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A good offer is integral to long-term success of a business. You can build an incredible product and invest in advertising, but if just a few get no return on their investment, or conned with your sales offer, and clients won't buy again. The quality of your offer relates to each aspect of your marketing funnel, including email subscriptions, products, and services.

There needs to be a clear reason for a prospect to take a desired action, removing any doubt or reluctance before it has set it. While we can all recognize a good offer when we see it, crafting one for your own business can be tricky. So how do you begin crafting an irresistible offer?

Desire

Many products and services can be helpful to a prospect, but that doesn't mean people actively want them. Remeber, if there's no desire, there's no sales. A good offer is able to create desire, so a prospect immediately sees benefit of making a purchase. Even less obviously desirable products can be marketed effectively, building an impression that they are superior to alternatives. Prospects should also be able to see what benefit your product/services are for them, avoiding generic pitches that don't address a particular issue or feeling that is common in your niche. Understanding desires of your prospects can be achieved through niche research, demographic studies, keyword searches, trends, and surveys.

Emotion Vs Reason

Whenever you get into a want mode, there's often 2 forces that are constantly at bay - One emotional "What if we bought the house?", and another being rational "Look at my wallet". Emotion only cares about what you want at the moment, and focuses more on momentary feelings. The rational cares about what the problem is, and how you'd solve the same problem. Assume a conversation as below.

"Lets buy the car" "What about maintainence?" "But, look at the bright side" "Think about the savings we have so far" "We can afford over 2 years" "Why now?" "If not now, when?" "Are you sure, we can save enough"

So who wins? EMOTION!

Science tells us emotion. As humans we struggle to articulate our feelings and often it engages people into rational arguments. And, this is something every focus group will work towards - How to convince you to choose a product! Remember, brands have a huge advantage when you choose to design for emotions and convinice your VALUE over the price.

Clarity

A confusing offer is certain to reduce interest. A good sales representative should be able to provide clarity for complex products and services, and be able to simplify any concepts, so consumers understand what they are really buying. For example, a software product that has numerous features can list detailed specifications, but they should not be a sales hook that draws people into offer. The ability to distill benefits of a product/service into clear headlines, slogans, bullet points, and sales copy will make or break your offer.

Value

Consumers are really concerned about, and often like to be educated on what value they are getting from any purchase. Certain products might be priced consistently with competitors, so you need to exemplify why buyers should choose you. Other products and services might not have a consistent price, so you need to show why price and offer match up. To add value to an offer, you can add things like bonuses, coaching, or a guarantee, helping to reduce any risk and reluctance of making a purchase.

Manufacturing Scarcity

Scarcity is a powerful marketing technique. but it needs to be added ethically and realistically. Read more about manufacturing scarcity on this article. When demand for a product outstrips supply, it creates scarcity. Competition for scarce goods lets businesses raise prices, but by doing so, they push a lot of your demand away artifically. Managing scarcity ethically, establishes an equilibrium of supply and demand for your sales, and though it might be a simplified version of real-world markets and classical economics, understanding scarcity will help solve ask questions about where your business fits in the market and where it should go next.

Influence People with Scarcity

Humans tend to like things that are rare. Why is gold valuable? Because it looks nice and there isn't much of it around. Outside a few electronic applications, gold doesn't serve much purpose except to look good, but since it's so rare, that's all it needs to be extremely valuable. Did you know, the total gold ever mined all over the world as of date, would simply just fill approx 3.3 swimming pools. In a way, marketing and product development, businesses take advantage of the attraction of scarcity in several ways.

Sales Vs Discounts

Heavy offers on your products on sale can help you attract customers, not only because they like to pay less for the same thing, but also because sales last a limited time. With scare time to buy the product, customers often think they had better get it now instead of waiting.

Being First to Market

Often startups, early-boomers with a new product/services launch or SaaS startups that offer a small tech for a great pricing will have an advantage of being only source of that product, at least for some time. However, once other companies catch up, unless you have a substaintial market share, your first relase isn't necessarily beneficial, as except for your early adopters, customers often wait before trying new subscription.

Having similar products at different price points helps solidify values by giving customers a point of comparison. Its a great idea to make fewer high-priced products and have an inventory that helps your sales to up-sell with demand. Companies reinforce these valuations by producing limited numbers of high-priced products, projecting scarcity by making sure those products sell out, especially on launch.

Economy

"No matter how petty a flaw might be in utopia, that flaw is where the full fury of power seeking will be focused." — Jaron Lanier, Who Owns the Future? Pioneering tech entrepreneur and theorist Jaron Lanier disagrees with many of his Silicon Valley colleagues, as he doesn't believe that technology inevitably makes world a better place. Technology is a tool, not the goal itself. No matter how good technology is, complex systems like human society are too complicated to perfect. There will always be flaws in the system and scarcity that smart businesses can exploit.

Nevertheless, something isn't scarce just because there isn't much of it around. People still have to demand something to make it valuable. In Middle Ages, after collapse of Roman Empire, economy became simple: economic power meant holding enough land to support enough soldiers to protect that same ground. Instead of paying serfs a salary for working his property, the lord protected them, thereby creating intertwined social obligations. But as the medieval system stabilized and led to peace, trade in scarce, far-flung products returned to Europe. People demanded money again because, unlike land, they could move it.

Scarcity Vs Demand

Companies might mass produce products that were once scarce, significantly decreasing their value. An inventor might create a new product that largely replaces another, fax machines are no longer valuable now that people use email and internet communications. Pay attention to where demand is moving, or your business will be left behind. Business create artificial scarcity. Manipulating scarcity is entirely possible. Governments and businesses do it all the time to move people and prices in the direction they prefer. Ref. Naom Chomsky's book. Some of few successful marketing tactics rely on provoking anxiety or fear in customer. However, when done badly this can have a damaging impact on your brand's image. Balancing conversion boosting anxiety and creation of positive brand associations helps sales.

Fear in Marketing

Even to most successful practitioners, marketing can sometimes seem a negative, manipulative process. It's evident that you can achieve great results by finding a customer's pain point and pushing it relentlessly. The most common is fear of missing out (FOMO) and scarcity marketing, not to mention trading on consumers insecurities and vulnerabilities.

Here are few examples. Show customers how your product will save them time, with an obvious implication that without it, they're wasting time. Emphasize how they will save money and therefore are currently saving more money. Your service will improve their business because no one wants to fall behind on their peers.

It's surprising that so many marketers try to simultaneously generate warm and fuzzy brand associations on one hand while doing their level best to stir anxiety on others. However, it doesn't have to be doom and gloom. The point of these anxiety-based tactics is to set your product as a solution to a problem, and this can be done with a little more finesse and subtlety. Instead of provoking fear only to resolve it, it can be just as effective to emphasize benefits in such a way as to imply negatives. This gives selling benefits of anxiety without the a bad karma for your brand.

In short, create a compelling offer your prospects won't be able to refuse. People buy for value not price. Stack up!