What Is Your Irresistible Offer?
First Of All…What Is An Irresistible Offer?
An irresistible offer is something that is specific, tangible and has a very, very clear benefit to your dry cleaning prospect or customer (if you’re selling them something). It has to be so incredibly exciting that it captures the attention of your potential customers. You want to make sure that when your prospective customers see your offer, they want it and they want it NOW!
Have you ever seen a Groupon offer? They are very good at this “irresistible offer” thing. Go take a look at the ones for dry cleaners. Go to Google and type in Groupon+dry cleaner and you’ll get a bunch of them. I’m not advising you to use Goupon in your dry cleaning business because it’s a little tricky. Next month I’ll discuss the pros and cons of Groupon and how to craft an offer that will work for your dry cleaning business. Some of my members got a ton of new customers, but most of them were coupon shoppers. And then some other members got great retention. Anyway, we’ll discuss that next month. Let’s continue with irresistible offers.
I’ve tested a bunch of “irresistible” offers for myself and my members going after new route customers. First, let me tell you what doesn’t work: all the percentage off offers don’t work. And believe it or not, “I’ll clean your first month’s dry cleaning for FREE,” doesn’t work either. Actually, it was a major BOMB! What we’ve found that works best is the “FREE dry cleaning dollar amount” offers. For example: $10 In FREE Dry Cleaning.
I’ve tested “$50 In FREE Dry Cleaning” and it goose-egged. I also tested, $40, $30 and even $20 (just recently again) and they got nowhere near the results that “$10 In FREE Dry Cleaning” got!
Why?
I don’t know exactly, but I surmise that $50, $40, $30 and $20 sound too good to be true. “And when it sounds too good to be true…it usually is, is what we’re all taught—right?” And with all of these offers we tell the prospective customer that there are no strings attached and no surprises, just an honest offer to try out our pick-up and delivery service.
Getting back to Groupon, I’d like you to notice the language they use in their offers. It’s very entertaining. Which brings me to another point; use language that your customers and prospective customers can understand. Don’t write like a college professor. Don’t write in “corporate speak.” Write in a fun and entertaining way that brings out your personality. Write as you talk. Write as if you’re talking to your neighbor over your fence. Your prospective customers don’t want to deal with a big faceless dry cleaner—they want to deal with you!
And don’t forget to test. Test all of your advertising. Don’t listen to the sales rep. The sales rep’s goal is to make the biggest commission they can. You can test your postcards and sales letters to as little an audience as 100 people. I do it all the time. 100 is a good sample to test with. But you’ve got to make sure that your list is a good one. Don’t mail to people who work in factories, mail to those who have white collar jobs and make a certain income. Any list broker worth his salt can help you out with this.
I’ve cracked most of the code for you. The tough part is done. This little “$10 In FREE Dry Cleaning” gold nugget of information took me eighteen months of testing all kinds of percentage and dollar amount offers. It was painstakingly tough to get through all of the offers that I thought of. And I’m not saying this is the best irresistible offer there is for our industry. Actually, I’ve come up with another one and initial tests are looking really good.
That’s what I do—I use my dry cleaning pick-up and delivery business as a marketing laboratory and test all kinds of mailings, advertising and offers. Most fail. Only a very few make money. And those are the ones I bring out to my membership.
To find out more quirky ideas on how to raise your revenue, go to my blog: DryCleaningMarketing.com
Greg Colosi helps dry cleaners get route customers WITHOUT knocking on doors (even though door knocking is a great way to get customers). All of Greg’s marketing ideas are tested by him or several of his 400+ members, so you won’t get theory, you’ll only get ideas that produce new customers and revenue.