Most people create the product they think will be wanted and loved… then proceed to make the sales page and offer afterward. This can result in a flop.
In my opinion, the best way to do this is to start with your offer and then create the product to match it.
But, what goes into creating the offer?
In this episode, we’ll discuss:
- Why most people get split testing all wrong
- 6 factors for creating an offer that will sell
- How to remove risk so people will trust you enough to buy
- What to do if your perfect offer isn’t something you feel you can deliver
Now in this episode, that is exactly what we are going to talk about… Product creation. Because product creation is something you are going to need to do in order to create a real business and ultimately make the income that you are looking for. And what we are going to be talking about today is something to do it, specifically that we need to start with the “offer”.
But before we jump into that, I want to invite you to the Blog Monetization Lab. In fact you could say that these episodes of Coffee Break Blogging are all brought to you by the Blog Monetization Lab. Really, the Blog Monetization Lab is my primary product to you guys. This is my delivery mechanism of the transformation that I deliver which is guiding you up to full profitability with a blog-based business. That is what I do! And I do that by way of the Blog Monetization Lab. Now it is also relevant to all these episodes that we have been doing and the ones that we are already doing regarding building the business and also creating the products because that is all stuff that we talk about inside the Blog Monetization Lab.
Now in fact, I actually am planning right now a brand new Action Plan that is going out to Lab Members specifically about Product Creation to guide people to creating their first product and doing it in the right way. As of the time this recording is happening and if you listen to this episode very shortly after it comes out, that Action Plan is not ready yet. I have a lot of Action Plans in my agenda and this is one of them. But if you are listening to this episode down the road, there’s a good chance it is there right now and waiting for you. And so in order to find out what Action Plans are available and if this one is available by the time you listen to this, head on over to the Lab, check out what we have inside and see if this is right for you.
Let’s jump right in to this…
Product creation starts with your offer
What most people do when they want to create their product is that they plan up the product; they think it is really going to be cool, they have these dreams in their head and they are like, “Oh man, people are going to really dig this” or at least they cross their fingers and hope people are going to dig it… That is a thing for another day about validating your product idea. But anyway, they have this idea, they have got the dream and then they just simply go and do it. And that is not what we should be doing.
Product creation does not start with the product. It starts with the offer.
The offer is the thing that you are going to present to outsiders to get them to buy it; very simple. It will be the thing that you put on the sales page. That is really where the product creation should begin. It needs to start with the complete package of things that you are going to put on the table and say “This is what I am offering to you today.”
In a lot of times we go down the road and you see or experience; because most entrepreneurs have, when a product just does not sell very well or when the conversion rates are not what we want them to be. What ends up happening is that that entrepreneur will start split-testing various things or start being like “Do I need to have a better offer in there or maybe I need to split-test my price or play around with images” and quite frankly these are all little things. Those are the things that you do when you know you have already got a winner. And because you are trying to tweak that conversion rate to 2.5 to 2.6 or something like that; you know, you already know something is converting and quite frankly, even the numbers I just gave you, in some cases will be a kind of a poor conversion rate. But you get the idea… We are talking about increments here when it comes to split-testing.
Really, what it comes down to at the beginning is whether anybody likes the offer to begin with. And so, instead of worrying about headlines and images and bullet points and even little price testing, we need to bring it down to basics and look at the offer itself. That is the most important thing to test; the actual offer. Not all the little mechanics of copy.
The most important factor is the offer itself. And so for that reason, when you are creating a brand new product for your audience, you want to start with the offer. You literally want to start outlining the offer, putting together that offer page before you have actually made the product.
By doing this you are going to go through a few different things. You will ask yourself different questions. The first thing is that it all starts by putting yourself in the mindset of the people that you are looking to sell to. You want to become your prospect and understand the world from their perspective. Understand what it looks like from their end. It does not matter how excited you are about your product, it does not matter how badly you and all your expertise think they need it. It really comes down to what it looks like from their point of view.
Ask Yourself Those Questions
And so, with that in mind; what would they get excited about? Ask that question. What would the people that you are going to be trying to sell to, what is going to make them excited? What is going to make them look at it and go “Wow, this really is what I need right now.”
Another question that you need to ask is, “What would alleviate their doubts?” It is absolutely natural for somebody who is looking to potentially buy something from you to doubt you, to wonder if there is risk involved, to wonder if you are really going to fulfill on the things that you are saying? Especially when money gets involved, it seems like a lot of people need to distrust until you prove otherwise. And you need to put that into the offer. You need to go “Okay, what is going to alleviate their doubts that I am serious about what I am talking about and then I can really deliver?” And bullet point those things down because you are going to build that into your offer and the way you present that offer.
