SPI 776: The Perfect Bonus Sandwich

SPI 776: The Perfect Bonus Sandwich

Announcer: You’re listening to the Smart Passive Income Podcast, a proud member of the Entrepreneur Podcast Network, a show that’s all about working hard now, so you can sit back and reap the benefits later. And now your host, he’s most productive when he’s sitting at a lounge at the airport, Pat Flynn.

Pat Flynn: We are on a roll lately with some amazing content from some of our guests. And we’re getting a little bit more strategic here with our Friday episodes, going a little bit more into tactics and strategies, and hopefully one or more of these are able to be injected into your business in some way, shape, or form. And today, we’re going to be talking about bonuses.

If you’re writing a sales page and you’re using the PASTOR framework from Ray Edwards last week, well, then understanding what bonuses to include can be a great way to help those that are on the fence make that purchase, make that decision. If you haven’t heard that episode with Ray, you gotta listen to it.

Perhaps you heard this past week’s episode with Ben from ClickFunnels and some of the amazing tactics and strategies that are working there. Great. This could align perfectly with that as well. Now, bonuses are almost a double edged sword because in some ways they work really, really well. And other ways they could absolutely work against you.

And here’s where it works against you. And this is where a lot of people fail. We feel because we feel like just the more bonuses that we add into whatever it is that we’re offering, the better you sell a course and you throw in 50 bonuses. I mean, that’s exorbitant. I’m exaggerating a little bit, but that’s what it feels like sometimes because we add these bonuses because we want as much value in there as possible, right?

And I’m not even going to begin talking about, you know, the actual dollar value to those just yet. My biggest pet peeve is when you say something’s worth something, and then it’s actually not worth that much because it’s not even for sale anywhere. It’s just obvious that it’s a made up number, but we’ll get into that in a little bit.

But just the idea of adding bonuses for bonus sake, just to help convince a person that there’s value here is wrong. Because what ends up happening is you end up putting all of these different bonuses in, and it either overshadows the main offer, it either overwhelms people because there’s now more content, more things to worry about, or it just devalues the actual course or again, the main product to begin with.

It’s like, okay, well, do you really believe that there’s not enough value in the main thing that you’re offering that you have to add all these other things just to make up for it? That’s what it can feel like sometimes. And that’s not the vibe you want to come across, you want to come across as, Oh, well, I’m kind of interested in this main product, but oh my gosh, these bonuses are exactly what I need.

This is a blessing to have this opportunity to have not just the main thing, but this side thing as well. And there’s a really good framework that Derek Halpern had once come on the show to share, but I wanted to reframe it for you today, because we hadn’t talked about it in a while. And it is, in my opinion, the perfect way to add a bonus into your offer.

So let’s just say for example, that your offer is a website design company, right? That’s what you offer, or you offer some sort of program to help a person design their own website, right? A valuable offer. A website does so much for people and it’s your online business card. It helps you get more clients, can help you build an email list.

All the great things that come with websites. Great. There’s a lot of pain there that comes with building a website. People who are less technically savvy. This would be perfect for them, right? So we’ve set up the main dish or in this analogy that we’re going to use called the bonus sandwich, this is the meat.

Or the tofu or the sort of center portion of the sandwich, right? The perfect bonuses come as a bottom bread bonus and a top bread bonus. Again, if your main thing is the meat of this hamburger, the bottom bun is a bonus that enables people to do or get, or actually start using the main part of the, of your offer, right?

You can’t build a hamburger unless you have the bottom bun. Like at least if you have the bottom bun, you can hold onto it. You could hold it in your hand. You’re fine. Right? The second bonus is a top bun bonus. This is something that perfectly aligns with the product that is perfect to use in conjunction with or after should be so obvious.

And here’s the example. So if your main thing is a website development program or some sort of course to build a website, your bottom button is a bonus for how to select a brand name and to get your .com or your website URL. Your domain in the best way possible because you can’t build a website unless you have a domain.

