How To Craft A Killer Marketing Offer For a Dietary Supplement

Maximizing for revenue in an online dietary supplement business almost always comes down to the marketing offer.

There are a couple of advantages to this approach to marketing.

First, everything is measurable making it easier to A/B test any element of your sales page. Second, an online health business, particularly a health supplement business that has a natural recurring continuity of a new bottle every month, which lends the revenue optimization towards a lifetime value approach to split-testing.

But when most general conversion optimization firms out there approach testing and optimization, they concentrate on the wrong things. If you’re working with a CRO firm right now and they are testing button color and calls to action, please fire them immediately. They don’t understand the health buyer.

The one most important thing a health company can A/B test is the marketing offer.

But first…

What Is a Marketing Offer?

The marketing offer Is NOT your product… 

It’s NOT a bottle of your dietary supplement. But it is what you sell (as you’ll see in a moment.) Want to skip to another article that goes into the offer even more? Click here.

The offer Is NOT your video sales letter (VSL)

A webinar, a quiz, a sales page or a VSL are the method in which you sell.

It is the way in which you’re trying to convince someone to take your offer, not the offer itself.

The marketing offer is what gets a prospect to buy.

You can have a single product and create multiple offers for it.

An offer is created around the product itself.

It’s the positioning of the product.

The offer has to have an underlying value to the consumer and not just be a 20 minute sales pitch.

Your offer might be, learn how to stretch to relieve your sciatica pain, and at the end of your exercise guide you lead them to your supplement product (which has it’s own unique offer.)

How Do You Structure a Marketing Offer?

Let’s say you only have one health supplement product. You can have multiple offers, for example:

Do you want to buy 1 bottle, 2 bottles or 4 bottles?

Or… Do you want to buy one bottle at 50% OFF vs. a Buy One Get One Free (BOGO) offer. Which by the way is the same exact thing financially they are just presented in different ways.

This is one easy offer test you can do to see which package presentation sells more to a specific traffic source. You may think how you package an offer may be a killer offer, but the way you offer the package may not be. Especially with cold traffic. 

I see a lot of people in the health space complaining because they package different products and bonuses together and then complain that it didn’t work. When the truth is they never tested their offer. You can’t make assumptions.

There are seven key elements that you should include and test within your offer presentation, let’s go over each one…

7 Elements Of a Marketing Offer

1. How Many Do You Get?

This seems like an obvious one, but in revenue optimization you can’t take anything for granted. A slight shift in how many and how much you offer can mean the difference between a 5 and 10 million dollar business.

You can present your product in several different ways, even if all you have is one single supplement product.

For example, you can offer three different options for the same product and even have multiple variations of those three options. 

You can present your buy options as:

• 1 Bottle
• 3 Bottles
• 6 Bottles

Or even:

• 1 Bottle
• 1 Bottle with a monthly subscription 
• 2 Bottles

The options are really limitless, don’t be afraid to offer an outrageous supply either like a 12 bottle option. It may not be many, but some will buy and the higher the supply, the higher the price point which could change the numbers dramatically enough to be a game changer. Or you might want to position the higher option as the anchor, decoy offer to move people to another offer.

It’s not just simply how many and how much can you come up with. There’s a strategic side of what you’re offering and why.

The second key element of a killer offer is…

2. How Much is the Offer?

This is where price comes into play. We spoke a little bit about this earlier with offers like 50% Off vs. Buy One Get One Free, which is the same exact thing financially.

But there are tons of ways to package the “how much” answer in your offer. The simplest is a discount offer. Again with an eye towards strategy. You might want to reserve some discounts for special reasons like a standard 5% Off coupon offer for retargeting or just for opting in and then have a scaling discount the more qualified the prospect gets. For example a 20% Off offer only for abandoned carts and a 15% Off offer to save a sale for people that call to cancel their monthly supplement subscription. there’s a lot you can do with a simple percentage off offer. As well as a BOGO offer. Buy one get one, Buy two get one, Buy three get three, etc. it all depends on the economics of the product and how much margin you have as well as a trade off for revenue goals in the short term.

The third key element is…

3. Payment Terms Can Improve Your Offer

Payment terms are an alternative form of the how much question. This works well for price points that are three digits. $200, $250, etc. 

Essentially you’re breaking up the total into installments, usually two or three and in most cases there is usually an added finance charge on top of the total amount. 

Making it easier to pay for the prospect. This type of offer also works well for a down sell, where they said no to a previous upsell. In this case you can simply make the same offer in the down sell but just add the ability to break up the payments. Often times people want to buy but the price is too high all at once.

An alternative variation of this is to offer payment terms where they pay zero or a very small amount like $1.99, but it can really be any amount. And then the next payment is for the remaining or full price. This is a variation of trial offer. You’re reducing the cost up front making it easier for them to accept the offer. You can use this case on offers that are fairly low dollar amounts. Pay nothing now (or $1.99) and we’ll bill you $19.95, $49.95, etc. in 30 days once you’ve had a chance to experience the product.

The one caveat with payment terms is that you have to watch your chargeback rate closely. Sometimes the prospect has reached their credit limit and you’re unable to accept the 2nd or 3rd or 4th, if you have one, payment in your offer. 

4. Is Free Shipping a Marketing Strategy?

Free shipping is the standard these days across major commerce retailers but you can play with this a lot. For example you’ll see the obvious free shipping on offers over $50. But you can also present this as part of the offer, so the six bottle option comes with free shipping but the two and one bottle options do not, or maybe the two and six come with free shipping. 