Another question you need to ask is “What would they feel like they need to get the result?” The key point there that I want you to realize is what would “they” feel they need to get the result? Not what you and all of your expertise think they need. What do they think they need? And you need to understand that. It is really important to jump into that mindset because your job when you are making the offer is to make your product match up with what they are looking for. It could be that ultimately you are going to need to take them down a different path than what they were maybe thinking. But you are going to have to meet them on common ground and so you need to know what is it that they feel that they need; what is it that they are looking for that would be a solution to that.
Now obviously, a follow up to that is “What do they really need?” I mean, you have to make sure that you are going to deliver the goods and deliver the thing that is going to get them to the result. Now if your prospect comes into this, thinking one thing but you know through experience that that thing that they think that is going to work is just not going to work, well you need to educate them on that and you need to ultimately provide what they really need. And maybe a part of your offer is going to be a little bit of education so that they have that “ah-huh” moment about why the way that they were doing something before is not going to work for them. Okay? But you need to have this in mind so that you can present the offer.
Another important part of the offer is just removing the risk from them. So a couple of questions come to mind here: One is how are you going to guarantee that they are going to get those results? I have said many times now that ultimately, your product is a simply a delivery mechanism for some outcome that they want. That is all that is. They are not buying an eBook, they are not buying a bunch of videos or whatever, they are buying a specific result and your product is just a means to an end for them. So, one of the things that they are going to be looking for is signs of certainty that they are going to get what they want.
How can you assure them that they are going to get it? And so, put yourself into the mind of the prospect and answer that question. How do you guarantee that they are going to get the results that they want? And then, goes along with that is “How do you remove risk?” That is a definitely important part of an overall offer; risk removal, because people are naturally going to be skeptical. That is just the way that it is; especially when you are asking them to buy something. People don’t like to part with their money. They are only going to do it when they feel as if the things that they are going to gain are greater than the value of the money that they are going to put out there.
And so how are you going to remove that risk? This is where things like the offer guaranty, that standard 30 day or 60 day refund policy… But some people are really sweet in their offer by going even beyond that. I have seen some offers that basically say “If you do not get such and such a result within some time frame, contact me and we will give your money back.” So that is a way of giving them a guarantee that not only guarantees that they are going to get the result but also removes risk because they now have the opportunity to get their money back if they do not get exactly what you are promising.
So these are all things that you need to bring to the table and outline, and maybe even sit down and write the sales letter for it before you have actually made the product.
But Why Do This First?
Now I will end off the episode by answering the obvious question of “Why do this first?” What many people are going to do is create the product and then come back and write the offer for it. Here is why… It is because it is the offer that is going to be the front-facing thing; not the product. They do not know what the product looks like until they already have given you money. And so you need to make the product match what they need and what they want. And then once you have that there, you create the product which fulfills it.
So by reversing the typical way that you do it, by looking at it in terms of what is going to sell, what is going to get them to buy this; and then you create the product to match what you just said in the offer, then you have got a really good package that is probably going to work versus you create the product and then you try to convince everybody why it is so great. Okay? That is why. Write the perfect offer which solves all these points that we just talked about and then you match the offer with the product that is actually going to deliver upon it.
You obviously need to fulfill all your promises; you do not want to say anything in your offer that is not going to be true. You want to make sure that the product matches up with the things that you say.
And by the way, I will just end off with this one little point… If you realize that the perfect offer, that thing that is really going to get them massively excited to something that you simply can’t deliver, that you just do not have the skills to do it; you could do a couple of things: One is that maybe you partner with somebody or find some way to bring in those skillset or that set of knowledge so that you can complete this offer and make it truly, truly good or maybe you have got to pare it down a little bit. Sometimes you have got to take the perfect offer and you got to tweak it and get it down to the neighborhood that you know that you can actually do. But it is always, always important that your product that you ultimately end up making matches the promises that you put into the offer and that offer needs to be written for the purposes of selling the course, not to match something that you have already made and now you are trying to convince people that they want it.
And that is why product creation starts with you offer.
…
Hopefully that is enlightening and gave you some really keen insight on to the world of product creation. With that being said, I will see you next time here at Coffee Break Blogging. 🙂 Talk again soon!
