Episode 449: Do cheaper offers have higher conversion rates?

Do you assume that cheaper offers have higher conversion rates?

When you’re struggling to make sales, is your default solution to offer something cheaper or give a discount?

In this episode of the Heart-Centred Business Podcast, I am going to answer the question of whether cheaper offers have higher conversion rates.

I’ll also give you a number of other ways that you can improve your conversion rates without having to drop the price or default to creating cheap offers.

Let’s dive in!

EPISODE 449: Listen using the player below, or click the links to your fave platform to subscribe and listen over there:

Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on SpotifListen on YouTube

When it comes to people’s decision-making about whether they’re going to invest in purchasing your product or service, price is only one factor.

Yes, sometimes cheaper offers have higher conversion rates. But it is only one factor!

For most people, the thing that would drive better conversion rates is something other than price.

I once heard the saying that there’s no price low enough for something that someone doesn’t want to buy, and there’s no price low enough for someone who never intended to buy from you.

If you are struggling with conversion, I want you to think about all the factors that contribute to your conversion rates.

Higher conversion rates come from a number of factors…

Factor 1: The value proposition

Value proposition is the value of the transformation your offer will facilitate through the eyes of the person who buys it. The difference between what my life and my situation looks like before I work with you, versus what my life and situation looks like after I’ve purchased your product, completed it and implemented it.

What is the difference? What difference do you make?

Because you don’t sell information, you sell transformation.

People don’t buy information. That is readily available for free on the internet. People buy transformation.

What is the value proposition of your offer? And have you articulated that in a way that’s meaningful to your niche?

Most people struggle with this. They spend so much time talking about how many modules their course has, or the process they will take someone through, but they don’t paint a picture of what that transformation looks like, what life will be like afterwards, and why that transformation is valuable for your niche.

And different people within your niche will value different things.

You need to speak about your offer and the value proposition of your offer from multiple angles at different times when you’re talking about it.

For example, when I’m promoting my Take Off program, I have 47 different promo posts that I can share on social media that talk about the value proposition of the program through different lenses.

Every time I launch the Take Off program, I write a bunch of new promos for it as well, because as new people go through the program and as I get clearer and clearer on my ideal clients for it, I have new ideas and new elements of the value proposition that I want to focus on.

Because of that, I write different versions of my promos for the program to attract in the right people and make sure it’s very clear what the transformation is and why it’s valuable.

That supports me to have higher conversion rates.

Factor 2: The resonance of your messaging

The value proposition is the value of the gap between before and after… but you’ve got to actually get my attention and reflect my lived experience.

If you are a picture-perfect person with a picture-perfect life, and your copy is all about how you help perfect people get better outcomes, then that’s not necessarily going to resonate with me.

If you also talk in very vague and lofty terms, I might not have the clarity that what you offer is exactly for me either.

Think about the way that your ideal client describes their challenge, goals and what it is that they’re looking for, and reflect that in your own messaging.

That is going to be far more likely to improve the conversion rate of your offer than simply making it cheaper and turning it into a self-study program.

Factor 3: Connection

How connected to you are your audience? How much do they know you? And how much do you know them?

Do they feel that they can reach out to you and ask you questions at any time? Do they engage on your content on social media? And do they reply to your emails?

If you’re not driving up connection and creating that sense of people knowing you and feeling like they have a relationship with you, then you will not be driving up conversion.

Low connection strategies have the lowest conversion rates.

High connection strategies have the highest conversion rates.

And yet, think about how most people are so motivated to create a self-study low-ticket course. That’s low connection in delivery. But also, because the price per sale that you’re making is so low, you also then have to sell it in a very low connection way.

You’re not going to be doing dozens and dozens of sales calls to make a sale of a $29 product.

That being said, the first time you launch it, I do recommend you do that because it’s going to give you a lot of insight into the messaging and resistance that people have and exactly what the value proposition is.

But if that’s going to be the strategy ongoing, then you are going to need to do a lot of sales conversations to be able to make even $1,000 in a month.

Generate that connection with your audience, not only in your marketing, but also in your delivery.

Because high connection does create higher conversion rates.

Factor 4: Time in your audience

I know the longer someone has been in my audience and on my mailing list, the more likely they are to buy something from me.

If I’m pushing to try and convert as many of them into paying clients as possible without giving them time to get to know the lay of the land, and get to learn some things from me, then often I end up driving them away.

In the first 90 days of joining my mailing list, I’m very conscious of ensuring that people get their welcome email, that people are receiving regular newsletters from me, that I’m directing them to these podcast episodes and that people find out about some of the free resources that I have to offer.

Because the more of my content they consume and the longer they’ve been in my audience, the more likely they are to buy.

One of the things that I teach in launch strategy and that I use myself that I don’t see in a lot of other places, is that when I launch my Take Off program, for example, 90% of my launch is focused on my existing audience.

This is because the people who join my list right in the middle of a Take Off launch are the least likely to buy in that Take Off launch.

They’re going to be my most likely to buy in the next launch or the launch after.

Instead, I focus on growing my audience at all times, so that I am maximising the amount of time people have in my audience before they’re invited into a launch and I’m presenting a paid offer.

My sweet spot is between 90 and 180 days.

It’s generally at around that time period that people are most likely to buy. But I’ve got to nurture them and look after them for that to be true.

You might just have an issue that you haven’t grown your audience consistently enough in the lead-up to the promotion of your product or service. The more you are consistently growing that audience, the more you are building up a bank of hot clients who are going to be ready to buy in the not-too-distant future.

Factor 5: Belief

This one has a number of different layers to it.

Layer 1: Belief in you

Does this particular potential client believe in you? Do they believe the results that you keep talking about? Do they believe that you have the skills, experience and understanding of their situation to be able to serve them? And do they believe you actually care about them and their results?

