How to Construct an Irresistible Offer, Step by Step
Note: This is the first of a series of member-contributed business tips. If you are an expert and would like to contribute a post, drop a line to dan@biznik.com. Joseph is also hosting a Biznik event on this topic on Wednesday, Nov. 29.
This methodology arose from dialog with a Biznik friend, Michael Max. He’s a Biznik, a Chinese medicine doctor, and the owner of the Yong Kang Clinic in Seattle. We’re conversing about understanding Mark Joyner’s book, “The Irresistible Offer.” Joyner’s ideas can seem strange at first blush. But they can radically improve the marketing of a private practice.
Tip: Read this book! More than once. Learn the key information by heart, and take action based on what you learn.
It’s useful to focus on your offer to customers because your offer’s what fundamentally defines your service and connects you to your market. It’s the prime mover of your business.
For present purposes, any one-person service business is a private practice. The discussion about services also applies to products.
In a private practice, 95 percent of your marketing is contained in what you say about what you do. Communicate your value well, and you’ll prosper. Botch the communication, and you’ll starve. If you’re feeling hungry, fix your communication.
As you communicate, remember the fundamental purpose of marketing — to create active positive regard in your customer’s mind about your business. Marketing is all about becoming aware of what ‘your market’ thinks, influencing their collective opinion to your benefit, and motivating them to choose and buy your product or service.
Market well, and your customers sell your service to each other at no cost to you. Your first goal in marketing a private practice has 4 aspects –
1. to reach peak revenue. . .
2. sustained by word-of-mouth. . .
3. at your desired level of effort. . .
4. with enough backlog to create stability.
Make an offer that’s irresistible, then deliver the goods. This will fall in place with little additional effort. It’ll happen even if your offer is only half-decent and you deliver tenaciously.
People want to know 4 things about what you offer –
• what are you selling?
• how much does it cost?
• why should I believe you?
• what’s in it for me?
So your customers are ready to listen. Grab attention, and speak to them eloquently about all these things.
There are 3 parts to an Irresistible Offer –
1. High ROI service
2. A touchstone,
3. Believability
The Irresistible Offer is the ultimate summary statement of your professional value. It communicates all the answers people need to do business with you, in one short burst of information.
As MJ illustrates, Domino’s Pizza, Federal Express, and Columbia House all rely on the Irresistible Offer. So do many other highly successful businesses.
Sorting It Out
To begin, it’s best to ignore the viral marketing stuff in the latter part of MJ’s book. Hang with the basics of offer construction. Internet viral marketing doesn’t apply to a professional practice. You don’t want 100,000 people calling you. Professionals don’t need massive viral response, because the goal is to fill up a practice and develop a backlog. This will happen at very sub-viral levels.
However, word-of-mouth is definitely wanted. Viral marketing and WOM are similar, except that WOM happens verbally (spoken or written) from one person to another. Viral is based on web technology. Viral is for products, not services, unless you have instant unlimited service providers. Outsourcing to India comes to mind. . .
If your business provides a product, do the IO first, and then worry about the viral thing shortly afterwards.
Foundation Research
If you’re a doctor, begin by making some observations about what your happy patients are taking away from the service you offer. And what your indifferent patients are missing. And if you have any, what your dissatisfied patients are unhappy about.
If you don’t have enough patients yet to get a good sample, use any patients of your kind of medicine. Even imaginary ones, if you’re certain of what they’ll say.
If it’s not intuitively obvious, go ask them. Call them up and ask them leading, open-ended questions. Or ask them when they come in for treatment. Invite them over for tea. Just be aware it’s an overall impression you seek. Don’t get hung up on anything one patient says, either good or bad.
You’ll be amazed at what you discover by becoming intimate with your market.
Tip: Record the conversations. Recording frees you from hesitations for note-taking.
Make a list. What makes the happy ones happy? Indifferent ones indifferent? Angry ones pissed off? Make three categories – happy, indifferent, unhappy.
Yes, you DO want to talk to the 3rd group. Don’t chicken out.
