Packaged Information Offers are one of my all-time favourite low-risk, high-return marketing strategies, writes Robert Clay of Marketing Wizdom.
It’s how you can get an avalanche of prime prospects to raise their hands and identify themselves to you. That means you no longer have to endlessly pursue business from people who aren’t ready or have no intention of doing business with you.
It’s about finding the people who are already in the market right now for what you’re offering, so that you can focus on them until they buy.
Get this right and you’ll gain an emphatic edge over most of your competition.
Packaged Information Offers Are Efficient
Identifying prime prospects for your product, service or expertise can be like searching for a needle in a haystack. But that’s an easy challenge to overcome when you employ “Packaged information offers” in an effective manner.
Packaged information offers is essentially the concept of offering information as an inducement to get your prime prospects to raise their hands and identify themselves to you.
This will typically be the same information that you give away free of charge every day of the week. It’s information you give away whenever your prospects have contact with you. That could be when they call you, interact with you in person or go to your website. It demonstrates that you know what you’re talking about and that you have expertise in your field.
That information can easily be packaged into a booklet, audio, video, special report, bulletin, guide, white paper, e-book … or indeed many other forms.
Common Currency
This information is probably common currency in your business. That means it costs you very little to package it. At the same time it is likely to be very valuable and useful to your prime prospects, who probably know little about your product, service or expertise.
When your prospects are in the market for what you offer, they’re seeking guidance. They want to ensure they make the right choice, deal with someone they can trust, who is competent. And more importantly, can deliver to them the outcomes they’re seeking.
Once you’ve packaged your information, you should advertise or promote it. This is a very effective way of generating qualified leads. Generally, the only people who will raise their hands and send for your information will be those who are in the market right now for what you are promoting.
In other words they’re qualified prospects who are seeking answers right now to a problem or need that you can potentially satisfy.
By responding to your packaged information offer they’re communicating a keen interest in what you’re offering. They’re also signalling that they’re ready to do business now or in the near future.
These are the very people you need to focus on right now to maximise your chances of success. And they’re raising their hands and identifying themselves to you. It doesn’t get much better than that!
40-60 Times Better Response
One of my clients was a recruitment company who specialise in finding jobs for the cream of the 16-24 year old school and college leavers.
They were short of good candidates at one time, so rather than advertise each individual job, we persuaded them to offer a packaged information booklet titled “How to win at an interview.”
The headline of the ad was “School leavers guide to success” and the body of the ad explained why the booklet would be valuable to any school or college leaver who wanted success.
Instead of their normal 3-4 responses per ad, this ad generated 160 enquiries the first week it was placed. And it continued to generate similar responses each week it ran. Everyone who responded was a school or college leaver who wanted success.
When we promoted a packaged information offer by direct mail for the UK’s most successful financial adviser, he achieved over sixteen times his normal response. A single mailing achieved over 1,200 responses, every one of them a prime prospect for his services.
The Recipe for Effective Packaged Information
The first step in creating your packaged information is to identify precisely who you want to target. Who has the capacity, desire and motivation to buy your product, service or expertise right now? Who already uses or is familiar with your type of product or service? These will be your prime prospects.
Next, identify what information these prime prospects are seeking.
They want to make an informed decision. They’re very likely seeking information and hard honest facts. They are seeking unbiased answers to their fears, frustrations, concerns, issues and uncertainties about buying your product, service or expertise.
What Answers Are Your Prime Prospects Seeking?
Your packaged information should satisfy that craving for answers. As such, it should contain, in an easy to read or absorb style …
- All the questions and answers a prime prospect would want to ask
- The thought provoking questions they may never have considered
- Must be completely unbiased and packed with solid answers.
- Should explain how to avoid potential disappointments or disaster
- It should educate your prospects on the vital issues in their decision making process
- Should alert your prospects to things they wouldn’t otherwise have known
- And it should position you as an authority in your field, someone who is on your customer’s side.
Don’t turn it into an ad for your product, service or expertise. People are astute. They can see through a thinly veiled ad a mile off.
When you give people an unbiased, factual, thought-provoking package of knowledge, they value it. It should be so useful to your prime prospects that they will want to keep it, use it and refer to it well into the future.
Isn’t that exactly the sort of information you crave when you’re in the market for a product or service?
If someone offered you information like that, wouldn’t you be much more drawn to them than you would be to their competitors?
That’s why this is such an effective strategy.
Never forget that while what you know may be everyday currency to you, it could be of immense value to your prime prospects.
So even if you offer this information for free, I recommend that you put a monetary value on it. That will make the information even more desirable and stimulate even greater response.
Overwhelming Benefits of Packaged Information
The benefits of using packaged information correctly are immense:
- It is a terrific lead generation tool
- You can use it to dramatically boost response to your ads, sales letters and email campaigns
- It qualifies and flushes your prime prospects out of the woodwork
- It tends to produce better quality leads at a fraction of the normal cost
- Allows you to rapidly build a database of names. And not just any names, but the names of self-selecting prime prospects who raise their hands because they want what you offer.
As well as educating and informing your marketplace, Packaged Information positions you as an authority in your field. It also induces the law of reciprocity, which states that when you give something useful and valuable to people they feel obliged to reciprocate.
Put Your Business on The Map
Correctly done and positioned, Packaged Information Offers can put your business ‘on the map’ as never before.
The media can also often be persuaded to share your knowledge and expertise as public service information. They will sometimes do free write-ups on your business that would cost you £ thousands had you bought the same space as an ad.
It can even result in you becoming an industry spokesperson, invited by the media to comment on issues relating to your industry.
Packaged information is therefore one of the most powerful marketing tools you’ll ever use to create immediate results. We use it all the time with clients in every industry you can imagine.
Done correctly, it always works, and again it can be a major factor in outselling, outsmart and outperform your toughest competition.
As you’ve probably gathered, packaged information offers is one of my favourite low-risk/high-return marketing strategies. And yes it takes some time and effort to pull together all the right elements for an effective packaged information offer.
But when you get 600 times better results from this strategy, as some of my clients have done, it makes all that effort worthwhile.
Questions
Here are some questions you need to answer to ensure that your packaged information gives your prospects the information they crave:
- Who, precisely, will you be targeting with your offer? Which people have the capacity, desire and motivation to buy your product, service or expertise right now?
- Who already uses or is familiar with your type of product or service?
- What information are these prime prospects seeking? Do you know what their fears, frustrations, concerns, issues and uncertainties about buying your product, service or expertise?
- How can you make your packaged information completely unbiased and packed with solid answers that address those fears, frustrations, concerns, issues and uncertainties about buying your product, service or expertise?
Get this right and you can generate an avalanche of high quality leads, prospects and sales.
Please share your thoughts and add your questions to the comments below. I’ll try to provide as many answers as possible in my future online videos, seminars, workshops, masterclasses and blog posts.
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