So that would be a perfect bottom bun bonus, right? Maybe it’s something else like Hey, before you set up your website, we want to make sure you have a business plan in place. So this bonus is going to be your business plan bonus because until you have that business plan, you don’t want to build a website yet.

So this does a few things. Number one, it enables those. who are telling that story in their head when they’re coming across your sales page. Oh, I don’t know if this is for me cause I’m not even ready to build a website yet. I don’t even have a brand name. I don’t even know exactly what I’m going to be doing.

Boom, bottom bun bonus. You are now qualified to take that meat and eat it. Don’t take a lot of the things I’m saying out of context, please. So that’s number one. The top bun bonus is great because it becomes a perfect add on. So in this case, website development program or course, A top bun bonus would be a search engine optimization or a website SEO ranking kind of bonus.

So it might be titled how to get your website on the front page of Google, how to get visitors to the website that you finally built. It could be that, you know, something to that, like where, okay, you’ve got the website. Now what? Maybe it’s specifically a, how to build your email list course. And I would only choose one, right?

Imagine a hamburger with two top buns and one bottom bun. Or two top buns and no bottom bun. That’s weird, right? I wouldn’t eat that. The only weird burger I eat is the In N Out protein style burger where the buns are actually just lettuce wraps. Super good. Less calories. So you see where we’re going here?

Bottom bun, meat, top bun. And this is perfect because a person can see Oh, if I purchase this, this will still continue to work for me even after I do the course. So, here’s the thing, you might have a course that has all three of these things in it. In which case you could do, so the bottom button and the middle, right, or the top button.

Your course might actually explain how to build a brand and get a domain name. Your course might also have how to get found and how to build an email list on top of that. You can do a couple of things. Number one, you can say, hey, our course has everything you need. Even if you’re not ready to build a website, we have things to set you up.

And when you build that website, we’re not just going to leave it at that. We’re going to help you rank it on the first page of Google and get visitors to your website. Cause we want you to get some value out of this thing, not just build it, but actually get use out of it. It’s all in the course and guess what?

There are no bonuses. Because you don’t need the bonuses. Everything is there. And that creates a stance, a position of this course is valuable. There’s not even a need for bonuses. So you could go that route and that route is very strong, but you have to say that upfront because people might be wondering, especially in certain industries where bonuses are normal and bonuses are expected.

If you say you come in different and you say, Hey, by the way, you might be looking for bonuses to go along with this to help quote unquote convince you to buy this thing, but I, we don’t believe that here. We believe that this has everything you need from start to finish. There’s no need for bonuses to distract you.

It’s all in here. That’s a very powerful position to take. The other position is, okay, if you have them all in there, actually remove them! Take them out! And then put them back in as bonuses. They are called bonuses. They may be still in the same course operationally. They’re still in there, but instead of Module 1, How to Find a Domain Name, Or build a brand name or create your business plan.

Those are bonuses, right? Module one is going to be, let’s build your website. But again, if you’re not ready for that, go to the bonuses that help you get ready for this. They’re there and they’re only available if you go through this course. And that is if you believe that the bonus opportunity would help convince a person.

Maybe the main product that you’re offering is very similar to other people’s main products out there. And you know that these bonuses would be a big differentiator. So you could highlight them as bonuses that are included. Now I will say that if you do that. Whether they were in the course and you pull that’s actually what I did with the architecture website.

I had some bonuses that were more top button bonuses like practice exams and things like that to go with my architecture study guide. They were in the course already, but I actually literally took them out. And then just turn them into a downloadable PDF instead of practice questions that go along with this test material.

And I sold more people loved it. People were like, where’s my bonus? And like, they got it automatically delivered to them. So that worked by literally taking it out. And you might go, well, then the information is not in the course. Yes. Now the course is even more transformational in how quickly you can get a person from where they start the course and where they end it.

