Line
Sunflowers are so much nicer than pots full of dirt.
If you're feeling frustrated because your offers aren't getting much response, take a look at how well your marketing supports those offers.
If you're promoting something new every month and piling multiple offers on a single email or advertisement, you may be setting your offers up for failure.
You need to focus on one or two offers at a time, provide consistent marketing over time, and make sure your offers make sense within your brand and business in order to start getting real results.
