Low ticket offer in your funnel (affiliate markting)

I use low price offers to qualify people.

I don't know who decided this is a good term. A tripwire is the trigger of a trap. Are you trying to trap people?

Brent

Really, to use a tripwire effectively you really need to have your own funnel with your own products.

This is the only way to have a real business. Everything else, you're building someone else's business for them.

A tripwire is really used by marketers that have their own products.

If the product owner did have a tripwire for you to offer as an affiliate. what happens after the sale of it? If they later buy the core product would you still get credit? Typically after the first sale, then the buyer becomes the product owners customer, not yours.

I think you can create a trip wire even though the offer is not yours. this will most likely be done right if your helping a customer to take a certain path which requires signing up for a software or tool that is required in whatever they are buying.

I have seen such offers a lot and also created one , even on this forum you will find them

You just need to introduce someone to an idea. charge your tripwire and letter show them the exact product they are buying .

so you must be talking about clickfunnels right? That's a term they use for a 3 page funnel.
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Your oto needs to be a improvement for the free product I just bought a bunch of plr from fiverr to use for mine.

Depending on the offer, audience and funnel it can be a great way to increase your earnings. But as always it takes testing and experimenting.

Hi, I think u should not offer freebies to potential customers because these people would just want free things n when u ask them to buy your core product, they won't buy it. You should just promote the core offer directly.

That's why it's extremely important to know your target audience... if you need a low-ticket offer to get your leads into your funnel so be it. However, keep in mind it's your job to build trust and rapport with your leads before asking them to purchase your core offer (which absolutely must be congruent with the offer that got them into the funnel in the first place.

Good luck!

Who do you want as a customer?

This is the question you should focus on in your situation. Why? Because how you use tripwires and lead magnets has a big impact on who you get as a customer.

I speak from years of experience. Now I am not in the "build a list, rush around and try and throw every affiliate product I can find at them, and hope something sells" mindset. If that's your game, then throw out everything I have to say and do what you like.

But if you are selling real services, or higher ticket products that are a genuine solution to a problem--rather than the constant churn of "OMG You Need This!" Gizmo-Of-The-Week--then listen closely.

Here's the business truth that is the core of reality and this approach:

A real business owner (digital/online or physical, either one) who has a real problem and buys into you at the foot-in-the-door level will never see you as the person to help them at the higher level.

Let me restate that so it's even clearer: if they have a serious problem, and they buy the little solution from you, they'll never buy the bigger one.

Now "never" is a strong word and I suppose there are examples somewhere of somebody selling a little thing, then working on the buyer and getting them to upgrade to something bigger.

But what we're trying to do here is use a small sale to develop trust, a relationship, and the experience of working with you (or at least how you work)...in the hopes that they'll buy something larger later on. This is a bad idea. Let's see why:

1. It positions you badly

Low ticket solutions rarely work well. They're the kinda-sorta-maybe works things, like half-baked software the dev can't afford to support and the affiliate seller certainly has zero impact on the upkeep of.

Higher ticket buyers won't buy a low price solution because they don't believe in it. They believe it can't be very good. I'll never forget the day a business friend, who had hired me for copywriting work many times, told me he would not hire me for sales training--because "anything good has to start at $80,000." My sales training program does not cost $80K and not even a tenth of that. (Obviously I'm kind of dumb--I should clearly be making a program at that price point. And if that scares you, note that Grant Cardone has a $100K program on his site: 4 X 15 minute calls over a year with him. Do you think that's worth it? Somebody does. At minimum it helps sell his other programs.) And those with long experience know low price means the solution is not supported for updates and feature improvements.

So who do you attract? Nervous, broke, "this-must-work-like-a-miracle-immediately" customers.

If I've attracted someone who I have to struggle to get $200 out of, I've done my job wrong. They don't have a problem large enough to warrant my involvement. They are screwed up on cash flow. Their mindset is bad.

Is this who you want as a customer?

2. It disempowers you

We have 24 hours in the day. All of us. So how do you want to spend your time? Chasing broke prospects in the hopes that they'll pick up this cheap, half-working solution?

And even if you do make sales, what have you got as a total by the end of the month? Not much.

Does the thought of that make you feel good? Like this is worthwhile?

"But Jason, I'm just sticking this offer into the front of my funnel. It's all automated. I don't have to do anything beyond that."

Oh? How will you be getting leads for your funnel and that low ticket solution? Where is the traffic coming from? Who will be putting their focus on finding those opportunities?

And your reward?

After awhile, you're going to wonder why you're doing this.

3. It makes selling even more difficult because of the customers you attract

One of the big realizations, and it continues to surprise and irritate me just how many years it took me to have it...with 15 years of corporate executive experience and then a bunch working on my own business, I've had is this:

The people who have money have money. They people who don't have money don't have money.

