How to Use Incentives to Get Extra Sales

Today's guest post is by Jimmy D. Brown of the website iBusiness Owner.

Jimmy is talking about a subject that I'm sure will resonate with many self-publishers, and especially with buyers of my 10-Day E-Book course (which discusses writing and publishing a money-making e-book on ClickBank).

Take it away, Jimmy...

* * *

The vast majority of your prospects aren’t all that passionate about your offer.

Truth is, they’re kind of lukewarm. They’re interested, but they’re not taking their credit card out. Instead of making a buying decision, they decide to “think about it.”

Of course you know what happens: They forget about your offer. They don’t return to your store or sales page. Some of them may even make the conscious decision to NOT buy your product.

So what can you do to get your prospects to get excited and take action NOW?

Simple: Offer them an incentive if they order now. Do it right, and you’re virtually guaranteed to make more sales!

Generally, an incentive can take two forms:

1. You offer a discount. One idea is the straightforward discount, such as offering a percent-off. Another ideas is to offer a discount on the overall package, such as by offering free shipping.

Tip: You can even make it a limited-time discount so that your prospects feel a sense of urgency.

1. You offer one or more bonus products. Again, you can even make the bonus offer limited to increase the sense of urgency.

Offering a discount is a pretty straightforward incentive. So let’s talk about how to offer a bonus as a buying incentive.

Here then are the seven keys to offering bonuses that generate extra sales:

• Make sure the bonus is desirable. Point is, if your prospects don’t care about the bonus product, then it won’t help you generate any sales. So make sure it’s something that your prospects already want. Something that gets them excited!

• Create a valuable bonus. Just because you’re giving the product away for free with a purchase doesn’t mean this bonus should be worth little to no money. Quite the contrary – it should have a high perceived value in the prospect’s mind.

• Choose bonuses that are easy to deliver. This is particularly true if you’re selling downloadable products online, such as software or information. Point is, you want to be able to deliver the bonus instantly – right alongside the main product – without you having to manually deliver the bonus.

• Supply an exclusive bonus, whenever possible. If the prospect can get the bonus somewhere else, he might just do that. So try to offer exclusive bonuses to help make the buying decision easy.

• Offer a bonus that compliments the main product. For example, let’s say you’re selling a book about retirement planning. Offering retirement-planning worksheets and software as a bonus would be a great incentive.

• Sell the bonus. If you’re selling via a sales page, don’t just list the bonus. Instead, sell it just the way you’re selling the main product, meaning you should list the benefits of this bonus product or service.

• Remember that you can offer products OR services. Let’s say you’re selling exterior landscaping supplies and information. As a bonus you can offer a free consultation where you provide specific landscaping ideas for buyers. Or if you’re selling a copywriting product, you can offer a sales letter critique.

Conclusion

Offering an incentive is a simple, yet highly effective way to generate more sales and grow your business. To discover still more ways to grow your business, visit http://tinyurl.com/6rtt8sl – you may just learn strategies you never even knew existed!

* * *

Thank you to Jimmy for an interesting article.

I do agree that offering extra bonuses is a powerful selling technique. My publishers, WCCL, always include a few extra bonuses with the products and courses they offer. In addition - as with my Kindle Kash course - I quite often add a few extra bonuses myself when people order from me personally!

If you have any comments or questions about this post, as ever, feel free to leave them below.

Photo Credit: Scared Candy by Enokson on Flickr. Licensed under CC Attribution 2.0 Generic Licence.