Do you have to offer bonuses to succeed?

Ben Roy · 12-31-2008, 09:36 AM

How important is it to offer a bunch of free bonuses with a product? Whenever I've read a sales page they rarely make an impact on me (especially since most of the time the value of those bonuses seems extremely low despite claims to the contrary). On the other hand, I doubt you'd see all the bonus offers if they weren't effective.

Anyone have any insight/thoughts on the relative importance of bonuses?

MaskedMarketer · 12-31-2008, 09:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ben Roy

Anyone have any insight/thoughts on the relative importance of bonuses?

Like anything else, you'll have to test results.

A side from that, the bonuses you offer shouldn't be there as filler. If the bonus can't stand on its own, I probably wouldn't offer it, but that just my opinion.

Just offer value

12-31-2008, 10:03 AM

Depends upon your offer, what you are selling...

Many over-use the bonus thing and just slap any old bonus there even if it is 6 months old and has been sold, given away, on 10,000 other websites..

There are pluses and minuses to this and your best to test with 2 different sales pages for your particular product.

Some Pluses:

* If the visitor does not want your main product and they see a bonus that they can not get noplace else and they want that bonus most of the time if the price is right they will buy. Now this depends upon price, if I go to google and find that same bonus for cheaper then I would buy the one from google.

* Adding related bonuses (which is what you should do) will help boost the main product itself. In reality though you should limit the bonuses to 3 max, anymore than that and you are making the main product look bad.

* Bonuses can be used to upsell also, adding additional sales messages or ads inside the bonus can produce additional sales.

Some Minuses:

* Too many bonuses can make your main product look cheap and worthless because to some they will think you have to use bonuses to sell your product because it does not actually do what you claim it does.

* Unrelated bonuses most of the time means nothing and will than likely turn your buyer off and then they go for the "close" button.

Alot of this depends upon your product though as I said.. You are best to test it for yourself and see what results you get.

James

ryanman · 12-31-2008, 10:04 AM

I guess it helps a lot....

TLTheLiberator · 12-31-2008, 10:09 AM

You can use bonuses as an affiliate also.

- Simply let your prospects know about the bonuses and setup a special email address that they can email their receipt to you, so that you can email them a link to the bonuses - when a purchase through your aff link.

Properly used, bonuses can increase your success rate tremendously!

Hope This Helps!

TL

williamtan · 12-31-2008, 10:12 AM

I feel adding bonuses is a "norm".

It differentiate your offer and increases the perceived value to entice sales.

Offering bonuses should not adversely affect the focus of the core product as the entire sales copy is geared towards it.

If I arrived at 2 sales page of same/similar product, same pricing, I'd definitely go for the one with more value add bonuses.

DavidO · 12-31-2008, 10:22 AM

I'm glad you asked this question! That's because bonuses are often just another one of those things that many marketers tend to do simply because everyone else is doing it.

You can add it to the list of all the other gimmicks we use including time countdowns, limited to the next x number of customers and so on. These tactics can either be beneficial or a total turnoff, depending on many factors. The problem is that most people are using them blindly without ever testing them (just because they see everyone else using them).

When it comes to bonuses many of these are just ridiculous. I've seen bonuses that add up to over $2000 "value" with a $17 product!

Their value depends on a lot of things. You can probably get away with a lot of hot air with certain markets that attract young and/or gullible people. But a long list of bonuses would turn off a more savvy market. You really do run the risk of cheapening your product.

The best approach is to use a limited number of truly valuable bonuses that are highly relevant to the product. Additional functions with software or bonus CDs with a set of music CDs like I offer are good examples.

I'm also going to test my product without bonuses at all in the coming year. I think in general it's way overdone and over-rated.

Dan C. Rinnert · 12-31-2008, 10:24 AM

I think the perceived value of the bonus may help too. I don't mean the value that the seller claims, but the value that the prospective buyer feels it has.

For example, I remember (not too specifically though) a product that I bought BECAUSE of one of the bonuses offered. The main product was maybe good, but not necessarily something I felt I needed, but one (maybe two?) of the bonus eBooks offered is what sold it to me.

