The Irresistible Offer!
At our Kick-off Marketing Academy, we spoke about never sending a piece of Marketing Communication without an Offer and we talked a lot about what is a great Offer which will create a pattern interrupt and cause immediate action by your ideal Prospect. Reminded me of this story from my mentor Dan Kennedy:
“The girl I was in a relationship with was at away at College, Murray State in Kentucky. I was running my little ad agency in Akron, OH. I was supposed to drive down to Murray and pick her up on Friday, and bring her home for a long weekend. Thursday night, Mother Nature, that pixie with the marvelous sense of humor, unleashed the blizzard of the century on Ohio. That’s not hyperbole either, it was the blizzard of the century. Actually, one of the four worst storms of recorded history. By 8:00am on Friday every school, office and business was closed, roads were buried in snow and the highways were a sheet of ice. The Ohio State Patrol asked everyone to avoid using the expressways. Another foot of snow was predicted. Attempting to drive from Akron south all the way through the state was a suicide mission.
At 8:30am, I got Nancy on the phone to tell her the bad news.
Oh, I should tell you, I had a 1974 American Motors Javelin, red with white racing stripes, only a few months old. I’d bought her brand new! It was a sporty car; very light in weight, small hind end, tiny trunk, no weight over the wheels. If you can’t recall the car, it was cleverly, uniquely shaped like a curvy women’s body. If you stood facing it, you saw a Playboy centerfold shape.
By the time I arrived at Murray late Friday night, the curves were flat. I smashed every single one of them flat, spinning around in circles on the interstate highway bridges and stopping against them.
In that little phone call, Nancy said fewer than 25 words. They cannot be repeated here. They constituted an irresistible offer.
And that is your challenge as a marketer or salesperson or copywriter, to craft an offer so irresistible that your prospect would bundle up, schlep out into a blinding snowstorm, a dangerous blizzard, and risk life and limb driving on icy roads, to get to the post office, to drop their order form in the mail before the deadline.
Nancy was going to college to become a dietitian. As far as I know she had no experience in sales or marketing. But she sure knew how to make an irresistible offer!”
I’m told the story is 100% true and I believe it. Remember our Speed to Market principle “All Truth is the Detection on an Analogy” and apply this story to the creation of your own irresistible offers.
Have a Margin Expanding day!
Shawn
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