Describe your offer in detailed language and help your ideal clients get to yes.
Recently I was talking to a colleague about a class/workshop I’m thinking of developing around using your intuition and creative writing. It was a FUN ideation session, filled with coffee and fountain pen joy.
As we were talking, I remembered one of the very first things I did when I started working on my business full-time was a workshop called Whispers from your Soul. It was a fun, light workshop I gave based on creative writing play and calling forward messages from your deeper self.
Maybe some of you even attended it with me.
What Strikes Me Now
The first thing I noticed right away when I looked the page up on my site, I didn’t have a proper sales page. I had a sentence, a few benefits and the time, place, and call to action. Super short. The commitment was not much – an hour’s worth of time and $29. So, on the one hand, I didn’t need a mile long sales page. It’s not a months’ long commitment. Or a five-figure investment. Or healing on a sensitive area.
And yet, looking back, it needed more than I gave it.
I realize I didn’t write more at the time because I didn’t yet have the words to describe what I was trying to offer.
I was edging around an idea. Our intuition is a gateway to accessing our inner wisdom and, when we’re in touch with it, and put pen to the page, it can open a whole new way of writing. One that can surprise or even delight us.
And yet, at the time, I didn’t have the words yet to talk about that in a coherent way. I hadn’t yet formally started my study of intuition and energy reading and I also hadn’t taken the time it needs to really hash out what I was trying to do.
This is often where coaches, healers and other creative entrepreneurs find themselves with their marketing: they need to spend the time trying to find the words to describe what they do.
Creating an Offer
When you’re crafting your offer, there’s much more involved than simply deciding and communicating logistics like number of sessions, Zoom or Meets and price. You also need to help your potential clients understand what, exactly, you’re offering. This way they’ll have the information they need to decide, and hopefully, feel safe enough to say yes. Yes, I trust this person here to help me with this thing I’m struggling with.
And getting to that might take some time.
Especially if you’ve never spent time on the page, looking for the words to describe what working with you looks like.
This is even more true if you work in a coaching, healing or creative space that involves some sort of transformation. It’s not enough to say that coaching is magical, or that healing sessions involve alchemy, even though this is often the case. (That’s not to say you can’t lean on that a bit more if your potential clients are coaches or healers themselves.) People need to understand what you do in a way that feel accessible and safe to them.
When I work with clients on developing their businesses and marketing, this is a key thing we do together. This can be a tricky process because they might not have ever tried to put words on a page about this thing they do before.
Six Things to Get You Started
If this sounds like where you are or have been before, here are a few practical steps for you to take to get you thinking about – and writing - your offer in a clear, resonant way.
1. Start with your ideal client
This is critical for the whole offer. If you don’t yet have your marketing starting point, you’ll need to pause and finalize that first, so you have a clear picture of who you help and what you help them with. You don’t need a buyer’s profile, like what kind of car they buy or where they shop, but you do need to know how they identify and what it is their struggling with.
2. Visualize
Think about your ideal client and bring one person to mind. This could be an earlier version of yourself, a previous client, or someone you know that you think could really benefit from the type of work you do. Really spend a few minutes here, visualizing this person, where’s she’s at, what’s on her mind.
This will help you make sure that you’re talking to them and where they’re at right now. Sometimes it’s easy to get caught up in where you know you can take someone vs. where they’re at right now.
3. Articulate the Problem
Once you have a picture of the things they’re struggling with that this offer is designed to help with, describe it. Make sure you include a lot of empathy and good, tangible descriptions so they can really see themselves in what you describe. What works well in creative writing works here too – show don’t tell.
4. Note the differentiators
This isn’t about turning the whole focus on the page about you, but it is talking about the offer and highlighting where it might be different from what other people offer. For example, you offer a lot of content support. You can talk about that and why it’s helpful for someone wanting to work with you. For someone looking to work with me, a differentiator is that the program is very comprehensive and personalized. It takes a while and it’s not one-size fits all. I spend time on the offer page talking through these aspects.
5. Answer questions
I’m not talking about a question like do you take credit cards or do I need to bring my own yoga mat. I’m talking more about the kinds of questions people might have in their hearts and minds as they think about working with you. Spending time addressing those questions is an important part of creating an effective offer sales page.
6. Bring clarity and detail
Shine your mental flashlight on the offer and make sure the details are clear. In an earlier post, I shared that “the confused mind says no.” So, make sure things are clear. How do you meet? How can people pay? What’s the process to sign up? What if people have questions?
Proofing well before publishing is always important. Not because we’re not human and can’t make mistakes but taking care of details helps your potential clients feel clear and comfortable.
When you have an offer you’re creating, describe it in detailed language. Focusing specifically on them and the issue, spending time talking about the offer and what makes it different and answering questions and being specific can all go a long way toward helping your ideal clients get to yes.