Mind you, I think this was like a $27 product, and that bonus seemed worth $27 to me. If the main product had been a higher priced product, the bonus would not have made a difference; in other words, I was willing to pay $27 for that bonus but not $97.

(In that case, I guess you could argue that, for me, the main product was actually the bonus.)

But, if the main product was $97 or something AND seemed like it might have been worth $97 to me, then that bonus might have served as an additional motivator to buy.

JohnMcCabe · 12-31-2008, 10:57 AM

Offering a bonus or premium has a long history of success in the direct mail field. It's a staple of direct marketing.

Like everything else, it's a candidate for testing. If one bonus works, what happens if you offer two? If bonus A helps conversions, does bonus B help more or less?

Some of the values assigned to bonuses are absolutely ludicrous...

From my studies, the premium or bonus has to meet two criteria:

1. It has to be desirable. It may not even have to be related to the original offer, but the prospective buyer has to want it. Otherwise, it's useless filler or worse.

2. The value has to be believable. If your premium is questionable, it can cast doubt on your entire offer. As one poster put it, "a $17 ebook with $2000 worth of bonuses" just doesn't make sense.

Do you have to offer bonuses to succeed?

No.

Will the right bonuses increase your success?

Definitely.

Loren Woirhaye · 12-31-2008, 11:19 AM

If you bury the product in bonuses people start to wonder
if the product is any good at all.

People will sometimes buy, NOW, to get a bonus. Without
the bonus they are, like, "ho hum..." so the bonus can kick
'em in the ass.

Crappy bonuses will fool naieve people I guess:

"Look at all you get. 10,000 ebooks you can resell plus
1200 softwares to sell." etc...

Do people know most ebooks suck? I don't know if they
do or not. Do they know old, unsupported software generally
sucks? I don't know that either.

Doing bonuses has an art to it. Cold traffic won't warm up to
your bonuses the way people on your list might so take that
into account. There is also a principle, used very well by IMC,
where a loooong sales letter loaded up with blah, blah, bonus,
blah, testimonial, blah - can just persuade people that it's worth
taking action f you have so much to say about it.

Michael Oksa · 12-31-2008, 01:38 PM

If done right, bonuses can help, but there is no clear cut answer.

There was a near perfect example of a bonus given away in my area recently. The car dealers are finding times are tough, and with the need to get rid of year-end inventory they have to get creative. So, what was the bonus?

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

A free car!

Ok, there were a few strings attached, but not too many. Basically, if you bought a new car, you would get a free used car valued at $10,000 or less. The promotion is/was a success by all counts.

You can read the story here...

Two For One Car Deal - News- msnbc.com

Just an example of how a bonus can work.

All the best,
Michael

tomcam · 01-10-2009, 11:11 PM

A tardy addition: the bonus should be closely related to the product. Don't give me a free graphics pack with a weight loss product, or a hypnosis ebook with an IM product.

freudianslip27 · 01-10-2009, 11:24 PM

Isn't it something how competitive things can get with bonuses. Sometimes I feel like I HAVE to offer a ton in order to stay in the game, but that's just silly.

I think one of the worst things you could do is slap together a huge list of generic bonuses, it can devalue your main product.

The tighter and more related the bonuses are to your product, the better your overall package should be perceived.

Matt

Desmon G · 01-11-2009, 12:37 AM

I offer bonuses less than half the time, and when I do it's just one tool or report closely related to the main subject. I definitely don't think you need to offer a bunch of bonuses to do well.

polleo · 01-11-2009, 12:46 AM

In my opinion, when you're trying to sell a product. You're targeting a particullar group of people to buy that product.
When you bring bonuses into the equation you just over complicate it, these bonuses might not be something that your target market really wants, and so doesn't actually boost their desire to buy the product from you.
One thing that all customers look for is a lower price. Rather than spending money on offering bonuses, just reduce your price the according amount.
Customers will generally go for the lower price over the bonuses any day
So in short, dont offer bonuses, offer a lower price and you will make more sales-end of story

