Irresistible Offers – Holiday Style

I’ve helped thousands of small business owners, entrepreneurs and sales professionals implement The WOW! Strategy™ over the past four decades, resulting in many millions of dollars worth of revenue and profits.

The most important part of The WOW! Strategy™ is to create an Irresistible OFFER. In my experience, that’s also the toughest part for people to get right.

We’re all used to extremely weak, easily-resistible offers from businesses, like “Get 25% Off!” or “Free Estimate!” or “After 9 Sandwiches, Your 10th One is Free!,” so naturally there’s a tendency to offer the same kind of ineffective offers ourselves.

Big mistake.

None of those causes anyone to think, “Wow! What’s the catch?” or “That just sounds way too good to possibly be true!”

And none of them causes anyone to run to do business with the company making the offer.

In other words, they are not truly Irresistible Offers.

Extending such timid, non-compelling offers causes business owners to get weak or no results from their advertising and/or marketing, which causes frustration, cash-flow issues and a loss of hope based on the belief that “___ type of advertising/marketing doesn’t work for my business.”

None of that is good for business owners.

And none of it is necessary.

One of my specialties is helping business owners and entrepreneurs create Irresistible Offers that attract floods of their ideal customers, clients or patients.

I often share examples of Irresistible Offers I have created and used for my own businesses and those of my clients to help business owners understand the concept.

And yesterday gave us a treasure trove of them.

Thousands of American businesses seized the Veteran’s Day holiday as an opportunity to come up with Irresistible Offers – even if they only extended those offers to people with military experience.

Veterans could start their day with a free cup of coffee from Starbucks, Roy Rogers, Einstein Bagels, or Krispy Kreme, grab a free breakfast at Denny’s, Friendly’s, Bob Evans or IHOP, head over to Sport Clips or Great Clips for a free haircut before grabbing a free lunch at Applebee’s, Chili’s, TGI Friday’s, Sizzler, Arby’s, On The Border, California Pizza Kitchen, Max & Erma’s, Shoney’s, Red Robin or Olive Garden.

They could then get a free post-lunch massage at Massage Envy or Ideal Massage, take advantage of a free car wash at 7-Eleven, then head to dinner at Famous Dave’s, Tony Roma’s, Claim Jumper or McCormick & Schmick’s before finishing off their day with free ice cream from Handel’s or free frozen yogurt from Orange Leaf or Menchie’s.

In addition to these national and regional chains, thousands more local businesses got in on the action, offering free services to active and/or retired military personnel.

One such local business owner is my client, Jon Bockman, second-generation owner of Bockman’s Auto Care, who raised his business up from the brink of bankruptcy to a million-dollar success by implementing smart marketing based on The WOW! Strategy™.

All six bays of Jon’s shop were busy all day long yesterday with Veterans taking him up on his “Free Oil Change For Veterans” Irresistible Offer.

Just like all the other national, regional and local businesses who extended such no-strings-attached Irresistible Offers (and even some who added various far-less-than-irresistible requirements and restrictions, such as “*Must purchase a meal to get a free appetizer”), Jon gained tremendous goodwill and produced positive feelings about his business not only from all of the veterans who took him up on his gracious offer, but also from the many more non-veterans who weren’t eligible for the free oil change yet felt respect and appreciation for Jon just seeing that he extended that free service to U.S. veterans.

Such goodwill and positive feelings will almost undoubtedly lead to tens of thousands of dollars in future revenue for him, just like it has every year he’s done this in the past.

That’s one of the keys to coming up with your Irresistible Offer: Calculating the Lifetime Value of a new customer, client or patient, so you know how much you will be happily willing to invest in order to attract one.

And whenever you have the opportunity to tie yourself to a charity or popular cause (in this case, supporting our veterans), that’s an extra boost to the power of your promotion.

If you want help creating your own Irresistible Offer to attract a flood of your ideal prospects, I offer readers of this blog a free 1-on-1 Strategy Session.

Yes, that’s yours for the taking, whether you’re a U.S. veteran or not, and whether it happens to be a holiday or not.

To request your free 1-on-1 Marketing Turnaround Strategy Session with me, go to:

—> www.SteveSipress.com

Let’s work together to create your very own Irresistible Offer, so you can attract a flood of your ideal customers, clients or patients, all year ’round!