Instead of what could possibly be three different phases in a course to help a person go from A to Z, they’re going from start to finish in a much quicker way through that one thing that they’re trying to do. Build a website. Boom. And as hopefully you know today, value comes in how quickly you can get a person to transform, not in how much information is there.

Because in general, the information is readily available everywhere on the internet. And it is that transformation and the quickness through that transformation or through the work to get to that transformation that is of value now. Now finally, as we finish up here. The price that you put to the bonuses, if you do pull those things out and put a bonus in it, make those prices real.

And there’s a few ways to do that. I know we’ve done this before where we’ve had, Will It Fly offered for free. Will It Fly my book published in 2015. And that’s a book that was, you know, 14 and 99 cents. So in some previous course launches, I said, Hey, you can get, will it fly for free? It costs 14 and 99 cents.

Do not Fake the price and make it larger than it actually is. If people see that and they’re like, no, this isn’t $45. Like you say it is here. It’s only $14.99 on, on Amazon. Then it’s like, okay, well, I don’t trust you anymore. If there is no price, then you could do two things. Number one, don’t put a price to it and just be upfront with that.

There, there’s no price to this. We’re not going to pretend like there’s a price here because this isn’t available anywhere else. The only place that you can get it is here. We did that with our, which course was it? One of our courses, it was our affiliate marketing course. 1, 2, 3 Affliate Marketing.

We have a mini course called Demo Videos That Convert. Because part of the strategy is to use YouTube to do a demo video of the product, online or offline, software or physical, that you are reviewing that you’re going to get an affiliate commission for. And demo videos that convert is a bonus. That is a top bun bonus for this course that we basically said, there is no price here and you can’t get this anywhere else.

And that worked really, really well. That was extremely strong in how it helped a person understand that. Okay. Like, yes, I was already excited, but now I’m even more excited. I get this thing. That’s going to help me even further take the lessons that you shared in this webinar and actually, you know, expand on them.

That’s number one. Number two, actually sell the thing, like sell it, even if nobody buys it, it’s for sale and there is a real price. We had done this with some workshops that we once done, right? We ran these workshops and we ended up charging, I think it was like 49 to watch these workshops. However, the replay, we just decided, okay, well, let’s, let’s just sell the replay for 99.

Nobody bought them, but they were for sale. But because they were for sale, we could add in a bonus to some of our online courses and say, Hey, this workshop that is available for 99. You can get it for free and look, see, it is available for 99. So that worked really well too. Don’t just make up a price though.

And then all of a sudden you add all these things together and you’re like, Today and today only you can get all of this for a value of $5,390 for just $199. No matter how great those products are, that just like screams scammy. Like quite honestly, like make it real, make these things valuable. And truthfully, if, the content is good enough inside of whatever it is that you’re offering, or if the program or the offering, the coaching, the pro, whatever it is, it should stand alone and be enough.

These bonuses should just be a little add on. A bottom button bonus and a top button bonus just to sweeten that deal. The cherry on top, that should be all you need. So next time you’re selling something, think about that. The bonus sandwich, shout out to Derek Halpern. Again, I want to give credit to where credit is due.

He came up with that a while back. He is now removed from the online business education field. He has been working as the director of marketing over at Truvani, which is a supplement health company. And he’s been killing it with Melanie and Devin Duncan over there at Truvani. So congrats to Derek blast from the past to bring them up on the show here.

But I hope this was helpful for you and I recommend you subscribe if you haven’t already, we’ve got a lot of more great content coming your way. And I appreciate you. I’ll see you next week.

Thank you so much for listening to the Smart Passive Income podcast at SmartPassiveIncome.com. I’m your host, Pat Flynn. Sound editing by Duncan Brown. Our senior producer is David Grabowski, and our executive producer is Matt Gartland. The Smart Passive Income Podcast is a production of SPI Media, and a proud member of the Entrepreneur Podcast Network. Catch you next week!