Marketing Idea – Endorsed Offers Part 1
Here’s a marketing idea that can work very well. Endorsed offers can be an important part of your overall marketing plan. They provide you with a way to borrow someone else's credibility to sell more of your services. And they can produce an explosion of sales.
I've personally done dozens of endorsed offers that succeeded beyond my most optimistic projections. One example that you'll see later in this chapter produced income of $60,000 for an investment of a mere $110.
On the other hand, endorsed offers aren't always your best bet. The drawback of endorsed offers is that you have to rely on someone else for a crucial component of your marketing. And you'll discover that most of the time, your marketing is a low priority on someone else's list of things that must get done.
As a rule of thumb, you should allow a minimum of three times as much elapsed time to get an endorsed offer up and running as it would take for a non-endorsed offer. That means if it will take you a month to create and mail a lead generation letter, it will require at least three months to get an endorsed version of the same letter in the mail.
With both the upside and downside in mind, let's examine all the components of endorsed offers. When it comes to endorsed offers, there's a tremendous amount of variety in how the deal can be structured. We'll be looking at the following four types of agreement structures for your endorsed offers:
1. No fee to your endorser
2. Compensating your endorser with your services
3. Trading endorsements
4. Compensation by providing a valuable gift given by
your endorser to their customers
No Fee To Your Endorser
Sometimes you need to offer your endorser some form of compensation in order to get the deal done. However, there are many times when you don't have to provide any direct compensation whatsoever to your endorser.
This occurs when you've done such a good job for a client, they want to do something as a means of thanking you. Sometimes a client will offer directly to give you a testimonial letter. You can request that they let you use that letter to approach other businesses similar to their own.
Or, if you've produced excellent results for a client, you can simply request that they let you document their results and use them to market your services. I've never had a client I asked to do this turn me down. If nothing else, they like to observe how you create your offer and see if something similar would work for them.
On the other side of the coin, I've also acted as endorser for a number of other companies. When someone produces exceptional results for me, I'm more than happy to show my appreciation by helping them.
To show you exactly what an endorsed offer looks like, let's examine an actual example. Derek D'Angiolini is a financial services professional who I've helped a number of times. During a follow-up conversation with Derek, he mentioned that just one technique I taught him increased his profits by 38%. And that by applying a few more techniques, he had actually doubled his sales in a very short time.
I was very pleased for Derek and asked if he would be willing to let me use his results to promote my services. He was kind enough to readily agree.
Now, here's one of the key secrets to creating powerful copy for your endorsed offers. Instead of having your endorser write the ad or letter,
You write the ad or letter for your endorser
Why would you want to do this? There are two reasons.
First, it makes it a lot easier for your endorser. If they're successful, they are also very busy. I've never had an endorser turn this kind of offer down. They very much appreciate that you're going to make it as easy as possible for them to help you.
Second, you know precisely what you want to say, so why waste time having your endorser write something that may miss the mark? You'll get it right the first time, save your endorser from wasting their own time, and have a powerful ad or sales letter. Of course, your endorser always has final approval of any copy and you should accommodate any requests they make for changes. However, in practice, you'll find that very few changes are ever requested.
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