Does any of this sound familiar?
Prospective Client:
“I received your proposal and I’m a bit confused as to why you’re charging $8,000 for a simple website when I received another quote from an agency for $2,000.”
What you feel like saying:
“Please go ahead and hire them. Good luck with getting leads and conversions. I’m sure your website is going to be wonderful.”
What you end up doing is having to justify your pricing. And it’s just so frustrating when you’re talking to someone who has no idea what good SEO or lead generation on a website looks like.
It doesn’t matter what you do when it comes to sales and marketing. If you don’t have your offer dialled in then these are the kinds of conversations you are going to be having with prospective clients… over and over again.
Because, let's face it, as DIY web design solutions become more popular and access to freelancers on sites such as Upwork has become easier… web design is becoming a commodity.
In this post, I’m going to explain how you can stand out from the crowd and stop competing on price by creating an irresistible offer so that your value doesn’t have to be questioned again.
Why Your Offer Might Be Falling Short
As a digital marketing or web design expert, you know more than the average person about marketing and sales.
You craft exceptional websites or campaigns for your clients, helping them to cut through the noise, reach their audience, and make an impact. But when it comes to clarifying your own purpose and crafting your agency’s offer, many agency owners fall short.
Why? There are a few possible reasons…which one do you identify with?
- You don’t yet have a clear niche.
- You haven’t identified what truly sets you apart from competitors.
- You currently want to work with any client that you can find.
- Your internal marketing process is vague, clunky or lacks cohesion.
- You haven’t clearly defined what you offer.
If you can relate to some or all of these challenges, you’re not alone. We see this every day with agency owners neglecting their own marketing.
All of the points above can be solved by learning how to get absolutely, entirely, and utterly clear on your offer.
Why Focus on Crafting Your Offer?
Mastering the art of crafting an irresistible offer will change the way you approach marketing.
No matter how much traffic and attention you generate for your website or marketing material, you simply won’t get the conversion you want unless you have the right offer. Practices like SEO, PPC, advertising, and social media marketing will draw people to your site, but the offer is what will take your visitor from shopping around to sold!
Step 1: Clarify Who the Offer is For
Before we discuss how to craft an offer that your prospects can’t refuse, there’s one vital factor that you must identify:
Who are your prospects?
This may sound like an obvious question, but you’d be surprised how many business owners and entrepreneurs haven’t yet identified their niche.
Is your audience a specific industry? A certain type of business owner? A company at a particular stage of their journey?
Once you get crystal clear on who you are trying to serve, you can ensure that your offer is hitting the mark. Knowing your target audience takes more than labelling them according to a few demographics. You must really explore who they are, what their pain points are, and what they need.
If you need help identifying your niche, then check out this post. There is a worksheet that you can download to help you.
Step 2: Craft an Offer They Can’t Refuse
We can’t tell you what your offer should be without knowing more about your business, but we can tell you some of the characteristics shared by the most irresistible offers:
Craft a killer UVP:
I won’t go into this topic too much as I cover it all here in a previous post.
Understand your target audience’s pain points:
Emotion connects, and connection sells! If you can show that you truly understand what your audience is struggling with, you can build rapport with your customer. This builds trust, not only helping to generate sales but also loyal brand advocates.
Provide a solution to one of their main problems:
Your product or service should always solve a problem that your audience faces. Always showcase this on your sales page or advertisement.
Offer excellent value:
When your customers or clients can see the value you’re providing, they’re more likely to pay the monetary cost. Having a clear and well-constructed offer is one of the best ways to show value.
You’ve probably seen it before… ‘worth $10,000, yours now for just $299’. If it’s a great deal, then you’re more likely to convert. Don’t be afraid to break your offer down and show what it’s truly worth.
And remember: your expertise, experience, and knowledge are worth more than you think!
Make sure the details are clearly defined:
It is recommended that you clearly communicate exactly what you’re offering. Confusion = inaction and so confused people are unlikely to become your buyers.
What is the offer, what’s included, how does it help and what are the practical details? Get someone who has never heard of your business before to read it and make sure there are no questions or confusion about what you do.
Create a sense of urgency or scarcity:
Urgency refers to when there is a time-sensitive offer. Scarcity refers to when there is a limited number of products available. This puts the offer front of mind and strives to ensure your offer is snapped up quickly!
Facilitate easy payment solutions:
The payment process needs to be fast, simple, and accessible. Once the customer has made the decision to purchase, there’s no time to waste. Easy payment and aftercare processes are essential.
Have a bulletproof guarantee:
Risk is one of the biggest deterrents of purchase. But when you remove this risk with a bulletproof guarantee, there’s nothing to stop your buyer.
Have social proof to back your claim:
Social proof is an excellent tool to support and justify your claims. Testimonials, case studies, or reviews are easy to add to your site and go a long way in building trust and credibility.
Include a strong call to action:
A call to action button should be on every page of your website. If it’s your goal to convert visitors into customers, you need to make this process as easy as possible. Your call to action should be prominent, relevant, and easy to find.
For agencies, crafting your offer is an essential exercise that will help you convert more and generate results. Let’s look at Helen’s story and how clarifying her offer totally transformed her business.
A Case Study
It’s well and good to talk theory – but how does crafting your offer work in practice?
We interviewed Helen Wakefield – Owner and Web Consultant of her agency, Impressence Web Studios. Helen is a member of Agency Mavericks, and crafting her offer has become a fundamental part of how her agency approaches internal marketing. Read on to find out how.
Helen’s Story:
Hi, I’m Helen – the owner of Impressence Web Studios.
We are an Australian digital agency focused on helping Christian women in business fulfil their God-given purpose and make a powerful impact on the world. We do this by identifying opportunities, impressing our client’s target audience with beautiful and functional websites, and inspiring their audience to engage and take action.
Before crafting my offer, you could have described my internal marketing as uninspiring! Honestly, it was all over the place…the campaigns were vague, general and lacked cohesion.
When I joined Agency Mavericks, Troy explained the importance of crafting an offer and how that would support and enhance all my marketing efforts. And so when I started crafting our offer, I looked at our client list and realised that all our latest clients were Christian women in business. This was emerging from the network I was doing in those groups and word of mouth.
We were getting comments from our clients like, “I’m so glad I’ve found you,” and “Where have you been all my life?” We couldn’t deny we were resonating strongly with this niche, and as a Christian woman in business myself, it made perfect sense. So, we decided to go with it and merged that with our passion for high-quality websites and services that help businesses get to the next level.
I grouped our services into three categories based on what I learned from Agency Mavericks. I’m a words person, and I love alliteration, so we came up with: Identify, Impress, Inspire.
And this happened to tie in nicely with our business name – Impressence – which is about making the right Impression with your online presence.
It’s a lot more targeted and easier to put together now that we know whom we are serving and what we are offering. We are more consistent with our content. We’re also in the middle of rebranding now that we have our defined market – this was much easier to do with a specific client in mind.
Generally, it’s more exciting to get behind, and when you’re clearer and excited about what you’re doing, the more attractive you and your offerings are.
Ready to Craft Your Offer?
What I’ve laid out here in this post are the basics for crafting an offer. But if you want to go deeper into finding out how to package up your services so that you get more clients over the line AND get paid more, then click here to find out about our brand new training – The Godfather Method.
