Part 3: Attraction Offers | $100M Money Models Audiobook

Section 2: Attraction Offers. How to turn eyeballs into money. Attraction offers generate leads and convert them into customers. They turn advertising into money by offering something free or at a discount. We do this because everyone wants a great deal. In a great deal, customers get far more value than the price they pay. Strangers can only take your word on the value, but they absolutely understand the price. For that reason, discounts make anything a great deal to just about anyone. And the greater the discount, the better the deal. The greatest discount of all being free. Free and discount work interchangeably. First off, anytime I say free, you can use discount or $1. Anytime I use discount, you can also use free or $1, and so on. They all discount a product to some level, even if you discount 100%. If you can imagine a way to use a discount or a free offer, then you can do it. After that, I'll let you use your noggin to exchange them. As you see fit. So how do you make money by offering free stuff? Think about it this way. People look for one thing and then buy another by accident all the time. Attraction offers get them to do it on purpose. But what's a better deal than free stuff? More and better free stuff. One free thing is awesome. Two free things are awesomer. And maybe to get those two free things, they have to buy one. That's how we make money on free stuff. In this section, I go over my 5 favorite ways to make money by offering free stuff. Number 1, win your money back. Number 2, giveaways. Number 3, decoy offer. Number 4, buy X, get Y free. Number 5, pay less now or pay more later. Let's make some money. Free gift, bonus tutorial on attraction offers. I made a free video for you on how attraction offers work. If you want it, just go to acquisition.com/training/money. There's no opt-in required, enjoy. Win your money back. If you do X or achieve Y within Z days, you can get it free. June 2013. I was in a room full of experienced gym owners and I was the new guy. We all took turns talking about what was working well. That's when Danny piped up. Yeah, so as you guys know, I've been struggling with sales and I think I got it figured out. I had this pain in the butt guy who wouldn't buy anything. He knew he needed it, but he also said he needed more accountability. So we were going back and forth and he finally came to me with this idea. He said, 'How about this? I'll give you $500, you train me for 8 weeks, and if I hit my goal, I get my money back. But in return, you can use my results to market your business. Fair enough?' I figured, what the heck, he wasn't gonna buy anyways, so I said sure. 'So what happened?' I asked. 'He hit the goal.' 'So did he give him his money back?' 'Yeah,' Danny said. I cut in. 'So what then? He just left?' 'That's what you'd think, but he ended up using the money to buy more time.' 'Huh, seems decent enough. What about marketing his results?' Dude, making his workouts public and posting his before and after pictures brought 13 referrals. Oh, that's insane. Now we're talking. Yeah, I know. I offer this to everyone now. The results are way better. People love the offer and all the free advertising they do gets us their friends and family to join too. I'm making more money than ever. This is the first time I ever saw an offer like this. I updated it over time, but the core stayed the same. Pay now with a chance to get your money back later. I used it for private training, group training, private nutrition coaching, and group nutrition coaching. and once I saw how well it worked with my customers, I started putting the offer in my ads for new customers. My cost of getting customers went way down and my leads exploded. Description: A win-your-money-back offer works like this. You set a goal for the customer and tell them how to reach it. If they reach it, then they qualify to get their money back or get it back as store credit. This offer grew my gyms better than any other. It was also the first grand slam offer Gym Launch taught to gym owners. It has tons of flexibility. So if you want to get more cash, get more customers, and get the better results, nothing beats it. To win your money back, the person has 3 options: get results, take actions, or both. And to make this work, you have to make the results and actions simple to track. Results. Here, no matter what they do, if the customer gets the result, they win their money back. For example, making X dollars a month, getting Y customers, losing Z pounds, etc. Basically, they bet on their ability to reach the goal. Actions. Here you hold them accountable for doing actions instead of getting results. No matter what results they get, if the customer does what you ask, they win their money back. For example, attend all sessions, calls, meetings, log progress, take pictures, do assigned homework, etc. Here they bet on their ability to follow instructions. Actions and results. Here you hold the customers accountable to following directions and getting results. If they do both, they win their money back. Often, people wanting to achieve a goal have too few skills to do it. Even if they did bet on themselves, they'd fail. By setting a good goal for them and showing them how to reach it, they have a fighting chance. Here they bet on their ability to follow directions and that your directions will get them the result. Bottom line: customers put money down. If they do the stuff or get the result or both, they get it back as cash or store credit. Examples: business-to-consumer offer: free 28-day blueprint. Deposit X dollars and get it all back if You, 1, attend all the consulting calls, 2, post your progress in the group once per week, 3, journal daily in our app, 4, attend your feedback session and your transformation session. Hint: calls and meetings become opportunities to make more offers. Next example, business-to-business offer. 