Free Bonuses - Are YOU Missing The Point?
Copyright 2004 by Willie Crawford
Look at any on-line sales letter in the "internet marketing"
arena today and you will see that almost all offer a ton of
bonuses when you purchase the main product. The marketer
does this to increase the perceived "value" of his packaged
deal. However, many marketers do this all wrong, and
therefore miss the point!
Offering a ton of bonuses with a product is nothing new.
It was done decades before the internet was even conceived.
The rules that were learned by savvy direct marketers back
then apply just as much on-line today. Since the on-line medium
is fairly new, it is actually enlightening to study the materials
from direct marketers before the internet. This is where I
learn many of the techniques I then test to confirm they still
apply on the internet.
The biggest secret I've learned about increasing sales by using
bonuses was learned from mail-order direct marketers. It was
validated on-line but it's time-tested in the off-line direct
response world.
That secret... that point often not acknowledged by on-line
neophytes....
In order for a bonus to help your sales, it has to be something
that the customer would happily pay for if it were not free. It has
to be something that causes the customer to salivate when he
reads the description. It has to be something that the customer
perceives has genuine high value.
Does this mean that you can't offer items as bonuses that have
been around for a while? No... not as long as the customer
perceives the item as current and still valuable. If the customer
has seen the item advertised a thousand places, for five years,
then he begins to wonder what else about your deal is out of
date and virtually worthless.
You can also offer bonuses that have been around for a while IF
serving a market that most likely hasn't seen the item before.
Many who have been on-line for years often forget that many
just coming on-line haven't seen many of the "classics." Some
of these do offer valuable lessons for the new audience! The key
there is to spend enough time describing the bonus to prove
its genuine value.
That brings us to another point... nothing closes a sale like
providing PROOF of your claims. That includes your claims of
value. Even when offering a free bonus, throwing in a testimonial
or two enhances the value of that bonus in the minds of your
prospective customers.
Let's look at the reason for offering all of those bonuses in
the first place. You do it because you want to convince your
prospect, who is interested in the primary product or service,
that he'd be CRAZY not to go for your offer. He should feel that
he'd loose out big if he doesn't grab your product now!
Another lesson I learned from off-line direct marketers is
that a customer will often buy a product just because he
wants one of the bonus. The customer may not even want the
primary product but buys because he really, really wants
an unusual and valuable bonus.
When putting together your offer, the bonuses are just a small
part of it. The thing is... you never know which part of your
offer is going to push a prospects hot buttons. It could be
a benefit of the main product or it could be a benefit of one
of the bonuses. You'll miss those bonus-induced sales if you
fail to adequately list the benefits of the bonuses!
A final issue... offering the wrong bonuses can definitely
turn off a prospect. If the prospect perceives that you are just
stacking up bonuses so that you can state the package has
some outlandish value, he will begin to question the value
of everything in the package... including the main product.
Make sure that the bonuses are relevent... or something
that prospects for the primary product should be interested
in. Then make sure that each bonus item is something that
the prospect would purchase by itself. That is the key point
missed by too many on-line marketers.
Willie Crawford has been teaching others how to build
successful on-line businesses since 1996. Join him and
a slew of seasoned internet business professionals at The
Internet Marketing How To Workshop April 30 - May 2, 2004.
Visit: http://InternetMarketingHowToWorkshop.com
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