Sabri Suby, CEO of the digital marketing agency King Kong, started out like most of us these days—without much more than a laptop, a cell phone, and an internet connection. But within four years, Sabri had built a $10 million business that’s one of Australia’s fastest growing digital agencies.
What’s especially impressive, however, is the success of his clients. The King Kong agency has helped clients across more than 120 niches grow their businesses, collectively generating over $400 million in sales. In this post, we’re offering a rare peek into exactly how he does it, a quick-and-dirty guide to how Sabri Suby makes offers his clients can’t refuse.
There are a lot of reasons for Sabri’s hard-earned success and the impressive growth of his business. It’s unquestionable that his mindset, ambition, discipline, focus and obsession with mastering his craft as a marketer and entrepreneur have all played a significant role.
But across all the strategies Sabri teaches, one thing stood out to me in particular:
His “Godfather” Offers.
It’s Sabri’s ability to dive into any niche or market and create an irresistible offer that is so compelling, well, the rest almost doesn’t even matter to his target audience once they hear it. One of his superpowers is creating offers that people simply can’t refuse.
Can you imagine that?
People being unable to turn down your offer just as soon as they heard or read your pitch? They excitedly sign up and make their payment before even going home and justifying it to their business or partner about “what a great deal” they got.
It’s powerful and a little dangerous.
Dangerous, because it relies on your product or service living up to the promise you have made. We now live in a world of instant feedback. If you over-promise and under-deliver, everyone will know about it through online ratings, social media blasts, and more.
So just to be clear, this article is about how to make irresistible offers to people who can afford and will benefit from your product or service. At Foundr, we strongly believe that the value of what you sell should far exceed the price that your customer pays. In that scenario, there are only winners.
That said, here’s how Sabri Suby does it.
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Examples of ‘Godfather’ Offers
To first give you some idea of the kind of thing we’re talking about, here are three great examples of irresistible offers that are hard to refuse (if you can think of some others I have missed, please add them to the comments below).
One key point to remember is that these kinds of offers will only work for your target audience. This isn’t like some cheap pheromone cologne that will leave people helpless to resist your charms. So your market research and customer avatar must be accurate and on point for this to be effective. You will first have to understand their deepest darkest pains if you are going to “turn the screws” (ethically of course).
Mike Dillard’s Completion Challenge
Mike sells some great training, and for two of his products, he offers to give you your money back if you complete the course and send him proof. If you want his course, and you intend on finishing it, how can you turn that down?
That is a powerful offer.
Koala’s 120-Night Trial
For people who want to buy a cheap (or more affordable) mattress online, Koala offers an ingenious 120-day trial to overcome that common online objection: “How do I know if I’ll like it?”
So without visiting a store and feeling pressured to buy, or worrying about choosing “the wrong one,” you can choose a mattress from your phone, have it delivered, and test it out for 120 nights, just to see if you like it.
That irresistible offer is hard to refuse.
Warby Parker’s Free Home Try-On, Free Shipping, And Free Returns
Warby Parker sells glasses online, a product that can present a tough decision for consumers. Again, a common objection for ecommerce stores is that people want to be able to try things on before they buy.
So Warby Parker offers a way you can try them before you buy, for free. Smart.
“Pick out five frames from a selection of our favorites to test out at home with our easy–and free!–Home Try-On program. You’ve got five days to take them for a spin and decide which style suits you best, then return the frames and order the pair (or pairs) you like.
Shipping is free both ways.”
Sunny Co. Clothing’s Viral Swimsuit Offer
These guys are now (in)famous for offering a free “Pamela” bathing suit (which was retailing fo $64.99) to everyone who reposted the image and tagged the company over a period of 24 hours.
What bikini-lover could refuse that? A free bikini for posting about them on Instagram.
But this is an example of a Godfather offer gone wrong. Within 24 hours they grew from 7,000 followers to over 750,000, and thousands of people were taking them up on their offer of an Instagram post for a free bikinis. Total disaster.
Plus they were on the hook to pay shipping for thousands of free offers, let alone the wholesale cost of all that Baywatch. Moral of the story: Don’t make an offer that you can’t afford to fulfill.
