Friday, August 8, 2014

Offer A 200% Money Back Guarantee? Are You Nuts!

The late, great Gary Halbert was one of the smartest copywriters of our times. Here is the guarantee copy he wrote for Donna Mills (TV star) and her beauty treatments."And remember, you must be 100% satisfied with my beauty kit... or... you are entitled to a refund of double your entire purchase price. All I ask is, you use my beauty kit for the entire 60-day period for which it is designed. Then, if you are unhappy, simply send back the empty product container with a short letter (written to me) about any problems you had with my product. But to tell the truth, I almost never get a request for a refund. Instead, I receive bushel baskets of "rave letters" from appreciative women telling me how much they love my products. I hope I get such a letter from you also."Now that's smart schmooz. Figure this. The guarantee can only be activated at the end of the sixty-day period (remember the longer the guarantee period, the less it is activated), the product must be returned empty along with a letter to Donna Mills herself (that's like writing a letter of complaint to the headmaster!) And then the copy is packed with commentary to the effect that claiming on the guarantee is an absolute rarity... in fact, most send in a rave letter.Powerful word-smithing... powerful marketing.A couple of more marketing smarts from the Donna Mills campaign. When the product was dispatched, it included a crafty up-sell letter which made the customer feel deliriously happy with their initial purchase and then it began with the next sale. In this case, the X02 Stabilized Liquid Oxygen (God only knows what that was!)So have a read of the PS text:"If you want to order an entire year's worth (as most people do)... we'll send you a new supply of X02 Liquid Oxygen every month, your price will be even less... and we won't even charge your credit card each month until your product has been sent."


Hmmm, get a sale commitment for a year... then send the product each month until the customer says stop. That's smart and funnily some people think this is a new marketing innovation. Sorry its decades old!Sure, the above story has been plucked from the history vaults... but the basics of human nature haven't changed one iota in thousands of years. Think about how these marketing tactics will work for you... today! To do so, and implement these concepts, will see you massively increase sales, profits and cash.To give you a real life example, here's what I did as a consequence of studying the Gary Halbert formula as above. I increased the guarantee on my Positive Business newsletter to 120% which covered them for 365 days of their annual subscription. In other words, they could always claim a refund if they were unhappy.Well, subscriptions soared and peaked at 22,000; most likely the biggest subscription list in Australia at the time for my target market, that of small to medium businesses.Did I get a mountain of refunds? No, it did increase, but no more than 3% and I figured that, in any society, you will have roughly this percentage who will take advantage of any situation.Bottom line: I was way, way ahead when I counted the extra sales, profits and cash! A guarantee isn't just about standing behind your product; it's also a very powerful marketing weapon. Use it!Can you see yourself strengthening your guarantees and using them as a vital marketing weapon?

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