5 customers in 5 days free challenge. Deposit X dollars and get it all back if you, 1, send 100 messages a day, 2, report stats on messages sent, 3, attend daily trainings. 4, post-finished homework in group. 5, attend 5-day consulting call. Hint: here you offer more, better, or new products and services. Example number 3, physical product offer. Put 1 million miles on your car and get a free car. So you get a free car if you: 1, buy a new car from us. 2, drive the car 1 million miles. 3, turn it in. 4, take pictures and be in a press release. 5. We'll credit all your original purchase towards your next car. This was an actual offer by Volvo years ago. Important notes: This offer has generated $1 billion in sales. It works. I have made a lot of money with it. You can too. Won Your Money Back works with new, current, and previous customers. I like to use it with new customers because it offers the steepest discount possible, 100%. I like it with current customers because it mixes them in with new customers. And I like to use it to get previous customers back because bigger incentives get them to come back. It works well with stuff that people start and quit, like starting a business, learning new skills, losing weight, building fitness, beauty regimes, self-care, time management, mental health management, etc. It keeps motivation during the early pains of learning. To this day, I've never seen a better way of setting up a program for results. A true win-win. Don't worry, this offer makes money. If you did give all the money back, this offer wouldn't make money. But it does. First, many won't qualify, even with realistic conditions. Second, those who do qualify often stay as customers, but they can only stay customers if they have something else to buy. So have an upsell ready to apply their winnings to, which I'll cover in Section 4 even more. Only offer win your money back if you feel okay with giving money back. Refunds are a part of doing business. However, when advertised well, the win your money back offer gets tons of extra customers. And when you give satisfied customers a great follow-up offer, you make plenty of profit. This more than outweighs the refunds. From the data we've collected from thousands of gyms, about 10% of all customers will ask for their money back. If you can't stomach that, don't do this. Offer store credit instead of cash. If you don't want to offer cash back, you can offer store credit instead. My testing showed offering store credit and cash back got the same number of customers, so you might as well offer store credit. But if you still want to advertise free, pair it with an unconditional satisfaction guarantee. Adding the unconditional guarantee never materially affected the people who wanted their money back. Check with legal counsel in your area, of course. Don't take blood money. If someone doesn't want me to have their money, I want it even less than they do. As a personal rule, if a customer asks for a refund, entitled or not, I give it to them. Just focus on getting the next customer. How to create your win-your-money-back criteria. These criteria make or break this offer. Good criteria have 3 characteristics. 1, they're easy to track, so train them on exactly what they need to do or they will mess it up. Bonus points if people already do it. Example: phones already track steps, word processors already track word count, cameras automatically date photos, etc. Get customers results. Make criteria likely to get them to their desired results. Realistic criteria do just fine. If you think the criteria looks too easy, you've probably gotten close to realistic. They may take a few tries to get it right, but so does anything worth making. Examples: attend meetings, workouts, watch videos, etc. Whatever the best customers do to get the best results, make everyone do it, and they'll get great results too. 3. Advertise the business. Make advertising the business part of your criteria. For example, posting about their participation, tagging in social media, referring, or leaving reviews and testimonials. How you apply store credit. This is important. When customers win their money back, offer to apply it over a longer period or a bulk package. Just offer to apply it to something that costs more than their winnings. In my experience, this keeps customers engaged and makes you more money. So here's what it looks like. You have a product or service that costs $200 a month. A customer wins $600 of credit. Avoid giving them 3 months free upfront. Instead, apply the $600 over 12 months. So $600 divided by 12 months is a $50 