The Million Dollar Bonus Report by Simon Hodgkinson and Jeremy Gislason - HTML preview

What Bonuses Are and Why They Work

 

For many, the idea of a bonus is free money.

For example, you receive a bonus at work or your auto insurance pays you a bonus if you don’t have any traffic violations this year.

While those types of bonuses are nice, that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about add on products you will give away to motivate purchases.

For the sake of this report bonuses are defined as products or services you give away to incite a purchase, a subscription, a referral, or even an opt-in.

For example…

 

^• A bonus could be an online course you give away in exchange for an opt-in email address.

 

^• A bonus could be an eBook you give away when someone purchases your coaching program.

 

^• A bonus could be a software program you give away with membership.

 

^• A bonus could be a video or an audio you give away with the purchase of an eBook.

 

^• A bonus could be all of the above combined and much more.
You can create one bonus to give away with your product or service or twenty bonuses to give away.
The decision is yours and will be determined in large part by what your audience appreciates, responds to and what your
testing and tracking data tells you – (and we’ll talk about
testing and tracking this information in just a bit_).

First, let’s take s look at why bonuses work, how bonuses can help you build an empire and the types of bonuses you may want to offer.

The Psychology of Bonuses

Robert Cialdini, author of “ Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion”, says there are certain things which trigger or influence our purchasing behavior.

Bonuses tap into several of these triggers and motivate a lead to become a customer. The triggers include:

Reciprocity

Reciprocity is the tendency we have as people to respond to something in kind. If someone opens a door for you, you’re more likely to turn around and open a door for someone else or to do something nice for that person who opened the door for you. The concept also works negatively. If someone does something negative or harmful to you, you’re more likely to do something harmful to them

Bonuses are the epitome of positive reciprocity. Customers receive a free guide, a free video, a free e-book as an opt-in bonus – now they’re feeling grateful. You gave them an excellent product for free. It triggers feeling of reciprocity. It also gets their wheels turning because they start thinking, “Wow, if the free stuff is this good, the products you pay for must be darned amazing.”

Commitment and Consistency

Psychologists tell us that we’re more likely to say yes to something big if we’ve already said yes to something smaller. And in sales, people often employ this tendency, called commitment and consistency, to get their prospects to buy by getting them in the habit of saying ‘yes’.

You can use bonus offers as a tool to get your prospect into the habit of saying yes.
When you ask them to pay for a product, they’ll be more likely to. Frequent bonuses and offers delivered get your prospects into the habit of receiving from you – and it still taps into reciprocity. Bonuses are truly one of the best tools for ensuring that your prospects will convert.

Liking

Who doesn’t like someone who gives them something for free?

People buy from companies they like, from personalities they relate to. When you consistently deliver more than they’ve asked for, more than they’ve paid for, you’re liked. Heck, you’re probably loved!

Scarcity / Urgency Buynow, only10 copiesleft!
The first 50 customers receive a free $100 gift certificate, a free DVD, a free book etc…

Scarcity sells.

Use a limited bonus or give an extra bonus to customers who act quickly. It motivates people to purchase now rather than to wait and possibly change their mind.

Bonuses are a great tool to motivate people to go ahead and click that “pay now” button. If your customer is on the edge and undecided about making a purchase a bonus, or a whole slew of bonuses, can give your offer that extra umph it needs to motivate a purchase.

And when then bonus products are just as valuable as the product or service they purchased, you’ve earned a customer for life – a customer who will share with the world how wonderful your company is thus driving more traffic and profits.

It’s important to note at this point that bonus products are also a great tool to provide to your affiliates to help them presell your products and services. They can give away bonus products to build their opt-in list or if you offer a tiered affiliate system then they can give away bonus products to help build your affiliate team.

Before we can jump into the types of bonus offers that will work best for your audience and industry it’s important to spend just a bit on the conversion process so you can see where bonus products fit in.

The Eyeballs to Conversions Process

As a business owner, you have several tasks to make your business successful. In addition to offering a valuable product or service to your prospects, you must drive traffic to your website.

Once there, your most important job is to convert those visitors into clients or customers.
As consumers become savvier and competition increases, the job of converting eyeballs to sales becomes a real challenge.
The goal of your sales page is to:

 

^⇒ Create interest _{⇒ Hold interest⇒ Make the sale}
However, let’s step back a moment and explore how bonuses can be used to generate leads.

Using Bonuses to Convert Eyeballs to Leads

A database is worth its weight in gold (assuming you’re able to convert the contacts into customers – we’ll talk about that next). Converting eyeballs, those people who are just visiting your website and browsing, to leads, actual names on your database, is vital to building your online business.

Although a lead does not necessarily equal a sale, it does equal a future potential sale. Once you have their name and email address, you’re able to move into step two – converting them to customers and making sales.

Bonus products work very well as a tool to build this opt-in list and free giveaways in exchange for an email address are a common lead generating tool.

Just about anything can make this conversion possible, including:

 

^{• Newsletters• Free reports• E-books• Coupons•} Sweepstakes entries or contests_{• Giveaways• Free trials• Consultations• Reviews• Workbooks• Resource lists• Upgrades}
Most important is your visitor’s willingness to part with contact information to receive the bonus being offered.

The method which gets the visitor to offer up the information isn’t as important as the percentage of visitors converting from eyeballs to leads. What you offer and how you offer it largely depends on your target audience. Don’t worry a little later in this report we’ll cover the “psychology of bonuses” where we’ll talk in depth about what types of bonuses convert eyeballs to leads and leads to sales.

Reports, eBooks, audio and videos, ecourses, and even small software products have all been used for this purpose. If you’re not already using a giveaway to motivate opt-ins, then now is the time to test it.

Using Bonuses to Convert Leads to Sales

Once you have your prospect’s attention – you’ve captured their information – you’re able to focus on converting them into customers.

Bonuses once again make the difference between a prospect leaving your website or making a sale.