Layer 2: Belief in themself

One of the main reasons why people in my audience say they don’t buy some of my self-study options is that they don’t believe they will complete the course.

They don’t have faith in themselves to do the modules and implement them.

Instead, they’d prefer to work with me in one of my higher touch mentorship programs because they know if they’ve got me on tap, they are far more likely to complete the process and get results because they want to borrow from my experience and expertise for the parts of themselves where they don’t necessarily think that they have the skills just yet.

One of the big reasons why people join my Accelerator is they love getting my help with copywriting edits and reviews of their sales pages, promos and emails.

They don’t necessarily think that if they did a self-study course on writing email sequences they would get as good results as if they would just have me give them a once over and make any adjustments and changes for them.

That’s one of the big benefits of being in the Accelerator with me.

Do they:

• Believe in themselves?
• Believe they have the time, energy, focus, discipline, connection with you, and access to you that they need in order to get the result?
• Have the skills and personality to get the result?
• Have the resources to get the result?

By driving up their belief in themselves, you will drive up conversion.

The more you help people to build that sense of self-belief, the more that they will be ready to buy from you.

I’m not saying you have to do done-for-you services or give people feedback on their copy, but I am saying that if you’re going to offer self-study programs or you’re offering something where that person needs to be very self-driven and self-motivated to finish the product and to get the results, you need to reassure them that you’ve made it as straightforward as possible, and you need to reassure them that they can get the result by being very explicit and specific about exactly how it helps them and exactly who it’s for.

Layer 3: Belief in the process

For example, if you’re selling a program that helps me to make a million dollars, but I don’t have any clarity on exactly how you’re going to help me do that, it starts to sound a little bit like snake oil.

It starts to sound like I’m swapping some things for some magic beans. If I don’t believe that those magic beans are created or crafted in a way that it’s going to work for me, then I’m less likely to purchase.

That’s particularly crucial in times of economic contraction.

When we are optimistic about the future and ourselves, we are more likely to buy something without knowing exactly what the process is.

But as money gets tight and as we go into economic contraction, we need far more clarity on exactly the steps you’re going to take us through, and we also need to believe that those steps are going to work for us.

You need to build belief in all three – belief in you, belief in themselves, and belief in the process and that process working for them.

That is going to create higher conversion rates.

Factor 6: Trust

Can you be trusted?

One of the most important drivers of trust is whether I can reliably predict your behaviour.

If you show up on social media for 12 days in a row, but then disappear for a couple of weeks, and then you come back for a few days before disappearing for six months, then you are eroding our trust.

Will you disappear when I buy from you? Will you disappear and yoink your course from out beneath my feet in the middle of me completing it?

Developing trust comes from being able to reliably predict your behaviour. And that often comes from your consistency.

I recommend setting yourself a target sometime this year to get to the point where you are posting daily on your primary social platform, and you’re creating a weekly piece of feature content, such as a blog, podcast or video, and sending that to your mailing list every single week.

If I know you’re showing up every week and I see you’ve got content going on your social media every day, that is a big driver of trust.

Of course there are other drivers of trust.

Being able to see your face, being able to see who you are as a human, and being able to see that you deeply care, will drive up my trust in you as well.

Also removing secrecy. This is a big one in the online business space at the moment, and I’m not 100% sure why.

We see a lot of people sharing that they’ve got this amazing special offer, but you have to DM them for the details.

Creating that layer of secrecy erodes trust, particularly in an economic contraction.

Instead of hiding the price on things, be upfront about it.

Be open. Instead of making people jump through hoops and only disclosing special offers in privacy, make those offers available to everyone. Be upfront about what the process is in your offers.

I’ve also seen a trend towards not even having sales pages for offers, and instead just having sales calls describing what’s going to be covered, but then never confirming that in writing.

I understand that one of the reasons that people do this is because they feel like they don’t want to be held to account for something that they said offhand, or they don’t want someone to scrupulously go through every single inclusion and feel like they’re not getting value because they’re not doing every single thing that’s included. But you’re also sending the message that you don’t like to be held accountable, and you don’t have that full disclosure upfront.

Something that I also find very frustrating is when sales pages disappear.

There’ve been times where I’ve purchased something, and then the moment the doors close, I can’t get back to the sales page of what I’ve purchased to check what it is that I bought and what was promised to be included.

These days, whenever I buy something through a sales page, I take screenshots of that sales page. I have been burned more than once when the sales page has disappeared. I’ve had a memory that something was going to be included, but when I’ve asked the provider, they’ve told me it’s not included so I’ve gone to check the sales page only to find that it’s been removed.

Developing trust and being someone who is transparent, upfront and reliable is a big factor when it comes to conversion.

There are also other factors, such as the ease with which I can complete the process, the time that it’s going to take me, what’s going on in my life, and all of these other things that go on for me behind the scenes as the buyer.

But you don’t have control over most of those factors.

The ones that you do have control over are your value proposition, the resonance of your messaging, the level of connection that you develop with your audience, the time that people have in your audience before they’re pitched your offer, and their belief in you themselves and the process… and yes, price as well.

But the factors other than price have a far bigger impact than the price in most markets.

If these six things are off, resorting to a decrease in price will not always help.

As I said, there’s no price low enough for an offer no one wants.

And there’s no price low enough for someone who was never intending to buy in the first place.

Work on these factors instead, rather than consistently jumping to a lower price.

Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of the podcast!

A couple of those factors that I mentioned that drive up conversion relate to your core message.

With this episode, I have a free template on how to develop your core message.

It walks you through the step-by-step process to map out your core message, and that can be one of the most mission-critical things to sort out if you’re struggling with conversion.

You can grab that free template at: tashcorbin.com/coremessage

Until next time, I cannot WAIT to see you SHINE.