per month credit. Now they pay $200 per month minus the $50 credit for a total of $150 a month. To be clear, they can use the credit however they want, but I recommend that you present this first. If they ask to use it up front, you can share my perspective, which is that people fall off if they don't pay something. A discount over the long haul keeps them engaged over the long haul. So it's in the customer's best interest to keep some skin in the game. In-depth details on this upsell offer in the Rollover Upsell chapter in Section 4. All meetings and calls provide opportunities to make more offers. Make check-in meetings part of your money-back criteria whenever you can, and make all meetings required to win their money back. Beyond helping them succeed, they are the best opportunities to make upsell offers. So after you've checked in, offer what makes sense based on their feedback. The win-your-money-back offer in my gyms had 3 appointments: nutrition orientation, which is before pictures, where I'd make a supplement offer; progress check-in, where I'd make a membership offer; and transformation feedback, which was after pictures, where I'd make a membership offer again. And if they bought the membership at the last meeting, I offered a discount if they prepaid the year. Make everyone a winner. Promote and sell the program as though they will only get it back if they meet the criteria. But about halfway through, make your next offer as if they've already won. You lower the customer's anxiety about failing and you keep them longer. They'll also love you that much more. It goes something like this. I know you're trying to hit this short-term goal, but what's your long-term goal? Okay, that's great to hear. You get that it's not about this short-term program, but about your long-term results. So I'll tell you what, to show you how much I want you to hit your long-term goal, I'll credit this program towards the next one, whether you hit the short-term goal or not. How's that sound? And then you sign them up right there for the long-term thing before they even finish. At the end of the program, let the losers win. If someone refuses your first upsell and fails the challenge, you can still upsell them again. Here's how. Act like they won. I say something like this. Don't worry about it. You started. That's the biggest victory of all. And even though you didn't hit your short-term goal, you met ours, which was finishing what you started. To show you that we're in this for the long haul, we'll credit your entire deposit towards staying with us long term. That way you get your money back and you can still hit your goal. How does that sound? You'll turn that frown upside down and they'll love you for it. Remember, we don't get customers to make a sale, we make sales to get customers. The win-your-money-back offer has a simple structure with lots of flexibility. At its heart, you offer a product or service and a way for customers to get their money back if they actually use it. Then, if they use it the way you suggest, they will get good enough results and stay open to more offers and/or longer-term commitments. Summary points. Win your money back is magical for businesses that require customers to put in continuous effort to get their ideal outcome. The win your money back offer rocks because you get loads of upfront cash, you get more customers to say yes to you since it's lower risk, you get massive results for customers, you get more long-term customers, they advertise your offers to get you even more customers. Making some meetings a part of getting the deposit back give great opportunities to check in with your customers and make more offers specific to their needs. Everyone thinks businesses make money on people who fail this program. No, the real money comes from people who succeed with it and you have something else to offer them. Trust me on this one. The more results you deliver, the more money you'll make. Think long. Make the refund criteria easy to track, aligned with the customer's goals, and helpful to the business. Only use a win-your-money-back offer if your refund rate is currently below 5%. Otherwise, fix your product before doing this. You'll risk getting too many refunds. Put the store credit towards another, preferably more expensive offer. You want them to stay customers, so give them the opportunity. You never want people to stop paying you. To make more sales and keep more customers, make everyone a winner in private. That way, everyone stays surprised and grateful when you make your upsell offer. Free gift: win your money back offer training video. I've made a tremendous amount of money with this offer, and I have more details and stories I couldn't reasonably fit in this book. If you want that, I made a free video for you, no opt-in required. To watch it, just go to acquisition.com/training/money. Author note: Send me cool money models you find or use. Submit any really cool money models you see and I'll feature them on my channel and in upcoming versions of this book. I want this book and the online training that's free to expand over time to encompass every type of money model, and I need your help to do it. I will only live one life, but together we can scour the earth for the best money