12-31-2008, 09:36 AM	#1
Ben Roy Advanced Warrior War Room Member Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Minnesota Posts: 612 Thanks: 13 Thanked 47 Times in 41 Posts Social Networking Contact Info	Do you have to offer bonuses to succeed? How important is it to offer a bunch of free bonuses with a product? Whenever I've read a sales page they rarely make an impact on me (especially since most of the time the value of those bonuses seems extremely low despite claims to the contrary). On the other hand, I doubt you'd see all the bonus offers if they weren't effective. Anyone have any insight/thoughts on the relative importance of bonuses?

12-31-2008, 10:03 AM	#3
TheRichJerksNet Guest Posts: n/a	Re: Do you have to offer bonuses to succeed? Depends upon your offer, what you are selling... Many over-use the bonus thing and just slap any old bonus there even if it is 6 months old and has been sold, given away, on 10,000 other websites.. There are pluses and minuses to this and your best to test with 2 different sales pages for your particular product. Some Pluses: * If the visitor does not want your main product and they see a bonus that they can not get noplace else and they want that bonus most of the time if the price is right they will buy. Now this depends upon price, if I go to google and find that same bonus for cheaper then I would buy the one from google. * Adding related bonuses (which is what you should do) will help boost the main product itself. In reality though you should limit the bonuses to 3 max, anymore than that and you are making the main product look bad. * Bonuses can be used to upsell also, adding additional sales messages or ads inside the bonus can produce additional sales. Some Minuses: * Too many bonuses can make your main product look cheap and worthless because to some they will think you have to use bonuses to sell your product because it does not actually do what you claim it does. * Unrelated bonuses most of the time means nothing and will than likely turn your buyer off and then they go for the "close" button. Alot of this depends upon your product though as I said.. You are best to test it for yourself and see what results you get. James
TheRichJerksNet Guest Posts: n/a

12-31-2008, 10:04 AM	#4
ryanman The Ultimate Warrior War Room Member Join Date: Oct 2008 Posts: 922 Thanks: 18 Thanked 295 Times in 141 Posts	Re: Do you have to offer bonuses to succeed? I guess it helps a lot....
	My WSO- 100% Commissions. This has never been done before. Trust Me! You Don't Want To Miss This... Jump On it Now!

12-31-2008, 10:09 AM	#5
TLTheLiberator Please get a net biz plan War Room Member Join Date: Apr 2008 Location: , , USA. Posts: 1,428 Blog Entries: 3 Thanks: 1,107 Thanked 559 Times in 427 Posts	Re: Do you have to offer bonuses to succeed? You can use bonuses as an affiliate also. - Simply let your prospects know about the bonuses and setup a special email address that they can email their receipt to you, so that you can email them a link to the bonuses - when a purchase through your aff link. Properly used, bonuses can increase your success rate tremendously! Hope This Helps! TL

12-31-2008, 10:12 AM	#6
williamtan Advanced Warrior War Room Member Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: Singapore Posts: 774 Blog Entries: 5 Thanks: 12 Thanked 25 Times in 21 Posts Social Networking	Re: Do you have to offer bonuses to succeed? I feel adding bonuses is a "norm". It differentiate your offer and increases the perceived value to entice sales. Offering bonuses should not adversely affect the focus of the core product as the entire sales copy is geared towards it. If I arrived at 2 sales page of same/similar product, same pricing, I'd definitely go for the one with more value add bonuses.
	Thinking of one ...