If you present this as part of the offer the decision changes for the prospect. It goes from a what else can I add to my cart to get free shipping, almost like you’re being penalized for not buying enough, to an enticement to pull you up to the next level. Look you’re already ordering one bottle, why not get two and let us pay for shipping?

Free shipping positioned that way becomes more of a premium, which is our next key element of a killer health supplement offer.

5. Adding Premiums to Amplify The Offer

Premiums, or bonuses, are a great way to add more value to any offer. You’ll see this used a lot in the TV Infomercial world. Where they will stack on additional items if you buy now. For example extra little gadget or side item and in some cases the Product ask as a premium itself, like a BOGO, where you buy to Plus get one free. You want to see this the information space as well, where the premiums are digital products, like a PDF guide or a recipe book. It’s usually something that enhances the solution the product is providing. 

One way the premiums are presented is by adding more of them the higher up in price you go. For example if you buy one bottle there may not be any premiums at all but if you buy two you’ll also get one PDF guide but if you buy three bottles, the top offer, you not only get the PDF guide but you also get the recipe PDF book and a digital audio interview.

The beauty of a digital premium is that it does not add any fulfillment costs to delivering. But don’t get trapped with just offering digital premiums.

Anything that adds value to the purchase can be used as a premium. Even if it’s totally unrelated to the product itself. A long time ago savings and loan banks would offer toasters and silverware for opening an account and Sports Illustrated used to offer a free phone shaped like a football with a yearly subscription.

There’s a lot of room for creativity when it comes to adding premiums to your offers.

6. Using Scarcity in your Marketing Offer

The sixth element is scarcity.

Which can be further broken down into… 

Time and Quantity

We see a lot of count down timers for health offers, usually on free trial pages but they are starting to become overly done, and I fear will soon lose their effectiveness.

In the testing I have done however they have increased conversion rates. So I don’t think we see them go away any time soon, you just have to be careful and strategic with your use of them. If a visitor comes back to the page and it starts from zero again or if it counts down to zero and the offer is still available, the jig is up and the prospect knows it’s fake. That’s not the way to start off a long term relationship and build trust.

The other element of scarcity you can add to your offer is to limit the quantity. This has to make sense within the larger context of the offer. If your price is super low for a special reason then it makes sense to limit the offer to one bottle per person or if you position the offer as an introductory offer, it can also make sense. 

The main rule to remember with any form of scarcity is that it must be believable why you’re adding scarcity to the offer. Not from a marketing perspective but from the perspective of the offer itself. 

The final element to a killer offer is one that you see a lot and has become a standard element these days…

7. Using Guarantees to Nudge The Sale

Weather it’s 30, 60, 90 days or more, 100% money back guarantees have become a standard component of a health supplement offer online. 

In the direct marketing world you’ll often see guarantees are branded with a unique name to the guarantee it self, like: “The Ironclad No Nonsense 100% Money Back Guarantee” and conditions like ‘No questions asked’ and even in some rare cases a 200% money back guarantee.

It’s impossible to use a supplement without actually breaking the seal and opening it up, making it unsellable at that point. So some health marketers add a unique spin by adding terms to their guarantee like an ‘empty bottle guarantee’, where you can return the empty bottle of supplements and get your money back even after you’ve taken them all. This does a couple of things. First it puts the prospect at ease and let’s them know they can get their money back after legitimately trying the product and secondly it creates a natural barrier by making them actually physically return the empty bottle rather than just giving them a refund.

The purpose of the guarantee is to reduce the psychological resistance in the mind of the visitor that exists over weather your product will actually work or not. So it’s a required element in the offer mix.

In fact, every element of the offer is vital because the offer itself is a lever that can truly have a huge impact on your revenue..

The Economics of a Marketing Offer

Don’t forget to always watch your numbers.

One marketing offer might have a much lower click rate but a higher revenue per visitor or higher ECPM … your effective earnings per 1,000 ad impressions. Measure both to determine your true overall value.

Here’s an example:

Let’s say you have a 50% OFF offer that gets a 23% CTR, click-through-rate and you test it against a 25% OFF offer that gets a 10% CTR and each of them are capturing email address opt-ins before they get to see you product.
 

You may find that the value per customer is less on the 25% OFF offer as compared to the 50% OFF offer because it may be bringing in lower value customers or because it just has a lower revenue amount it just doesn’t have as much value on day zero. But… over time you end up with more customers for that offer.

In that case you want to measure the value per email address you’re getting. But make sure you’re also adding in any affiliate offers that you’re promoting to that list across a 30 day, 60 day, 90 day and 120 day time period. You can’t just look at your numbers on day zero (the first day you get a new customer), it’s really, really, really difficult to get a self liquidating offer. That’s not actually the best way to look at your cold traffic’s return on investment. The better way to look at it is across 30, 60, 90, 120 days. Each business will have a different threshold for success. You may have enough cashflow or investment aside that self liquidating at 90 days makes sense for you, and is intact the only way it will work for you to keep the cold traffic train running.

It All Comes Down To a Killer Marketing Offer

Of all the possible elements to split-test, the offer is the one most important A/B test that an online health company can run. It’s the final mental hurdle and marketing hook that gets a prospect to buy and therefore of all the elements on a sales page, it has the most impact on revenue. 

If you’re stuck testing button color and calls to action, you’re leaving massive growth on the table. You need to increase the impact of optimization and start testing the game changing stuff that can add rocket fuel to your health business revenue and bottom line. Start testing your offers.