I screwed up yesterday.
In my email about “selling dollars at a discount” I wrote a line illustrating that concept that could definitely be considered an unsubstantiated income claim.
One of my subscribers immediately replied to warn me about the issue.
Obviously, it’s not my intention to teach you how to write non-compliant copy. What I was trying to do was show you how you must build up desire for your products (Eugene Schwartz calls this “Intensification”) by clearly explaining to them the real, tangible value of what they’re buying (or how much they’re saving by buying).
You’re doing yourself a disservice if you simply write something generic like:
- “Normally this is $100 but you get it today for $50.” This is just a price with no real value attached unless you explain it (and your explanation needs to be true). So you could say, “If you go to my website right now, you’ll see it listed for $100.”
- Or if you simply write: “$100 value,” this will be hard for a prospect to understand. “Value” is a nebulous concept. You need to show them how they’d arrive at that $100 worth of value. i.e., “A personal trainer would charge you $100 per session.”
But I’ll let you in on a little secret of mine: I used to think that the job of the copywriter was to get ethically creative in helping a customer understand value – to figure out new and interesting ways to assign value that made sense to a prospect.
And while I want them to understand that there’s a definite ROI to buying and implementing my courses, there are compliance concerns I’d like to avoid and I’ve found a simpler way…
These days I like to apply the “dollars at a discount” concept mostly inside the product itself.
What that means is that my aim is to try to make customers feel almost guilty for how little they paid for my course in exchange for the returns they get. (This higher-level way of thinking is something I learned from Jason Fladlien – who I mentioned yesterday).
I want it to feel like customers paid pennies for each real dollar I help them make. Or, that the results they get with my product are in line with something they’d expect to have paid more for (i.e., I get them same or better results with an Email Delivered Course than if they’d paid for a private business coach).
In other words I’m not spending hours trying to figure out creative ways to explain value. I’m using that extra time to literally try to create the most valuable product possible. That is what’s allowed me to sell CopyHour successfully for over a decade.
What exactly does over-delivering look like?
There are really only 2 components of over-delivering:
- Tease them with what they want. But give them what they need, first.
- Be opinionated and share exactly what you do even if it’s not the sexiest way to do it.
To understand what over-delivering is, let’s define what under-delivering is.
When it comes to information products like courses, a product that under-delivers is one that doesn’t fulfill the promise made before the sale. But it’s not just that because the problem is, most people won’t take action on the things they’ve purchased.
In my mind an underwhelming product is one that:
- Doesn’t fulfill the promise made in the marketing or doesn’t fulfill the promise in the fastest, easiest, or most complete way possible.
- OR, if the customer doesn’t use the product to its fullest extent… it’s underwhelming if the course doesn’t provide a unique or highly opinionated process that the customer thinks would fulfill the promise even if they weren’t able to implement it.
A product that delivers is one that fulfills the promises made in the marketing and if the customer is incapable (for their own reasons) of implementing the product, it at least appears opinionated and different than all the other products the customer has purchased previously.
A product that over-delivers then, in my mind, is one that delivers on the promise, does it in a highly opinionated (or “different” way than normal) AND importantly… delivers BETTER results than the customer even thought it would. The course delivers results that are closer to what someone would expect to pay a lot more for – like coaching or even private consultation.
That gives the course the “dollars at a discount” feel to it.
To toot my own horn – I’ve created the perfect system for creating courses that consistently over-deliver – it’s called Email Delivered Courses.
Now, let me quickly jump into the 2 components I mentioned that help you over-deliver.
Tease them with what they want. But give them what they need, first.
The first thing you should do is sell people the results they want.
But as you know, what people want isn’t always what they need.
For example in the dating market, guys might WANT to learn the “5 magic words to make her fall for you.”
But in reality, what they NEED is to learn how to dress, groom, smile & have fun, get in shape (you DON’T need to be an Adonis – you just need to take care of yourself), get comfortable in their own skin, develop hobbies & interests, etc etc etc.
So the way to make a course that over-delivers is to promise the customer that you’re going to get to the “5 magic words” stuff, but before you do, you take them through all the stuff they NEED to hear first. You teach them all the things that are going to make “5 magic words” actually click for them down the line when they’re ready.
When you teach your courses in this way, your customers get blown away – because no one teaches like this. Course creators sell customers what they think they want… and try to deliver them what they want.
And what happens when you try to use “5 magic words” without having all the other things in place?
Customers don’t get great results. Your product doesn’t over-deliver.
All of this ties nicely into the next component:
Be opinionated and share exactly what you do even if it’s not the sexiest way to do it.
If you give customers what they NEED before you give them what they want… they’ll get better results.
If you share highly opinionated step-by-step processes and provide detailed breakdowns of your methods, you will blow customers’ minds.
What you teach them will sound different.
Why? Because every other course creator (myself included in the past) tries to give people too many options.
The amount of content being added to the internet daily is staggering. The amount of possible choices we can make is staggering.
People are desperate for experts to give them 1 to 2 choices at most – to tell them “just do this.”
I want this kind of opinionated advice form experts and I’m sure you want it too.
But a problem that most experts have is, even if they’re opinionated, they try to tell customers the “ideal” way to get results. They create an exaggerated version – like a TV script version – of what they do or how they think.
And what happens is that customers get frustrated when they try that “idealized” advice in the real world and fail. It’s a similar problem as giving them what they want before giving them what they actually need.
When I stopped running the content I was writing through an “idealized” filter, customers started getting better and faster results.
I started attracting more serious buyers – people hungry to solve real issues and people willing to try my advice. That’s lead to more repeat customers, and generally customers feel like they’re getting more value out of my courses than any other courses they’ve ever taken (at least that’s what I hear from them).
It’s weird – the less “sexy” I try to make things – the more people tell me they’re getting great results – and the more often I’m told I over-delivered (this goes for both free and paid content I create).
Okay, I’ll cut this email off here. I suppose that was marketing Strategy #3: Over-deliver with Derek Johanson’s Email Delivered Courses method.
I’ll be back tomorrow with the email marketing strategy I mentioned before.
Talk to you then!
– Derek
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