10MINMC.Ep.10.V1.Audio
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Trey Sheneman: [00:00:00] Great marketing doesn't start with ads. It starts with an offer that is too good to ignore. Today we're gonna talk about building an ironclad offer. Come.
Welcome to 10 Minute Masterclass. I'm your host and lead MC, Trey Sheneman, and it's our goal on 10 Minute Masterclass every week to help you learn timeless business principles that will work to apply to today's business problems. Now, the way that we do that every week is we focus in on what I call the core four drivers of growth, marketing, sales, operations, and leadership.
No matter when I was running growth inside of some [00:01:00] well-known organizations or taking my own startups to market growth for me and. Every situation could always be nested back to problems that I was solving in one of those four core areas of the business, which is why I call 'em the core four areas of growth.
Now in today's episode, we're gonna lean into the marketing area of growth, and we're gonna pick up where we've left off in our series here of doing deep dives into our one of a kind growth framework that we run here at Herald called. The Compass Method. Now, a couple of episodes ago, we did a deep dive on the competitive set analysis, and in today's episode, we're gonna be doing a deep dive into what we call offer mapping.
Now, offer mapping to me is that, that it's the fulcrum in the way the compass works because if you don't have a well positioned, well articulated offer, the rest of your marketing, the rest of your advertising, the rest of your strategy. Really doesn't matter. So getting your offer right to me is probably the most critical thing you can do as a brand, especially if you're a brand that's selling [00:02:00] online.
I. Now when I meet business owners, I meet 'em from all over the world in all kinds of industries. It never ceases to amaze me how convinced business owners are about their own offers. Most business owners believe that their offer, um, is, is good, and the truth is. Many business owners just carry a, a, a bit of natural bias towards their own offer.
And when you really dig into the framing, the positioning of their offer, they've not spent one second looking at the market, looking at the other offers that they're competing against. They've really just come up with a product or service, stuck a price on it, and then started trying to sell it. And so what we do in the offer mapping section of the compass is we really drill in on how our.
Offers specific for our clients, how are they differentiated from the rest of the market? Now, um, if you don't have differentiation, you're gonna be viewed as just another offer in a sea of offers. And [00:03:00] so in today's episode, what I wanna do is I really wanna drill in on the five areas of an ironclad offer of what we're actually looking to discover and to help our clients build out and understand.
So the first part. Of an ironclad offer is a compelling promise. The the promise should be clear, it should be bold, and the promise of your product or your service should deliver on the desired future that your prospective customer wants to have in their life. Um. When I think about, uh, really cool, clear, compelling promises, I've talked about this brand a little bit in a prior episode.
You might get hungry when you hear me talking about 'em, but, but Domino's to me in the kind of pizza delivery world, has really upped their game in the last few years. You know, uh, Papa John's, they had like a little bit of a PR crisis with their founder and they kind of had to move away from him. And, you know, Shaq's now come in and Shaq's become a bit of the face of Papa John's.
But when you think about Domino's. Domino's has focused on speed. Speed has become their [00:04:00] clear, compelling promise. Their tagline right now is hot and fresh pizza delivered in 30 minutes or less, or it's free. I mean, that's a really, really bold promise. They've invested in these little, uh, like, uh, hatchback cars that have ovens in 'em so that the pizza stays hot and fresh while they're driving around.
They have increased their driver count in all of the locations, so their deliveries go faster. And if you go and look at their stock price and the way they've been doing as a company like it, it's showing that that clear compelling process is working. So what can you learn from that? Your offer should tell your customers exactly what they'll get.
I. And how it's gonna improve their life. That's how your product has a compelling promise. Okay part number two of an Iron Cloud offer is an irresistible guarantee. So the whole point of having an irresistible guarantee in your offer is you wanna reduce risk and build trust. Most people aren't necessarily excited about making the right decision when they're buying a product or service.
They're really just concerned about making the [00:05:00] wrong one. And so one of the ways that we can make sure they don't do that is we, we reverse risk. We take the risk off the table, we give them some sort of a. Irresistible guarantee. It helps to remove fear, remove fear of getting the buying decision wrong.
Um, a really great example of a, of a risk reversal that's out there is Zappos, the shoe brand. They have got a 365 day return policy. That is insane. Um, people could wear the shoes out multiple times over and still send 'em back within the first year. They're gonna get their money back and it's made online shopping with Zappos.
