#289 - The 10-Part Gateway Offer Checklist (Miss One and It Won't Work)

Have you ever heard of a gateway offer? It's not just a low ticket offer. I know a lot of people think they're the same thing, but they're not. A gateway offer is specifically designed to solve two massive problems that almost every coach and course creator is dealing with right now. Problem number one, you need to be able to run profitable ads and grow your list every single day, not just covering costs, not just right before a launch, but actually making profit, growing leads daily. Problem number 2 is people just don't trust you and they don't trust themselves. They bought courses before and they've never finished them. They've invested money and just not followed through. So even if your offer is great, they're hesitant. A gateway offer solves both of these problems. And when you get it right, it is a game changer. But here's the thing, most people get it wrong, and that's exactly what I'm going to help you to fix today. Hey, hey there, I'm Kate McKibbin from hellofunnels.co, and welcome to the Doing It Online podcast. Today I'm walking you through my 10-part gateway offer checklist. Yes, 10 parts. This is the exact checklist I use to make sure an offer is going to work before I ever spend a dollar on it. Because if your offer doesn't hit all of these 10 things, it's not going to be profitable. You're not going to be able to scale. You're not going to be able to get in front of enough people. And it's probably going to end up being a big old waste of time and money, which is what happens when you do low-ticket offers wrong. So let's make sure you do it right. Now, before I get into the checklist, which is what I know you're all waiting for, I wanna let you know about something really exciting. We are running a gateway offers workshop next week, March 24th Australian time, but for most people, that's probably March 23rd, and tickets are already half sold out. Now, inside the workshop, I'm gonna walk you through how to create a gateway offer using this exact 10-path checklist. We're even gonna give you the AI tools I use to make sure you get it right. We're gonna help you come up with the ideas. Refine those ideas, and make sure they hit all 10 points. Because I've actually got an amazing GPT that does all the hard work for you. It helps you to brainstorm ideas, refine them, double-check they hit all 10 things on the checklist, and then create your sales page all in minutes. And I know it might feel a little overwhelming to try and come up with something like that that hits all of these 10 things on your own, but it needs to hit all 10 or it's just not going to work. So if you want to create your gateway offer with us live, actually come up with the idea, refine it, and have it ready to start selling in just a couple of hours, grab your tickets now. Link are in the show notes below, and I'll see you there. Alrighty, let's dive on into the checklist. So number 1, it needs to be specific. I'm not talking about using things like getting better, more, growing. We need to use really specific language. Okay. So rather than how to grow your email list, it's going to be how to get your first 100 subscribers in the next 7 days. Can you see the difference? One is big and broad and vague and pretty unexciting. The other is specific and specific is what sells. Okay. Number 2, the promise needs to be desirable. So is it something that they really want? Something that they really want right now, where they're at right now with everything that's going on in the world. Not what you think they need, but what they actually want. And those things can be quite different. And you need to balance this with believability, which is number 3. So do they believe that whatever that promise is, that you're going to actually be able to help them to achieve it in a realistic time frame. So we're not going out there saying something like, how to make $1 million in the next 7 days, because no one's going to believe that. They're going to think you're a scammer. Yes, it's very desirable, but it sounds like total BS. Instead, how about saying something like, how to make an extra $500 in the next 7 days, or how to get another 3 clients in the next 7 days. These feel desirable, but also achievable, believable. And it's really important that you find the mix of these two. All right, number 4, it needs to feel new, novel, or different. It can't just feel like something that they've seen 100 times before, just another version of something they've maybe already tried and failed. You need to put your own spin on it, and this can look like your own method, your own name, your own unique take. or maybe it's even a bit contrarian, how to get a certain result without having to do the things they thought they'd have to do. But it definitely needs to feel new, novel, or unique, or you will not get the cut-through and you'll just be more noise. All right, number 5, is the promise related to what you're going to help them with in your other offers? Okay, this is really important. So if it is completely unrelated, just because you've come up with something that maybe feels exciting or sexy or ticks all the other boxes, that's not going to be a clear, easy, direct path to taking them on the journey to get them to also buy your other offers. And that's, you know, that's the second thing that this offer needs to do. It needs to allow you to grow your list profitably, and it needs to be bringing in ideal clients and making it effortless to introduce them to your next step offers. So if it doesn't feel related, then this is going to be a waste of time. So an example of this is our current gateway offer is all around content, right? But it couldn't just be any content. It had to be around content done in a way that really attracted people who were also interested in what it is that we help people with, which is sales and marketing in a more systemized way. So our content-focused offer is helping people to create content and it's going to save them time and it's going to be more strategic content, more systemized content, so they can help to make them more sales. So you can see here it's