There are four principles you need to stick to when crafting the perfect discount message for an offer:
- The offer itself
- The right wording
- WIIFM – what’s in it for me
- FOMO – fear of missing out
These four principles outline precisely what your next offer should cover to make it irresistible to your customers. While using all four cannot guarantee your deal’s success in the market, it’s a four-pronged approach that can boost your odds measurably.
Let’s get stuck into how each of the principles works…
The Offer Itself
When creating an offer, you need to be aware of how your customer receives it.
There are two parts to this:
- The offer
- And who it is delivered to
Isn’t it nice when someone does something just for you, something tailored to your needs and not the needs of the crowd?
We’re all individuals, and we love getting special treatment.
Imagine for a second that you are dealing with a customer, Fred, who bought a coffee maker.
What do you think is more influential out of these two offers?
- Hi Fred … Get 20% off 1kg bag of coffee.
- Hi Fred … We have the PERFECT coffee match with your new coffee maker! Because you recently bought a coffee maker,, you can now claim a 1kg bag of Joe’s Specialty Grade Sumatran Single-Origin Arabica Coffee at 20% off. But hurry, we have limited stock, and this offer is only valid for 1 week. Give it a try!
While they both make the same offer, 20% off, the second is specific and personalized. Fred will feel as though he is getting a personal recommendation.
You recognized that he had just bought a coffee maker, and you made a valid, fair, and exciting offer to get a related product based on his next immediate need.
The more personalized you can make your offer, the higher the conversion rate will be.
On a general offer blasted to your whole customer list, you can expect a dismal 1% return on investment. This is pretty standard for all advertising to general audiences.
On a particular offer sent to just a subset of your customers, you can expect the conversion rate to be much higher (5%, 10%, or more is not unheard of).
The Right Wording
Being aware of the right way to frame an offer when you are communicating can make a massive difference in the take-up of your deal.
The right wording will:
- Focus on loss aversion
- Subtle fear triggers
- Increasing desire
- Shocking & awing
We wrote a detailed guide on
Studies have shown that, in general, loss aversion is a much more vital psychological force than gain.
But, saying “save X” over “get X” is mentally more challenging for people to resist.
Next, we have subtle fear triggers. I’ll talk more about FOMO (the Fear Of Missing Out) shortly, but fear triggers have been shown to motivate people into action.
It’s not so much that you want to scare them. That’s just mean. More than you want to indicate, there are limitations, and to avoid loss, they need to act.
Increasing the desire for an item is an accelerant to this fire. Make an item highly desirable and combine that with the fear of losing the opportunity, and you’ll be opening up a pandora’s box of emotion.
People buy based on emotion.
Lastly, to increase all these, look to shock and awe your customer. What can you do that is outrageous to make them pay attention?
Wear a red shirt if you want someone to notice you in a sea of grey.
What can you change about your offer, message, and delivery to make you stand out and shock and awe your customers?
WIIFM – What’s In It For Me?
When crafting an offer, it’s straightforward to slip into the trap of only looking at what is in it for you.
What is best for the company?
How can I extract as much money as possible from people and give away the least?
It’s okay to keep these things in the back of your mind, but the customer should be in the forefront of your mind.
Their needs. Their wants.
When crafting an offer and writing marketing copy for your emails and social posts, filming videos, recording radio ads, and writing ad copy, you should ALWAYS keep in mind “WIIFM.”
WIIFM stands for What’s In It For Me. It’s shorthand to remind you that the customer needs to know, first and foremost, what is in it for them.
In the buying journey, customers are very selfish. They only care about themselves. They don’t give a flying fig tree about you and your needs as a company.
Therefore when you write, you should be writing in a “benefits” mindset.
What are the benefits to the customer? What will they be able to do after taking up your offer that they can’t do now? Will it
Look over your campaign and ask yourself, “If I was my customer, and I was being selfish and only looking at what was in it, what would convince me the most?”
Use this as your guidepost when communicating, and you’ll be winning.
FOMO – Fear Of Missing Out
The final principle that you need to keep in mind is called “FOMO.”
FOMO is shorthand for Fear Of Missing Out.
A huge trigger in people’s brains is fear. Fear drives people, and I don’t mean that in a sinister way.
All it means is that to get an outsized response on a campaign, you need to motivate people by triggering an emotional response that they might be missing out on something.
People don’t like to miss out.
Parents talk to their toddlers in this way all the time.
“You don’t want to put on your shoes before leaving the house? Oh well, I guess we’ll miss out on going to grandmas.” … boom… the kid jumps into action and gets their shoes on quick smart.
As adults, we never really grow out of this.
The timer doesn’t stop ticking down to zero on that shoe listing in that eBay auction… boom… we lodge a bid to hopefully secure the buy and avoid missing out.
There are two primary ways to trigger FOMO:
- Soft deadlines
- Hard deadlines
A soft deadline is something where the deadline is movable. For example:
“Be one of the first 100 callers and get a free set of steak knives!”
A hard deadline is a deadline that is fixed. For example:
“48-hour flash sale on all socks & hosiery”
Implement The 4 Principles Of Discount Messaging
So when it comes time to set up your next WooCommerce coupon deal or offer, ensure that you adhere to the 4 principles of discount messaging to customers.
- Focus on loss aversion
- Subtle fear triggers
- Increasing desire
- Shocking & awing
If you do this, you’ll significantly increase your odds of running a successful campaign.