Your Godfather Offer
“Suuuuuure, they can do it, because they have investors, a bigger budget, .”
OK, so you’re right. I hand picked some very clever offers and guarantees from successful people and fast-growth companies.
But what if you can’t offer all of this stuff for free, because your margins are too thin, or you simply don’t want to?
That’s fine, because a super-compelling offer is not just about money-back guarantees and free trials. There are actually eight steps that you can follow to create your very own Godfather offer without going broke doing so.
It’s time to cut the excuses and take a seat in front of the master.
Before we dive in, it’s crucial that you get everything else right for your business or consultancy first, things like your pitch, your service offering, your branding—and of course, you need leads to make a Godfather offer too. If you need to get these items in place, check out our detailed guide on how to become a consultant.
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How To Make Your Godfather Offer
Here’s an actionable, step-by-step guide that I’ve condensed so you can create your very own Godfather offer.
Step 1: Lay The Groundwork
In order to convert, your offer must be:
- Clear and easy to understand – There should be no question as to what your audience is getting in return for their email/purchase/registration.
- Value based – Your offer copy should be focused on how it will fill a need or solve a problem.
- Concise – Keeping it short and to the point will drive more conversions.
- Persuasive – If there ever was a place to bust out your salesperson chops, your offer is it.
Step 2: Add Bonuses
Add relevant bonuses or sweeteners to the offer. These should be highly desirable, but not essential to reaching the desired outcome—prospects simply need to want them.
Step 3: Stack The Value
Stack up the total value and benefits of everything in your offer into what we call, you guessed it, your “value stack.” That means tell them how much everything is worth, then paint a vivid picture with explanations of all the benefits to raise your offer’s perceived value.
Step 4: Reveal Your Price
Add the prices of everything you’re offering together to calculate the combined value, then reveal a price that’s much cheaper. Explain why the price is what it is, and why it is such a great value.
Step 5: Inject Scarcity
Offers without scarcity don’t sell as well. Think about it, if you don’t need to take action now, when will you take it? NEVER. But keep in mind, the scarcity needs to be genuine.
Examples of scarcity include:
- Putting an expiration date on your offer
- Flash sales
- Countdown clocks
- “Doors are closing”
- “Only X left at this price”
- “Buy before X to avoid a price hike”
Scarcity has been shown time and time again to skyrocket conversion rates. The best marketers use it because it works.
Step 6: Give a Powerful Guarantee
Remove, eliminate, reverse, or otherwise take out any perceived risks. A guarantee transfers the risk from the buyer to the seller. And that shows the buyer that if the product doesn’t deliver, they won’t lose their time or money, thus eliminating the pain of buying. Here’s a pro tip: the longer the guarantee, the fewer returns you’ll get. Whether it’s a no-risk, money-back guarantee or a promise to never share their information, guarantees remove the risk associated with your offer.
Step 7: Call to Action (CTA)
The call to action is a command. Be specific and tell them exactly what to do. Keep it clear and direct (your audience shouldn’t have to play 20 Questions to figure out what you want them to do). Ask them to do ONE thing. The more hoops you ask them to jump through, the more likely they’ll say “screw this” and leave.
Step 8: Add a Warning
Warn them against the consequence of what will happen if they don’t buy. Psychologically, people are often more motivated to move away from pain than towards pleasure. So “warning” them about what will happen if they don’t buy can increase conversions. It could be as simple as warning them about missing out on your service, not getting the best price, or even worse, their situation won’t improve and they will remain stuck with their problems.
Boom. That’s it. You’re done.
If you follow each of these steps carefully, you should end up with a highly compelling and irresistible offer. Put it all together and get this offer out to your leads ASAP by putting it on a sales page, in a video, or on a phone call.
Please enjoy, get your offer together, and don’t break anyone’s knee caps along the way.
And if you feel this post was valuable, please like, share, and most importantly, comment below! There’s a whole team working hard behind the Foundr blog, and nothing motivates us more than knowing it’s making a difference to our readers.
And that’s how we roll at Foundr. Practical and actionable.
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