Make them an offer they can’t refuse - Part 2
By Andrew Shedden
In the first part of this article I discussed the importance of the offer in all of your direct mail promotions. In terms of direct mail success your offer ranks second in importance only to your mailing list. Today I’ll discuss the two main types of offers you can make to your target market.
Once you’ve considered the wants, needs, and desires of your target market creating an optimal and motivational offer can be a snap. The first thing you need to assess is the strength and size of your sales force. Because the number of leads you receive will be directly proportional to your offer the question you need to ask yourself is do I want quantity or do I want quality?
If you want quantity
If your primary objective is generating a high quantity of leads then a soft offer is the logical choice. Soft offers are offers in which you give your target market the opportunity to get something for free. They generally involve no or minimal amounts of personal contact by the prospect. This typically is some time of printed or online material or other form of electronic media they can request without any face to face communication. Examples of soft offers are free reports, free white papers, free videos, free CD’s or promotional contests.
Soft offers are normally used to get prospects to identify themselves and say “Yes I’m interested please tell me more.” These prospects are interested in learning more about how your product or service can solve their problems or challenges. They may not be ready to buy immediately or be wary of buying from a company or individual of which they know nothing.
Soft offers are especially good for lead generation when you’re selling complex or expensive products or services. They will usually generate plenty of leads that can be handed over for further qualification by your sales force. The major disadvantage in soft offers is many of these leads can be from unqualified freebie seekers with no intention of buying.
If you want quality
Hard offers seek to sell the product or service or a face to face meeting from the direct mail promotion. In the consumer market these offers usually take the form of “Send us the money and we’ll ship you the goods.”
Hard offers are good when your goal is to sell directly by mail and you are featuring products or services that are easy to understand and have a relatively low price point. If you look at a lot of consumer based direct mail pieces you’ll see lots of examples of hard offers.
In the business to business market a typical hard offer is “Call now for your free no-obligation initial consultation.” It could just as easily be a demonstration, estimate or analysis of some type.
Hard offers tend to be used less in the business to business marketplace as they tend to get a very low response. The first reason is that many people won’t even consider purchasing an expensive product or service without first establishing a level of comfort and trust to be built. The second reason is that many people are fearful of a salesperson putting a lot of sales pressure on them.
Hard offers generate fewer inquiries than soft offers but these inquiries will be highly qualified.
The optimum offer
In most instances the optimum offer to make to your target market is a combination of a hard and soft offer. For example you might offer them a free half-hour needs consultation or the option of ordering a free report from your company. If you go to our home page at you’ll see an example of a combined offer. The vast majority of responses are from people interested in our free report packages with a smaller percentage of highly motivated prospects requesting their free consultation
If I were forced to choose between a hard offer and a soft offer I would choose the soft offer. Soft offers promoting free tip sheets, white papers, booklets, or other forms of helpful information always work well. We promote problem-solving information in all of our own printed marketing communications (sales letters, post cards, self-mailers) as a way of generating qualified leads. Interestingly, every one of our clients who utilize soft offers in their marketing materials always get excellent results.
In every case you need to capitalize on the greatest strength in direct mail – testing. Send out a series of offers to a subset of your mailing list and see what attracts the greatest response. Once you find a winner mail it out several times to the same list, follow up on the phone, and watch your sales grow.