still very related. All right, number 6, is the problem you're attempting to solve or offering to solve, is it what I would call a vanity problem or a pretty problem? Basically, is this the problem that they actually want to solve? Not necessarily the real problem, but the problem that they think and really hope will be the thing to solve it. So if you think about all the things that they're currently doing, currently spending time and money on, currently buying books about, things that they're, you know, they're saving carousels about, all in an attempt to try and get to that endpoint they want to be. So these are often problems that feel easier or more beginner problems, and they're often also not the real problem. You know, as the experts, as the coaches, you know, we know that there is a big difference between the things that people think they should do or think they need to do to get an outcome and what they really need to do. For example, if their real problem— and I'll stay with my example— is that they want to make more sales, right? I know that the real way to do that, to get a real impact there, is it going to need to be able to grow their audience reliably. They need to have great offers. They need to set up structures and systems to sell, and they need to have a rhythm in place to be activating and converting their existing audience. Like, these are the 4 things we help people with. But all of that's really big, right? And none of that's something you can do in 20 minutes. It feels like a lot of work. It feels like a lot of effort. And people don't necessarily want to do that. When they're sort of in this like impulse buying mode, the stuff that's gonna get them activated and ready to hand over money quickly is something that feels a little bit more like a quick win or a magic solution. So often while they're scrolling, the kinds of things that they're actually looking for solutions for are those quicker win feeling things, which is maybe like, what if my content was just better? Rather than having to put this whole system in place, what if my content was just a bit better? That would surely help me make more sales. Or what if I was just a bit more productive? Surely I'd then have time to make more sales. Or what if I knew the exact right thing to say when someone sent me a DM message? That's obviously going to help me make more sales. Can you see how these are like almost like little Band-Aids, but they're the Band-Aids that people want? They're the Band-Aids with the superhero characters on them, right? So we want to focus on giving people those superhero band-aids, giving them the solutions to the problems that they're currently hoping and wanting to solve because they wanna get that quick win, they wanna get that dopamine, they wanna be able to prove to themselves that yes, they can get a little bit way down the road because often that bigger thing, which is the real big solution to the real big problem, yes, not only does it feel like more work, but like we've already mentioned, they don't really trust themselves to be able to do it, or that if they put that much time and effort into something, that it's gonna actually give them solution they want. So that's why we're giving them these pretty problem solutions, these vanity problem solutions. And that's why our current gateway offer, I said it's content focused, and it gives them a system to create content more quickly and in a way that's gonna make them more sales. So they're gonna get that win. They're gonna go, oh, that was great. I wonder what else I can systemize. I wonder what else I can do to make more sales. And then it leads them through to the next steps. Okay, number 7. Does it appeal to not just your ideal client, but also the broader audience that they are part of? So of course, whatever your gateway offer is, it needs to appeal to your ideal client, really speak to them, get them really excited. But it also needs to appeal to an audience that is broader than your ideal client, which might sound a bit counterintuitive. But bear with me, because if you create something that only appeals to your absolute ideal client, it's going to be too expensive to run ads to. And that's a really common problem that I see. So you need something that's going to appeal to your ideal client, but within a much broader target market, because that's how Facebook ads work right now. Like, if you're wanting to have success with Facebook ads right now, you need to give them a really big audience to go after. If you do that, everything is going to be cheaper. It's be so much easier to scale. And before you go, hang on, but Kate, you're telling me I need to create something that's going to attract people onto my list who aren't ideal clients? First of all, your lead magnet is doing that already. Like, I would say that 9 out of 10 people coming through to your list from freebie things like lead magnets are probably never going to buy. They are probably also people who are like, oh, I'm not sure what that is, but it was interesting. I've only put my email address in. So it's, it's no different than running a lead magnet. But the thing that is different is that when you go after this bigger audience, it allows you to make a lot more sales of this initial offer. And if you set the offer up right, then that's going to give you profit, which is going to help with all the other parts of your business. But on top of that, it's giving you a bigger ads budget so you can scale those ads and get in front of more ideal clients. Whereas if you just stayed super niche, you wouldn't be able to increase your ad spend, you wouldn't be able to get in front of more clients, and every sale you make is probably going to be a loss. So that's kind of the— and that's this decision I think a lot of people don't understand, but it is a really, really important one to understand to be able to get this right. Number 8, it needs to be fast to consume and fast to get a win. So this is part of the trust building going both ways. It's also part of the promise. If you can have a nice short attractive timeframe within your promise, that's like bonus points. But if we're gonna give