by Jeffrey Hedquist
Putting an offer in a commercial will increase the immediacy of response, but you must be careful. An offer with a high threshold resistance may be counterproductive.
The famous shopping mall developer Arnold Taubman talked about threshold resistance as, “the physical and psychological barrier that stands between a shopper and the inside of a store.”
“You buy something because it is available and attractive,” Taubman said. “You can’t have any obstacles. The goods have to be all there.”
Taubman realized that in an enclosed mall, the customers don’t have to make the decision to enter a store. Once in the mall, they have already entered into a buying relationship with the stores.
Think of your client’s commercial as a store. A typical offer in the commercial, such as a free consultation, free webinar, free estimate, or free evaluation can be intimidating, because they assume a decision has been made to find help, to get a project done, to learn new information. This may be the case for some potential customers, but not the majority.
Examples of low threshold offers might be free information sent by mail, or through a link, or even a prerecorded message or video download.
Low threshold offers will get more opt-ins (albeit of potential lower quality), but will often begin a relationship, build trust, and help establish top of mind awareness with the audience your client wishes to reach.
How can you reach both the ready-to-buy audience and court the possible-future-need group? Create separate commercials for each audience in the same campaign, or test combining a high and low threshold offer in the same commercial.
Example: “If you are faced with an audit, contact us immediately and one of our tax experts will guide you through the next steps to protect your assets. For your free Bulletproof Your Business From The IRS tax guide, just ask and it will be sent to you at no cost, no obligation.”
Contrary to what you might think, adding a low threshold offer won’t significantly deter the number of ready-to-buy responses to a high threshold offer, but as I said above, test.
It’s been said that the more steps you add to your sales process, the more trust you create. The more trust you create, the less objections will be put in the way of your client helping prospects solve their problems.
Being sensitive to threshold resistance will help you create offers for your client that will bring maximum results.
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