12-31-2008, 10:22 AM	#7
DavidO Senior Warrior Member War Room Member Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: United Kingdom, Spain Posts: 2,031 Thanks: 10 Thanked 101 Times in 58 Posts	Re: Do you have to offer bonuses to succeed? I'm glad you asked this question! That's because bonuses are often just another one of those things that many marketers tend to do simply because everyone else is doing it. You can add it to the list of all the other gimmicks we use including time countdowns, limited to the next x number of customers and so on. These tactics can either be beneficial or a total turnoff, depending on many factors. The problem is that most people are using them blindly without ever testing them (just because they see everyone else using them). When it comes to bonuses many of these are just ridiculous. I've seen bonuses that add up to over $2000 "value" with a $17 product! Their value depends on a lot of things. You can probably get away with a lot of hot air with certain markets that attract young and/or gullible people. But a long list of bonuses would turn off a more savvy market. You really do run the risk of cheapening your product. The best approach is to use a limited number of truly valuable bonuses that are highly relevant to the product. Additional functions with software or bonus CDs with a set of music CDs like I offer are good examples. I'm also going to test my product without bonuses at all in the coming year. I think in general it's way overdone and over-rated.

12-31-2008, 10:24 AM	#8
Dan C. Rinnert I have a lame list. War Room Member Join Date: Jul 2008 Location: One Second into the Future Posts: 4,256 Blog Entries: 1 Thanks: 811 Thanked 2,176 Times in 1,003 Posts Social Networking	Re: Do you have to offer bonuses to succeed? I think the perceived value of the bonus may help too. I don't mean the value that the seller claims, but the value that the prospective buyer feels it has. For example, I remember (not too specifically though) a product that I bought BECAUSE of one of the bonuses offered. The main product was maybe good, but not necessarily something I felt I needed, but one (maybe two?) of the bonus eBooks offered is what sold it to me. Mind you, I think this was like a $27 product, and that bonus seemed worth $27 to me. If the main product had been a higher priced product, the bonus would not have made a difference; in other words, I was willing to pay $27 for that bonus but not $97. (In that case, I guess you could argue that, for me, the main product was actually the bonus.) But, if the main product was $97 or something AND seemed like it might have been worth $97 to me, then that bonus might have served as an additional motivator to buy.
	Click here for the MOST FUN PRODUCT CREATION GUIDE for Procrastinators since forever. Dan's content is irregularly read by handfuls of people. Join the elite few by reading his blog: dcrBlogs.com or following him on Twitter: dcrTweets.com but NOT by Clicking Here! ----------> [Free WSO] The Lamest WSO in the History of the Warrior Forum ☺ <----------

12-31-2008, 10:57 AM	#9
JohnMcCabe Happy Hooker War Room Member Join Date: Jun 2007 Location: North of the Peace River, Southwest Florida, USA. Posts: 7,626 Thanks: 2,687 Thanked 4,398 Times in 2,394 Posts Social Networking	Re: Do you have to offer bonuses to succeed? Offering a bonus or premium has a long history of success in the direct mail field. It's a staple of direct marketing. Like everything else, it's a candidate for testing. If one bonus works, what happens if you offer two? If bonus A helps conversions, does bonus B help more or less? Some of the values assigned to bonuses are absolutely ludicrous... From my studies, the premium or bonus has to meet two criteria: 1. It has to be desirable. It may not even have to be related to the original offer, but the prospective buyer has to want it. Otherwise, it's useless filler or worse. 2. The value has to be believable. If your premium is questionable, it can cast doubt on your entire offer. As one poster put it, "a $17 ebook with $2000 worth of bonuses" just doesn't make sense. Do you have to offer bonuses to succeed? No. Will the right bonuses increase your success? Definitely.
	Salad is not food. Salad is what food eats... -- The REAL PETA, People for Eating Tasty Animals "I did not fight my way to the top of the food chain to eat tofu!"

