Do your offers lead your customer on a journey? Or do they look a bit more like a mall food court? Pizza here, Chinese there, maybe a cinnamon roll if you’re in the mood? By structuring your offers strategically, you can become known for your area of expertise, lead your customers down a path through working with you, and greatly increase the Lifetime Customer Value of your clients.

But what if you’ve got the food court?

When I started my business, it looked a lot like this. An offer teaching something people wanted here, an offer teaching my audience what they wanted to learn there. No clear path, and a whole lot of offers that didn’t fully serve my purpose. I was what I now call a Short Order Course Creator ™.

A Short Order Course Creator is someone who looks to their audience for what to create. While that makes sense in theory, create what your audience wants to buy, it often leaves you with an incohesive group of offers, and still no expertise of any kind. You started your business to share your expertise in a specific area, and every time you ask your audience what they want you to create, you give them more and more of your power. 

It's like that famous quote about the French radical that says “Oh look, there go my people! I must find out where they are going so I can lead them!” Your audience follows YOU because you are a leader. When you take a stand for the change you want to create in the world, and create a product suite that empowers you to do it, you become known for that thing.

Start with the end in mind.

If up until now your business has been reactionary (ie creating programs that people request, or following your audience’s whims), you might not know where the end is, to start there. But that’s the awesome thing about business, you get to decide.

What do you want to be known for? What is the transformation you help people create? Who is the person that has that problem? Keeping this in mind, you’ll be able to create a customer journey that takes them down the road to getting that transformation. Having this level of direction in your offers will allow you to build on the work you do, and get people even better results.

Your high level offer.

At the very end of your customer journey should be your highest ticket, highest touch program. This should get people the transformation you provide in the most hands on way possible. For some people, this is a done for you service, an agency, or 1:1 coaching. It could even be a small group coaching offer if you don’t offer 1:1. It's the highest level of working with you, and should ideally be for the least amount of customers. That is how you create scalability.

If this is your primary offer now, that’s ok! But keep in mind that your income ceiling is only as high as the time you have in the day. By creating the offers I am about to share with you, you can create a much more scalable stream of revenue, and have a consistent group of ideal clients for your high level offer coming in consistently.

Your “one to many”, signature offer.

This should be your flagship offer. The thing that you are known for. When you create your signature framework and signature methodology, this is your way of delivering it. This will be the program that you launch every year, and get people the best transformation. It will likely include some group coaching, some recorded modules, etc.

The idea with this program is to create an asset that you can launch time and time again, to get appreciating returns. When you create new programs over and over in your business, it's like trying to build wealth by buying new stocks and then selling them over and over again. When you treat your signature program like an asset, you are creating an offer that you can leverage over and over again to create greater and greater return on your initial investment.

Your leveraged DIY Course.

This program provides a specific transformation that will get people one step closer to your signature program. Think about the transformation you want to become known for. Is there anything that you wish they knew before they joined it? A foundation of knowledge that would get them even better results? This is a great topic for your DIY Course.

This will be a great mid level program for your ideal clients. It will get them a tangible result, and will also get them one step closer to working with you in your signature program. This offer can ever be something sold on evergreen. Evergreen means it is either open all the time (which I don’t recommend) or launched on an individual basis. Meaning people come into your launch in their own time (often through a facebook ad) and are led through the launch sequence individually. This is an incredibly effective way to sell a DIY offer. Because there is no or little support from you (often just a facebook group, no calls) it's something you can fill all the time, always bringing new clients into your customer ecosystem.

Your Low End Paid Offer. 

This offer has many different names these days. Call it a “Tiny Offer” or a “Pocket Program” or a Tripwire, you can call it whatever you want. This is a small program that provides a small transformation for a small price point. Often between $7-$49, this offer should get your ideal client a small win.

One of the biggest mistakes I see people make with a low end paid offer is that they try to take a DIY course and offer it for $29. The problem with this is that people are paying $29 for a $29 transformation. When you try to stuff 5 hours of course content into a low end offer, you overwhelm your ideal client. People don’t buy $29 offers because they want to take a whole course. They want to learn something quickly and get results quickly. When you make the barrier of transformation too high, you are creating mismatched expectations. The worst part about this is that it does the total opposite of what you want this offer to do- it will push away people from buying further programs from you.

Instead, find a micro transformation you can help people achieve in a short amount of time for a small amount of money. This will be the most effective way to bring in paid leads. One of my favorite ways to use this offer is as a tripwire, meaning on the other side of the opt in for a freebie. Placed here, you can capture a really warm audience when they already want to learn what you have to offer. Which leads me to your last offer.

Your high value freebie. 

Freebies get a bad wrap, but I think it's because the marketing industry as a whole got lazy about their freebies. Treating them like they are just another thing they needed to create in their business. When you have a strategized, high value freebie, you can not only capture your ideal client’s attention, you can create massive authority and demand for your paid offers. 

How to content is not valuable. Telling someone the steps to do something is not valuable. It is a commodity. Anyone on pinterest can tell someone how to do something. True value lies in both painting the picture of how to get the transformation you are known for, and removing the roadblocks that are keeping them from getting that result. Your freebie should do both.

And when you treat your freebie like the offer that it is, with positioning, a package, and a promise, you will create a high converting offer that is the first step in to your customer ecosystem.

The key is making sure that each offer leads to the next.

When you create offers like a food court, there is no logical progression to working with you, and people will leave as soon as they come into your ecosystem. But when you create a reason to keep working with you, to deepen the relationship with them, you will not only create customer loyalty, you will greatly increase the Lifetime Customer Value of your clients.

Are you making one of these surprising mistakes?

If you have an offer you are in love with, but it just isn’t converting, you might be! I have released a new e-book detailing the 5 reasons your offer isn’t converting, and what to do about it! If you are ready to create a truly irresistible offer, you don’t want to miss it! 

Click here to learn what mistakes you’re likely making, and what to do to fix it!