models in existence. Everyone wins. So if you find a cool one, just send it to value@acquisition.com. Follow the same 5-step format listed above, and you can send any links to it if you can. Make sure to check out acquisition.com/training for updates on new ones. Giveaways. Many will enter, many will win. Disclaimer: Sweepstakes and giveaways are heavily regulated. Main reason: they're exceptionally powerful, and when done wrong, can become illegal lotteries. We don't want that. Jail time, no bueno. Make sure you follow all the local advertising laws. This description is no way a guarantee of lawfulness. I take no responsibility for anything you do or don't do as a result of reading this chapter. Woo, okay, got that out of the way. August 2020. I hopped on the phone with the owner of a fitness certification business to talk shop. In a few minutes, he gave me the rundown about how they certify fitness enthusiasts and help them find clients. Interesting business you've got, I said. "Adam, how do you get leads?" "Well, it's pretty simple. We advertise a full-ride scholarship for our entire program. People apply with their contact information and then answer a few questions. We ask stuff like, 'Why should we pick you for the full-ride scholarship?' The best answer gets a full ride. But we also do something more." "Nice, keep going," I said. "We give out partial scholarships." "What do you mean? How's that work?" "Well, we often have a clear winner for the full ride, but tons of people have inspiring stories." So I want to make sure they get scholarships too. Now I can only give away one full ride, but I can give away as many partial scholarships as I want. And then it hit me. Oh, so lots of people apply for the grand prize and only one person gets that. But the other applicants qualify for smaller prizes, right? So I make a big deal out of the person who wins the full ride scholarship. But then I call everyone else to let them know they got the partial scholarship. When I talk to them, they're thrilled. Most of them join our program on the spot. So they don't know the actual price of your thing when they hop on the call. Nope. But they know the value of the full ride scholarship. And then when you present the discounted price of your program with the partial scholarship, it's still a huge savings. Exactly. So not only do you get tons of engaged leads, but you also get more customers with your surprise discount. Genius. It works really well. We actually have to cap it to make sure we can service all the new signups. Believe it or not, we teach the same play to trainers that we certify. It works just as well to get fitness customers and sometimes even better. Man, I love it. He presented this as an education offer and as a fitness offer, but it's so much more. I'm going to show you how to use it in any business. Free giveaways generate many leads who show interest in your most expensive product. What could be better? Description: Giveaway offers advertise a chance to win a big prize in exchange for your content information and whatever else you want. Then after picking a winner, you offer everyone else the big prize at a discounted price. Giveaways also go by names like scholarship, sweepstakes, and raffles. They all mean enter for a chance to win. To run a giveaway offer, you pick a grand prize, pick your promotional offer, ask for contact information and other eligibility criteria, pick what actions you want entrants to take to qualify for the big prize, put the giveaway on a deadline to add urgency, announce the grand prize winner, and contact everyone else. Let's go into each with more detail. Pick a grand prize. Make your grand prize the thing you want everyone to buy. Make sure you assign a monetary value to your grand prize to serve as a price anchor. For instance, if you sell €5,000 worth of value for $2,000, then advertise the $5,000 value. Next, pick your promotional offer. Your promotional offer takes the place of the partial scholarship in the story. You create it by enhancing your core offer with a discount, a bonus, or by minorly changing it from the grand prize in order to ethically justify a price reduction. Using the grand prize as a price anchor. And the bigger the discount, the more compelling the offer. So the bigger the value you ascribe to your grand prize, the better. Remember, leads entered the giveaway because they found the grand prize interesting. It gets you qualified leads because you offer what they already showed interest in at a discount. Call your promotional offer, the thing you sell to everyone else, whatever you want for your giveaway. Scholarship, gift card, dollars off, store credit, vouchers, etc. Next, Ask for contact information in exchange for a chance to win. Ask for permission to contact them in any way you please for follow-up promotions. Beyond that, I survey for prize eligibility and then ask them to take qualifying actions. So what's eligibility? If I ask them if they're a fit for my products, like, do you own a vet clinic? Or more character/need-based questions like, why should you be selected? Ask for qualifying actions. Those are Other stuff entrants do to qualify to win. I also use these to get them to promote my giveaway more or demonstrate higher levels of