Using Direct Marketing terminology there are only two types of
offers, a hard offer and a soft offer.
What’s the difference? That’s simple,
one asks for money to be paid now whereas the other asks for a qualified
inquiry which will then be followed up by a telemarketer or in person sales
appointment where the salesperson will ask for payment on one or subsequent
calls depending on the type of ad.
Let me go over the type of offers you will see on hard offers (one step offers). Let
me take my own experience in selling millions of books and tapes globally with
a price point of just under $50. There was a crescendo effect during the
process of asking for the order via video (this is called a “push”) where the
spokesperson, in my case, me asked for the person to make a call and have their
credit card in hand to order the offer.
Now let’s take the alternative where all that is sought is a
qualified inquiry. I’ll give you a great example that you should easily
comprehend if you are in
North
America, the Select Comfort offer for more information which is
FREE if you call in response to the TV
advertisement. Once you call your phone number is recorded along with your
address.
Once the response is logged you will be sent a DVD with a nice
brochure to
help take you from a prospect to a customer. The ultimate
goal in the “soft offer” or a “two step” offer is to get you to call in and
order the Select Comfort bed over the phone or get you to walk into a Select
Comfort showroom (usually located in shopping malls) and order without any
additional
salesmanship.
Of course as I always recommend that Select Comfort and any digital marketers use text message marketing to increase their results during the one step and two step phase of the sales process.
Of course there is a second group that is inherent to the prospect
class of the “soft offer” or “two step” offer, that’s the prospect that needs
to be asked to buy (in this case via telephone along with preceding the call with text message marketing and an 800 number to get urgent inbound calls to your call center).
Only testing will tell
you what the mix is between those that are sent
information and call or walk in
to a showroom to buy and those that need a push to purchase over the phone or
through a walk in to a showroom.
It’s not uncommon to combine a “hard offer-one step” with a “soft
offer-two step”. For instance
you might be selling an initial starter product and
then direct mailing, e-mailing, or outbound telemarketing a subsequent sales offer to increase the gross profit from the
customer.
