Our Take on Tiny Offers — It Might Surprise You!
Episode 441: Show Notes
Tiny offers … what are they? Small, inexpensive products that are supposed to blow up your business. At least that’s what we think people are saying they do: start with a tiny offer, grow your audience exponentially, and make a ton of money. Those people suggest that it’s possible to create a six-figure business on the back of a $29 product; that you can launch with a tiny offer and make the big bucks. But hear us out: while we have a tiny offer (Trello for Business), this only came much later in our business—we didn’t start with it.
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We made a tiny offer before tiny offers were a thing, and now people ask us about it all the time since it became the cool thing to do. This is what we’re talking about in this episode. We’re walking you through whether or not a tiny offer makes sense for your business right now. The pros, the cons, the whole shebang. But take note: these are just our opinions and experiences; you might not agree with them. Still, there is always something new to learn. Grab your go-to Strategy Hour drink and let’s go!
You Need A Big-Ass Audience to Succeed with a Tiny Offer
Normally we say the size of your audience does not matter and is no indication of the level of success you can achieve, but the same rule does not apply to tiny offers. When you have a tiny offer, you need to sell thousands to make a satisfying profit, so you naturally need to have many eyes on your products who will potentially buy from you. You have to ask yourself where you want to spend your energy because it’s either going to go towards cultivating relationships and deeper connections that will allow you to sell higher ticket items, or it will go to flash in the pan marketing and constantly trying something new to grab people’s attention. Neither of these is right or wrong—they’re just very different approaches to business. The reason we typically recommend you start with services or a high ticket product is that it requires the same energy to market and achieve success. What kind of output do you expect from you marketing a $2,000 item to one person versus landing 100 customers with a $20 product? Trust us when we say the former is your best option, even if you are new in the game. When done right, tiny offers can work but, more often than not, they collect dust on a shelf somewhere if they don’t have enough momentum in the first place.
Marketing a $2,000 and $20 Product Takes the Same Effort
You’ve heard us and others say this: it takes the same energy and effort to market and sell the cheapest to the most expensive item. It’s a different kind of energy, but it amounts to the same because you still have to create the item, name it, describe it, create a sales page, decide how people are going to pay for it, talk to people about it and all the other steps—it remains the same regardless of the ticket price. The point is, if you need to set up all the same systems and processes, why not ask a decent price for it? Why not converse with fewer people and focus on deepening relationships than trying to reach as many people as possible? When you are in the early days of your business, why not make more money by helping fewer people, making your own life simpler? We get the appeal of a tiny offer: it provides a comfortable space for those who are too scared to overcharge and people more readily convince themselves to spend $20 than to make a big investment of $2,000. There is also something attractive about a higher volume audience, especially when you are starting and are thrilled by the numbers. But will it make you more money? No, probably not. While it might help you build brand awareness a bit faster and get more people opting in, the end-of-the-day results are likely to be underwhelming.
Our Tiny Offer: Trello for Business
We reckon people who ask us about our tiny offer hope for there to be a strategic reason behind us creating one, but there wasn’t in our case. Our $29 item, Trello for Business, has been around for three years, and it came into existence on a whim. We were inspired by something and decided to give it a go. We could have made it an opt-in but then decided to test the power of a tiny offer, so we beefed it up, added some more stuff to take it from freebie status to something people want to pay for. It took us twenty minutes to write the sales page and we created no funnel for it—we just put it out there and waited to see what would happen. And it took off. We’re now on the verge of replicating it, not with another tiny offer, but with a membership.
What Our New Membership and Trello for Business Have in Common
What does our new Creative Template Shop membership and our three-year-old tiny offer Trello for Business have in common? The thing that makes them sexy and successful is that we are giving someone a tangible takeaway in a very short timeframe. You also get a taste of what it is before you even get in the door. On the Trello for Business sales page, we talk about how it can transform your workday and how you run your business, so the people who come in frantic and disorganized leave the course knowing exactly what they are going to do next and they have a clearer vision. And what is happening with the Shop—despite it being an entirely different model—is that prospective members can tangibly see how it will make their business better and solve the problem they have. You have to bridge the gap for them between their problem and the solution you offer, otherwise, your item will fall flat regardless of how awesome you think it is. Here’s the thing: if you can convince people your product is the reason why they are succeeding in their endeavors, you will have a business for life. Getting people results is the ultimate win. And that could just mean elegantly wrapping your product or giving them an experience they don’t get anywhere else.
How Our Tiny Offer Performs Compared to Our Premium Offer
A tiny offer is definitely less than $50. It could even be less than $30. A tiny offer is $7, $19, $25, while when you get to $47, you start to think about it more before purchasing it. As we mentioned, our tiny offer is our Trello for Business course at $29 while our signature course, Strategy Academy, is sold at $2,000. Clearly, these are vastly different products. But we want to break down the numbers for you to get a sense of what we are saying. Trello was built in July of 2017 and Strategy Academy was built in June of 2018, and they’ve remained the same price throughout. So, Trello has been running a year longer and has had 7,265 students and it has made just under $200,000. Strategy Academy has had 317 students yet it has made just under $600,000. Do y’all get what we’re saying? Before you try to do the math, just remember we have payment plans for Strategy Academy so there is still money due. There are a few things we need to point out, however. Trello marketed itself from the beginning with happy customers sharing it with their followers all over the place. We didn’t have to do much. But since then we have started marketing it with ads but it’s still not something we pay much attention to. Our goal with Trello was to build trust and offer our audience an amazing experience so they would want to continue working with us. The key here is to set the right expectations with whatever you decide to launch. Often people picture having six-figure success selling a $29 product and they make the mistake of learning from people who sell premium products, which means they are using convoluting strategies.
The Exceptions to the Rule
There are a handful of people who happen upon success with a tiny offer. People who never intended to have a business but something they did in their lives made them go viral or they accumulated followers for some random reason, and then they decide to turn a tiny product into a business. We know this one person who has an outrageously successful business selling $2 meal plans! But she is the exception, not the rule. Do not put the future of your success on the hope that you can pull off something similar because you will most likely be disappointed. We would rather have you secure your premium offer first and then work backward. There are so many people talking about how great the tiny offer is, and there are lots to learn from them, but set realistic expectations for it. With all that 2020 has served us thus far, people are pivoting and trying to make their offers more affordable, and that’s great, but do not think that you cannot sell a high ticket item in this environment—you can. Money is still moving and people are still buying stuff. You can show up and do crazy new things.
Quote This
You have to bridge the gap for them between their problem and the solution you offer, otherwise, your item will fall flat regardless of how awesome you think it is.
Highlights
You Need A Big-Ass Audience to Succeed with a Tiny Offer. [0:04:44.1]
Marketing a $2000 and $20 Product Takes the Same Effort. [0:08:45.1]
Our Tiny Offer: Trello for Business. [0:14:37.1]
What Our New Membership and Trello for Business Have in Common. [0:22:04.1]
How Our Tiny Offer Performs Compared to Our Premium Offer. [0:29:53.1]
The Exceptions to the Rule. [0:37:18.1]
ON TODAY’S SHOW
Abagail & Emylee
The Strategy Hour Podcast
We help overwhelmed and creative entrepreneurs break down their Oprah-sized dreams to create a functioning command center to tame the chaos of their business. Basically, we think you’re totally bomb diggity, we’re about to uplevel the shiz out of your business.
KEY TOPICS
Tiny offers, Marketing, Trello for Business, Strategy Academy, Expectations, Pivoting