something to someone for a very low amount of money, you need to be able to get them in, get them moving and consuming and taking action really fast because often that small spend, it's not enough of a spend for them to be so committed that they're gonna come back later or that they're gonna be happy to spend hours and hours going through your massive mini course that you've overstuffed to make it feel valuable, right? So it needs to be something they feel like they can dive in, consume, do it now, like get started right away. And I have a 20-minute rule that I use with my clients. So when it comes to anything that's gonna happen before you're going to potentially be having to invite them to another sale or making another pitch, you want it to take 20 minutes or less because you want them to be able to consume this whole thing before they move through to the next steps of your funnel and offers. So if there are any videos or anything that needs to go with it, if there's like PDFs, worksheets, whatever it is they need to work through, set yourself the goal of it being something that can be done in 20 minutes, max 30 minutes, preferably 20 minutes, so they can go away, they can start to implement it, and then hopefully they also start to get that first high from that quick win or that aha moment, or even just getting something out there and in place so quickly. You wanna make sure that, as I said, it's quick to consume and implement as possible, because if it's something where they go, oh God, there's a whole lot in here, I'm gonna have to come back to that, they probably won't. So they won't implement, they won't get that trust. And then because you've set them homework, in their head, they're like, I've gotta come back and do that thing later. Anything else you present to them, they're like, I can't buy that because I still haven't done this other thing I bought. So we wanna just make sure that we, we don't give them homework. We let 'em get in, we let 'em get that win. We, we bump up that trust as quickly as possible. Okay, getting all of those? Awesome. Number 9, is it priced to be profitable? So this is something I see a lot of people get wrong, okay? And there's a lot of different theories out there. You'll see some people out there going, no, it's gotta be like, $77 or it's gotta be $7. And the thing is that what it has to be is it has to be right for you and your niche. And I actually have a little cheat code. It's a bit of a calculation that I figured out. It takes just a second, but you can use it to figure out for your exact niche exactly what you should be pricing it for to make it so that it's profitable. I know there was a big trend a few years ago where everyone was doing like the $7 and the $9 thing. And for like a handful of people that worked amazingly well, for most people it didn't. And all they did was just donate a bunch money to Mark Zuckerberg, and I don't want that to happen to you. Okay, so please know it's very important that you price it correctly. It's a really— it's a fine balance, right? If it needs to be low enough that it doesn't need a lot of thought, it can be that impulse buy, but it needs to be high enough so that you are actually setting yourself up to win with your ads. And the real trick here is to actually start with the price first. Like, when you know what that profitable price is for you, for your niche, you then go away and figure out what can you create that is going to be so super valuable that that price feels like a no-brainer, not the other way around. Okay, final one. It needs to be really, really clear and easy to understand exactly what your offer is, what it does, who it's for in seconds, okay? Because that's all the time that you have. It really needs to be something that is going to be designed to work for impulse buyer behavior. Just think about it. They're on their phone, they're doom scrolling. They see an ad, they see like a quick headline. They read a couple of lines, they click a button. And in that time, that's the amount of time you have for them to say, yep, I want this. Okay. Or you don't want them landing on the page. And then that's where you're convincing them. You're explaining things. You want them to land. And be in, ready to buy. Otherwise your conversion rates are not going to be good enough to make this work. So we cannot be explaining anything. We cannot be calling things names that people don't understand. We cannot be using concepts that people need to be convinced of or that they need to be explained to them. And all you're doing is showing them, hey, you're looking for this thing. This is the best way to solve it. You're not convincing them that that is the problem in the first place. Okay. All right, guys. So that's a 10-part checklist. And as you can see, there's quite a bit of nuance to it. You can see why it would be so easy to get this wrong, why it'd be so easy to go out there and try a bunch of things and still never have them work. But I've seen how powerful these are when you get them right. And to get them right, you need to hit all 10 of these things, not 8, not 9, all 10. Because if it doesn't, it's not going to be profitable to scale. You're not going to be able to run ads to it. You're not going to get in front of enough people for it to grow the rest of your business. And it's going to end up being a big waste of time and money. So if you want to create your offer, your gateway offer with us live, if you want to have access to the AI tool I've created that helps to make sure you hit all 10 of these things, and if you want to walk through this whole process with me, from the ideas to the pricing to the creating the sales page, everything you need to getting it done and ready to sell in just a couple of hours, come and join us at the Gateway Offers Workshop live. It's happening next week, March 24th Australian time, which is March 23rd for most people listening. Tickets are already half sold out at the time of recording this episode, so make sure you grab yours now. The link is in the show notes below. I can't wait to see you there. It's going to be so much fun. Grab your ticket now, guys, and I will see you next week.