At the end of May, Forbes Magazine published an article about how small businesses can compete with big businesses.

Noting that big businesses routinely have much, much larger budgets for advertising, the article said that by using Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising properly, small businesses (without the aid of a big marketing budget) CAN compete against much larger businesses. .

In order to compete, Forbes mentioned six things you need to do:
1) “Target keywords with high conversion probability.”
2) “Target high-volume keywords, within limits.”
3) “Make your offer too good to refuse.”
4) “Create a relevant, persuasive landing page.”
5) “Do not run competitor campaigns.”
6) “Test.”

When running your PPC campaigns, I take care of most of these for you so you don’t need to worry about them.

However, there are two items that, unless you hire me to do them, fall on your shoulders and can have a huge impact on the success of your campaigns—and not just for your PPC campaigns. In fact, these two items can potentially affect EVERY advertising campaign you do, no matter what medium you use.

What are they?

Your offer and your landing page.

Because often when it comes to making sure your offer is too good to refuse or ensuring your landing page is relevant and persuasive, it comes down to the decisions you make.

In the past I’ve discussed landing pages, plus, the one true element that impacts EVERYTHING you do, the offer. So today, I’m going to focus on how to make an irresistible offer that your ideal client, customer or patient can’t refuse.

For small businesses, THE best way to compete and win against a big company is to create a killer offer that is compelling and practically forces people to take notice.

7 Important Things An Irresistible Offer Does

The offer …

1. Is clear. If you want to create an offer that gets people to buy your product or service, you absolutely must give a clear, easily identifiable, tangible result. In other words, people must be able to understand what you are offering instantly. It’s simple: confused people do not respond. For example, half off is better than 50% off and a lot better than 35% or even 60% off. People have difficulty understanding percentages. Two for one is usually better than half off.

2. Delivers good value. People want to know they are getting a good deal—that they are getting their money’s worth. The value or the perceived value should outweigh the cost. You can do this a couple of ways. First, by giving more value (or potential for value) than what a customer invests in your product or service. For instance, offering them a way to save time or make or save money has high emotional benefits.

Another way to do this is to offer a product or service that helps clients get results easier and/or faster. For example, a periodontist might create an offer for treating gum disease using new technology that requires little or no pain and no downtime compared to traditional procedures.

A word of caution about this: percentage off coupons rarely work well because people are suspicious. They think as soon as they see a coupon that the business just raises prices to recover the discount. The exception is when your prices are well known, then a percentage off coupon can work well such as restaurants, auto services like oil changes, or movie tickets.

3. Involves either a discount or a premium or preferably both. Sometimes premiums work much better than discounts. A premium is something you give away as a free gift to someone who comes into your store or who makes a purchase from you. For instance, I just saw an ad for a bank that offers $400 in gift cards when you open a checking account.

Of course, a premium doesn’t have to be expensive. One of the most successful promotions for an investment broker offered a premium where buyers were given a free Swiss bank account. It cost nothing to open the Swiss bank account at the time but people perceived it as having a huge value attached to it.

4. Compels people to act immediately. Do this by creating emotionally driven offers. People don’t buy for logical reasons. Even the most logical purchases are driven by some deep desire or pain or underlying emotion. Figure out what that is…then satisfy that desire or alleviate that pain (or both) and you’ll have a good offer.

5. Focuses on the customer who is ready to buy NOW. With any offer, you can target the person who is actively seeking the solution your product or service offers OR you can target the person who needs your product or service, but doesn’t know it yet or isn’t in the market for it quite yet. Centering your offer around the person who needs what you offer RIGHT NOW will be more successful than trying to convert someone who isn’t ready yet.

6. Has a logical reason behind it. You won’t have room for this in your PPC ad, but this should be included on your landing page. Especially if you discount or give something away. Because when you do this without an explanation you create skepticism and suspicion. People have been told all their lives, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” You have to explain. For example, “We’re doing this as an introductory offer in celebration of opening our new store.” Or “In honor of our anniversary, we’re having a customer appreciation sale.” Just about any explanation will do, but there needs to be an explanation.

7. Creates urgency. A good offer creates a sense of urgency to get the customer to say “YES” today, not a few days or a week or a month from now.
Even if you hire someone to create an offer or landing page for you, it’s important for you to understand what elements need to be included for it to be effective.

Because you are not the only one vying for your customer’s business.

Your competitors are too.

In fact, chances are they are doing everything they can to make their business the most appealing. Plus, big businesses have brand recognition on their side to stack the deck even more, whereas your business is probably unknown to many of your ideal prospects.

So if you want to compete, you’ll have to step up your game, use the ammunition provided in today’s email and create an offer that your prospects and customers simply can’t say no to.