Like when you really look into it, it's pretty much a no-brainer. You literally have zero risk. Costco is this way. You could buy bushes from Costco and plant 'em in your yard and have 'em live. You know, go through an entire cycle in your front yard and then dig 'em up and take 'em back into Costco and Costco's gonna give your money back like.
These brands have figured out. Now that's extreme, and when you're a small business, you might not have the cash flow in the early days to be able to do something that [00:06:00] extreme. But I would say what is a, what is a risk reversal? That you can do. We have a client in the home services space, and they are no money down.
Don't pay until you're satisfied. So they literally are doing the entire job. And then after the job is done, letting the customer come in and say, yep, I'm satisfied. And then they get to pay. So what makes sense for you from a risk reversal standpoint that you could offer? Figure that out. Add it to your offer.
Number three is stacked value. You should make the offer feel so good that it's also a no-brainer from just the total value that you're getting above and beyond the cost of the offer. So instead of discounting, I, I'm, I'm, I'm really squarely in the Chick-fil-A camp on this one. You know, Chick-fil-A never discounts their prices. You either get it for free from them, which is why they give out those little, uh, used to be a little, uh, like business card looking coupons. Now it's, they give you like actual gift card, like plastic things that have free, free food on them. They either give it to you for free or you pay full price for it.
I'm very much in that camp. I [00:07:00] don't think we should get into limited time promos a ton in. In some industries it makes sense, but for the general people we work with, we never really coach 'em up on that. But what we do coach them up on is adding bonuses. So rather than discounting the price, what are some other things you could throw in in a limited time to make.
The offer even stickier. You know, in the info product space, this is where people will throw in free coaching sessions or extra worksheets or templates or extended access. Um, so what is that extra thing that you could wrap into your offer to make it even stronger? So number three, stacked value. Number four, clear differentiation.
What are the actual things that make your product unique? And how are you communicating those uniques to the world? You gotta own a lane. You can't just be a product in a lane with a bunch of other products. You actually need to own a lane. So why should people buy from you instead of the competitor?
This is where those comparison charts come in a lot. We've all seen them. Uh, they're really, really, um. Prevalent in [00:08:00] the SaaS space where people will come in and they'll build these little comparison charts with your product going down the left and all your other competitors and then how you, how you're differentiated.
You know, apple is really leaned in on this. You know, they don't just be want to be another computer company or a phone company. They are selling a lane around thinking and being different in the way you use your technology. So come up with however you can frame your offer up to make it stand out. And lastly, you gotta have a really clear and compelling.
Uh, call to action. You gotta tell people what to do next. A part of your offer is actually asking them to take action and how you do that. Like what are the words you actually use? Um, what are, um, you know, what can you do to drive scarcity and urgency? Can you use countdown timers? Can you use limited supply?
Can you use going out of stock? Like, what are the things you can do in order to make things time sensitive and clear? So, my encouragement to you this week is, as you listen to this episode, is go in and audit your own offer. Work it through these five points. Is, does it [00:09:00] have a clear and compelling promise?
Have I reversed risk? Have I stacked enough value? Is it clearly differentiated? And what am I doing from a timely timeliness factor right now on my offer to drive scarcity and urgency? I promise you, if you'll figure out how to work all of those things in, you're gonna find that there's a lot more meat on that bone when it comes to driving your conversion rate up and being able to sell more products.
Now, here's the truth. There's, there's not a ton of people out there that are really great at building our cloud offers. Of all the things we do at Herald, helping brands land their offers is something I believe we're world class at. And I think we've got plenty of references to back that up. So if you want somebody to actually take a look at your offer with you, I'd love for, uh, you to give us that shot.
We actually have some space coming up here in the second quarter of 2025 in order to be able to take on a couple of clients. So if considering the Compass Method is something you wanna look into, we'd love to talk to you about that. Alright, so this. Week. Your homework is to make sure you [00:10:00] have audited your own offer.
Don't just be one of those people that hears this stuff and doesn't do anything about it. Make sure you take action because if you get a great offer and it's ironclad, it's gonna sell itself. Until next time on 10 Minute Masterclass, we'll see you on the flip side.