12-31-2008, 11:19 AM	#10
Loren Woirhaye Who'm I kidding? War Room Member Join Date: May 2006 Location: Easthampton, Massachusetts Posts: 4,542 Blog Entries: 15 Thanks: 117 Thanked 904 Times in 651 Posts Social Networking Contact Info	Re: Do you have to offer bonuses to succeed? If you bury the product in bonuses people start to wonder if the product is any good at all. People will sometimes buy, NOW, to get a bonus. Without the bonus they are, like, "ho hum..." so the bonus can kick 'em in the ass. Crappy bonuses will fool naieve people I guess: "Look at all you get. 10,000 ebooks you can resell plus 1200 softwares to sell." etc... Do people know most ebooks suck? I don't know if they do or not. Do they know old, unsupported software generally sucks? I don't know that either. Doing bonuses has an art to it. Cold traffic won't warm up to your bonuses the way people on your list might so take that into account. There is also a principle, used very well by IMC, where a loooong sales letter loaded up with blah, blah, bonus, blah, testimonial, blah - can just persuade people that it's worth taking action f you have so much to say about it.
	HOT! $25,000,000/yr Copywriter's Secret Book—FREE! \| The "Automated Free Traffic Formula" ArticleBot Secrets Revealed! Breakthrough Marketing Blog (+ goodies) CopyWriting Services

12-31-2008, 01:38 PM	#11
Michael Oksa The Ethical Marketer War Room Member Join Date: May 2006 Location: Wisconsin, USA Posts: 6,066 Thanks: 1,750 Thanked 3,029 Times in 1,341 Posts Social Networking Contact Info	Re: Do you have to offer bonuses to succeed? If done right, bonuses can help, but there is no clear cut answer. There was a near perfect example of a bonus given away in my area recently. The car dealers are finding times are tough, and with the need to get rid of year-end inventory they have to get creative. So, what was the bonus? . . . . . . . . . A free car! Ok, there were a few strings attached, but not too many. Basically, if you bought a new car, you would get a free used car valued at $10,000 or less. The promotion is/was a success by all counts. You can read the story here... Two For One Car Deal - News- msnbc.com Just an example of how a bonus can work. All the best, Michael
	* * IT'S HERE! IT'S HOT * * . . . *The Ultimate* 2011 Christmas Holiday Package!**

01-10-2009, 11:11 PM	#12
tomcam Tom Campbell War Room Member Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Seattle, WA Posts: 381 Blog Entries: 12 Thanks: 278 Thanked 118 Times in 61 Posts Social Networking	Re: Do you have to offer bonuses to succeed? A tardy addition: the bonus should be closely related to the product. Don't give me a free graphics pack with a weight loss product, or a hypnosis ebook with an IM product.

01-10-2009, 11:24 PM	#13
freudianslip27 Senior Warrior Member War Room Member Join Date: Mar 2007 Posts: 1,315 Thanks: 26 Thanked 176 Times in 116 Posts	Re: Do you have to offer bonuses to succeed? Isn't it something how competitive things can get with bonuses. Sometimes I feel like I HAVE to offer a ton in order to stay in the game, but that's just silly. I think one of the worst things you could do is slap together a huge list of generic bonuses, it can devalue your main product. The tighter and more related the bonuses are to your product, the better your overall package should be perceived. Matt
	Offline Marketers: Dominate the Local Business Directories with Never Seen Before Techniques I reveal the secrets of dominating the local business directories in my detailed videos and accompanying book.

01-11-2009, 12:37 AM	#14
Desmon G Active Warrior Join Date: Sep 2008 Posts: 34 Thanks: 0 Thanked 2 Times in 1 Post	Re: Do you have to offer bonuses to succeed? I offer bonuses less than half the time, and when I do it's just one tool or report closely related to the main subject. I definitely don't think you need to offer a bunch of bonuses to do well.

01-11-2009, 12:46 AM	#15
polleo Active Warrior Join Date: Jan 2009 Posts: 41 Thanks: 2 Thanked 2 Times in 2 Posts	Re: Do you have to offer bonuses to succeed? In my opinion, when you're trying to sell a product. You're targeting a particullar group of people to buy that product. When you bring bonuses into the equation you just over complicate it, these bonuses might not be something that your target market really wants, and so doesn't actually boost their desire to buy the product from you. One thing that all customers look for is a lower price. Rather than spending money on offering bonuses, just reduce your price the according amount. Customers will generally go for the lower price over the bonuses any day So in short, dont offer bonuses, offer a lower price and you will make more sales-end of story