interest. Example: attending a call or event, making a post, entering a group, etc. Put the giveaway on a deadline to add urgency. Set a date for the grand prize drawing. Make your giveaway more urgent by only making it available for a limited time. I like 3 to 7 days from the day I start promoting it. As soon as leads enter the giveaway, update them daily. First, let them know how long they have left until you announce the winner. You can do this with email, direct messages, text, social media posts, and so on. Do as many times as reasonable. Once a day across all platforms works fine. Second, provide value along with your countdown. Show everyone the benefits of the grand prize, how excited they should be, and refer everyone to social proof. Keep the hype alive. Pro tip: Whisper Tea Shop. Once people enter the free giveaway, it may help to think of the countdown like a mini product launch. So check out the Affiliates and Partners chapter of $100 Million Leads for a detailed look on launches. Announce the grand prize winner and start contacting everyone else. Announce the grand prize winner publicly, then message everyone else who qualifies for your core offer privately. The beauty is everybody else qualifies for a promotional offer. Notify them by text, email, and direct messages. In that message, ask them to schedule a call because they qualified for something. If you need a reason, just say that you found their answers or story so compelling you felt obligated to give them something just for entering. Think of your promotional offer like a participation trophy. To make sure they redeem, add another deadline. Make claiming your promotional offer, the scholarship, gift card, dollars off, store credit, vouchers expire in 7 days. The second countdown works like the first. Show the benefits, more social proof, and more valuable stuff about your offer. Give them a way to book a call to claim their promotional offer. Explain the cost to value using their discount. My rule of thumb: make your core offer discount equal to 10 to 30% of your gross margins. Say we advertise a grand prize with a $5,000 value and a $2,000 retail price tag. Everyone else gets it for $1,800, a 10% discount off retail. When we let them know they qualified for something, we explain they get $5,000 value for an $1,800 price tag. By comparing the value of the thing to what they pay, a 10% discount becomes a 64% difference in cost to value. Bottom line, remember, everyone that entered the giveaway showed interest in your thing. And if somebody shows interest in a thing that you have to offer, offer it to them. Example free giveaways. Dentist offer: free perfect smile giveaway. Grand prize: a free set of invisible braces. $6,000 retail price. Promotional offer: $2,000 gift card for braces. Physical products offer: free year of organic dog food. Grand prize: free year of organic dog food. $1,000 retail price. Promotional offer: $300 gift card for dog food, usable only with a 1-year subscription. Services offer: free ultimate giveaway. Grand prize: free 1-year package, $5,000 retail price. Promotional offer: $2,000 voucher redeemable towards 1 year of service agreement. Consulting offer: free 16-week turnaround giveaway. Grand prize: 16-week turnaround, retail price $12,000. Promotional offer: $6,000 partial scholarship. Important notes: consult legal counsel about how to structure your giveaway. I'm not legal counsel, but I do consider these no-brainers because of the way that I like to do business. Somebody actually has to win the grand prize. Make the grand prize and qualifications to win clear in the rules. Make clear that more than one person can win a prize. Ask your legal counsel about the rest. Eligibility criteria get more customers to buy your core offer. More people will take your core offer if you can make the value specific to them. I ask questions like this to get ammo. Why should we pick you? Why this program? Why now? Why does this matter to you? Why is this important to you? What's your goal, etc.? That being said, the more The harder work you make it to enter, the fewer people will enter, but the more qualified they'll be. So find your sweet spot. If your giveaway doesn't work, it means your grand prize wasn't grand enough. One of my portfolio companies ran a giveaway. They barely got interest. Their grand prize? Tickets to their event. Not compelling. I told them grand prizes only work if they're grand. They tried it again with a $50,000 bundle of equipment from a well-known supplier in the gym space, plus their core product for a year. And this time it crushed. Surprise. When you have an awesome thing to give away and you advertise it properly, the leads flood in, and giveaway kind of explains itself. So if nobody bites, then I suggest you give away something better, or at least better for the audience. Give away 2 prizes for twice the leads. If you give away 1 prize, that's fine, but if you give away 2 grand prizes, you can get twice the leads or more. Here's how: just tell everyone that if someone a referrer wins the grand prize, they win one too. That way they get endless entries into the contest by referring their friends. This gets more people to refer and work together. This also provides a sneaky benefit. Referrers are