If you are not simply retail, and if you offer a product or especially a service, you could benefit from having a multi-tiered offering for your clients to have many options in how they connect with you. Do you need a value ladder? If you do, your clients can get the products and services they need from you and you can generate income from them based on how much money they want to give you.
Some people only want to pay the minimum cost for something. You may know some people like this. But there are others who desire to pay dearly for more personalized services. Having a value ladder in place helps your clients find their own sweet spot to support you and your service offerings.
Building a value ladder helps bring potential clients to your site, exposes your point of view to like-minded people, and increases your earning potential by giving them many ways to integrate with you and support your work by specifically voting with their dollars.
Like a ladder, there will be many rungs, each one raising higher and higher consecutively.
You want to entice your potential supporters with free products that have intrinsic value but lead to a product that they would be glad to pay for.
Free Offer
The first rung of the ladder is free, immediately accompanied with a tripwire offer, and the second rung of the ladder is a low-cost offer attached to the free offer.
If you are blogging every day, you are creating valuable content that you can direct them to.
You can give them a direct link to a specific blog post, give them a sample eBook, direct them to a how-to video, let them listen in on a pre-recorded meditation, give them a free introductory course, and let them attend a free webinar, etc.
This is how you begin to build affinity with your tribe.
If you have used the free method to connect to your people, when they are ready to pay, they will have confidence in your ability to help them, and they will vote for you with their dollars.
Tripwire
The tripwire is attached to the free offer. Oftentimes when someone is getting something free, they will opt to engage in a small upgrade if offered the chance to do so at the time of signing up for the free offer. So, they get the free item and a bonus which they pay for (the tripwire) that they receive together, and you’ve accomplished the feat of upgrading a lookie-loo into a customer. If they upgrade at this entry point, they are likely to buy and/or upgrade again if they are liking what you have to offer.
The purpose of the free offer and tripwire is to lead them to your core offer.
Core Offer
You must follow up with an offer to participate in your core offer once they’ve received your free offer.
This is where the potential client becomes your client and agrees to enlist your product or services by paying a higher price for your product or service(s).
Core offers can include e-books, seminars, or courses.
Higher Priced Offer
This is another rung up the ladder to give your clients a deeper understanding of what the possibilities could be with better results from the clients increasing their support and dollars to you. These individuals may need more of your personal attention.
The value of your higher-priced offer should be kept discrete, not disclosed throughout your site. Why? Because you can adjust this level to any level of pay as necessary. So, remain vague, except when people have actually made it to this level of the value ladder.
High-ticket Offer
This is the exclusive offer that only the people who can afford it can take advantage of it and these clients are part of a special group, and you can provide a private forum or group for them to interact with you and each other.
So, the question was, “Do You Need a Value Ladder?” and the answer is, “Yes,” but only if you want to monetize your book, business, ministry, or project.
If you want to have control of your own self-funding program, you need to give your people, your potential tribe, various means and methods to support you with their dollars.