Analysis
Now cruise your list. Conceptualize the commonalities. You are discovering the *benefits* of your medicine. Features will also come up. Distinguish the features from the benefits. Define and state the benefits clearly.
Save the features for later, they are useful.
The benefits are the value you deliver in your high ROI service. Now you’re getting somewhere. The value is half of it, the other half is cost. High value + low cost = high ROI. Low is a relative term. It’s the cost the patient perceives.
Tip: If you discover your perceived value is *way too low* relative to the cost, STOP! This is a wake up call. You have a fundamental problem. You can NOT make an Irresistible Offer until achieve high ROI. You must have high value or you’re toast. Because if your value is low, only fools will do business with you if they have any alternative.
Step 1 complete.
Synthesis
Now use the results of Step 1 to forge a terse statement of value your patients perceive. Make it as credible as possible. And as attractive as possible. This is your touchstone. It’s like a mantra that encapsulates what your practice is all about by conveying your medicine’s core value to the patient.
It’s a kernel of truth, like a haiku.
A lovely thing to see:
through the paper window’s hole,
the Galaxy.– Issa (1762-1826)
Tip: BTW, what does ‘Yong Kang’ mean in English? Does your brand already have a component you can use?
MJ gives the touchstones from FedEx, Domino’s, and Columbia House. Yours should be along the same lines.
Here’s one I created for a company that makes some very powerful and beneficial nutritional supplements –
“A better body. . . a better life.�?
And here’s one I’m using for my commercial writing business –
“Exceptional copy, ordinary rates, and the marketing expert’s free.�?
Step 2 complete.
Believability
This is where the features become useful. Factual details lend credence to claims.
Social — “Hi, my name is Charlie Brown. Before Michael Max treated me, I was skeptical. I was dumb, ugly, gullible, and spoke with a lisp. Girls ignored me. After 5 treatments I got a job as Brad Pitt’s double. Girls are all over me now. Go see Michael, he’ll make your day.”
Technical — “Chinese health care, acupuncture and herbology, were developed over the past 10,000 years. What works East, works West.”
Factual — “The Seattle Supersonics came out of their slump and started winning consistently after starting regular visits to Michael Max.”
Etc. — There are more options listed in MJ’s book, like recommendations from high-profile people. Know any movie stars who love your stuff?
Tip: Don’t follow the false examples above. Always tell the truth. This is the most important thing about believability.
Step 3 complete
Now you’re ready to rock and roll!
Use the touchstone + believability stuff everywhere you can.
• Post it in your clinic.
• Integrate it into your branding.
• Append it to emails.
• Use it as you tag line.
• Put it on your business cards, web site, brochure, etc.
• Make a brochure that conveys your IO and mail it to your client base.
• Post an article that features your IO to the web, linked to your site.
Now you have a powerful marketing tool. Leverage it!
Possibilities Are Endless. . .
. . . But only if you ACT!
Remember, knowing about this stuff is just in your head. It does you no good until you act on the knowledge and put it into play in the real world.
Like your medicine, you might know about it, and know it’s good, and know it’ll help someone, BUT it can’t do anything until you give it to them and they take it.
Do you have the initiative and courage to act on what you now know and believe?
You already have, or your clinic wouldn’t exist. Keep going. In addition to knowing something, you need relentless focused action to gain any benefit.
Relentless focused action is how Sam Walton created the most powerful retail chain in history. It’s how Ray Kroc took a little hamburger restaurant that worked like a Swiss watch and parleyed it into the greatest franchise of all times.
You might be able to recall their Irresistible Offers.
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Joseph Riden is a commercial freelance writer in Seattle. I provide custom quotes on request. Call or email today for more information. Get a free hour of consultation to discuss how you could have, at a modest cost, your own Personal Publicist. No hype, I promise – just solid facts you can use. Contact joseph@jriden.com or call 714-402-3217, or visit www.jriden.com.
November 30th, 2006 at 4:14 am
Joseph, thank you for this. This looks very helpful to me. I’m going to put it to work, as it makes more sense than anything else I’ve read or heard on the subject!