invested in the success of their referrals. This keeps quality high. Here's an example I did for Skool.com, a platform I co-own for people to build and monetize communities. Refer a winner and you win too. Many of you are inviting friends to play the games with you. And that's the point, to make business fun. To encourage this even more, we're adding a new incentive. If a person that you refer gets in the top 10, you get to come too. AKA, if they win, you win. Beyond that, as a reminder, anyone you refer to school earns you a lifetime 40% commission. Everyone's going to come to school eventually and people can only be referred once. And since you're all early, you have a bigger opportunity to refer. So I'd encourage you to refer them before someone else does or they come on their own. Imagine referring all your friends to Facebook before everyone was on it. Like that, but cooler because you're actually helping them learn and grow and getting a commission too. To refer somebody to share your referral link, go here. P.S., you'll have a higher likelihood to win in the games if the people you refer already have an audience to give their group an immediate boost. Scarcity, scarcity, scarcity. Limit your giveaway by time, number of entries, or both. You can run giveaways for a specific amount of time, example 7 days, a specific number of entries, example 5,000 entries, or both. I like both. I match how many people I let enter. I match how many people I let enter the giveaway with the number of people I have the time and resources to connect with inside 7 days. Any more would be a waste. Urgency, urgency, urgency. I add urgency in 3 places: to enter, to claim, to use. Make how long they have to enter clear in the advertisements. Once you announce the winners, let them know how long they have to claim it. When they do, schedule their call the same day or the next day if you can. Once you let people know they won, tell them how long they have to use it. I like hours, but I have gone up to 5 days. In short, always have deadlines. Have down sells available. Some won't or can't buy your promotional offer even with the discount or bonus. And that's okay. Here's how I approach it. At the start of the call, let them know they qualified for 2 prizes and that you'll help them figure out which way makes the most sense for them. Then present your promotional offer, a.k.a. the discount on the grand prize thing, If they take it, great. If not, then offer the same discount by percentage on any other product you have that makes sense for them. If you have a recurring revenue business, apply their discount over the longest period of time they'll agree to. Then set up their monthly subscription to bill automatically at normal rates after the discounted period ends. Summary points. At their core, giveaways ask an audience to apply to get a high-value thing of yours for free. Many will enter, one wins. The rest qualify for discounts on your core offer. Pick a grand prize people want. Give 2 prizes away if you want more people to refer. Tell them if, tell them if someone they refer wins, they win the other prize. Offer a chance to win the grand prize to anyone who enters and qualifies. You can get great information from every lead because you can make it part of the entry process. Get information that indicates how your offer will provide them value. This becomes important for making offers later. Advertise your giveaway for 7 days or until the number of leads surpasses the number that you can manage to call in 7 days, whichever comes first. Book appointments with everyone else to claim your promotional offer. Use whatever reason why feels good for you. Put an expiration date on people claiming their prizes to make them more likely to claim them. If somebody says no to your core offer, have another product or service to discount. It may suit the lead better. Free gift giveaways. Bonus training. Giveaways are one of the strongest attraction offers on earth. They're so good they need to be regulated. I mean, who doesn't want something for nothing, right? I made a free video training that covered the topic in depth. If you love this stuff as much as me, you can check it out at acquisition.com/training/money. As always, you can scan the QR code if you hate typing. Enjoy. Real quick, guys, I have a special, special gift for you for being loyal listeners of the podcast. Layla and I spent probably an entire quarter putting together our scaling roadmap. It's breaking scaling into 10 stages and across all 8 functions of the business. So you've got marketing, you've got sales, you've got product, you got customer success, you've got IT, You've got recruiting, you've got HR, you've got finance. And we show the problems that emerge at every level of scale and how to graduate to the next level. It's all free and you can get it personalized to you. So it's about 30-ish pages for each of the stages. Once you answer the questions, it will tell you exactly where you're at and what you need to do to grow. It's about 14 hours of stuff, but it's narrowed down so that you only have to watch the part that's relevant to you, which will probably be about 90 minutes. Um, and so if that's at all interesting, you can go to acquisition.com/roadmap. Road map, road map.