So simple, right?

Yet how do 99/100 sellers behave? Who do they run towards? Who do they try to get as customers?

When a buyer has money, they don't struggle. They just give you some from their pile and continue on. It's no big deal to them. If, next month, they have to reinvest in the thing to do it again, they Nike their way in and just do it. They're not so anxious.

When a buyer doesn't have money, they do struggle. They have to! They must rob from Peter to pay Paul (you're Paul): typically Peter is "operating expenses". So now you're both in this situation where it HAS to work. Like miracle level work. Every day they're tying up your time.

And that broke buyer already spent all their money on your cheap solution. They don't have any to get something more expensive, even if they know they need it.

Your high ticket buyer...let's say you convinced them out of persistence or their curiosity or whatever to pick up your low ticket product. That's their experience with you. I've had people buy stuff from me and then talk to me later to tell me about it: "I bought something just to see how you work." Well, they've seen how you work now. Instead of opening the door, it closes the opportunity shut. "This isn't my guy (or gal)," they'll say to themselves. "Look at how they do business. Cheap. Unsupported. Fly-By-Night."

They will refuse to see you as the solution provider at the higher level for solving their problem because of your tripwire.


Does this all sound like a game you should be banking your financial life on?

So again I ask: What kind of customers do you want to attract?

I've seen some marketers proclaim, "A buyer is a buyer is a bloody buyer." Of course, they're playing at the level where $250 is "a lot of money" (and those of you who follow me will know the import of that particular phrase.)

If you don't care, and you just want that $7, then ignore everything I have to say.

If you want to aim higher, attract a different level of buyer, be treated differently, then you have to behave differently.

Do I use tripwires and lead magnets? Yes, I do: Kindle books, free reports. They have the specific purpose of entering the conversation going on in my prospect's mind, and positioning me as that higher ticket solution provider. I didn't do this in the beginning, when I was learning (OK, I'm still learning), and got locked in as the "low ticket sales trainer" for awhile. My mistake.

Nowadays my reports talk about the hidden costs of Free and low ticket solutions.

I'm not interested in waving a loss leader in front of a weak prospect.

Watch some entrepreneurial startup vids on YouTube: you'll find they confirm there's a buyer at every price level. Ramit Sethi comes to mind:The world will try to drag you down, turn you into vanilla, then ignore you, he said. There will always be whiners that you're "too expensive." Who cares. There are buyers at the higher level.

Serious people want CONFIDENCE. Confidence in your solution.

Yes, McDonald's can provide confidence that they'll give you a standard-level meal...but they and their competitors have found the problems with racing to the bottom with price...and they have the distribution channel to transact enough times to make money. You do not.

So who do you want as a customer? Choose deliberately. You're stuck with 'em.

Jason, this is one time I wish I could hit the 'Thanks' button more than once.

I wish I'd written that myself.

Folks, keep in mind what tripwire offers and lead magnets are meant to do.

You lead magnet's sole purpose isn't to "build your list" - it's to identify people who may be willing and able to purchase your product/service. It's a sorting mechanism.

Your tripwire offer is just to sort the buyers from the non-buyers. It's to create trust and belief in your real offer. That's why the best tripwire offers are actually a piece of the real product/service, and there's no subterfuge involved.

In the grocery store, you get a piece of cheese on a toothpick. If you like the cheese, it's available in the case right behind the smiling person with the tray. It would make no sense to hand out samples of cheese in front of a case of bananas.

The cheese sample is the lead magnet.

Suppose we take this analogy online.

You offer a 'lead magnet' of a cheese sampler.

Your tripwire offer is a larger version, or maybe packages of individual cheeses.

Your main offer is a subscription to a 'cheese of the month' club.

Each step leads naturally to the next.

Or, as author Harvey Mackay put it, if you can solve your issue by writing a check, it isn't a problem. It's an expense.

He used the example of taking a potential client to a hockey game. Through a fubar in the ticket office, his reserved seats had been given to someone else and the only tickets available were in the nosebleed seats.

Mackey took the tickets, then gave a couple of guys with good seats $100 each to swap seats with him.

Issue resolved.

McD, BK and others have been trying for years to escape that 'value menu' trap with more upscale offerings, with minimal success.

Even Walmart has been struggling to 'level up' their customer base.

Jason, thanks for your great reply!

Based on my experience, it makes total sense. I was brainstorming how to do various free vs low priced tripwire offers in my niche, and nothing felt right. Now I see why. I felt like I was cheapening my product by offering a $9 or $27 version of it. I'm not going to do that.

This has convinced me to position myself as the high value option only. Anything else, I'm giving away for free as a lead-up to a high value offer.