Reverse Engineer Your Offer

Marketing is not comprised of blanket solutions that treat each audience with a broad stroke.

Depending on your audience they will respond differently to different methods. Just as a social influencer could be an effective marketing effort for one brand, it doesn’t mean your brand should follow suit. Your specific audience may resonate with a different approach and that’s a good thing!

To gain clarity in what approach best fits your business, look at your offer, the worth of your offerings, and who you’re offering to. Or better yet, do that same thing but in reverse. This is a bit of mental gymnastics to reverse engineer this process so stay with me…

The Buyer of Your Offer

Many businesses will accept what the market is willing to pay them. This will then force them to best configure how to have the price make sense considering their costs. They also keep their fingers crossed to squeeze out a wee bit of profit when all is said and done. HERE is where I’m proposing you start in reverse.

This reverse approach is method used by some of the greats like Steve Jobs when he would configure an offer but first look at the market. First, You’ll be starting by identifying a market (a consumer) who you think you can bring value to. Once you identify this need or desire that they have, you can begin to analyze the market to better understand them. This is where true empathy is applied and you put yourself in their shoes. Feeling their frustration with their current options or their dream of the perfect offering. By further understanding your buyer, you’ll begin to better understand that which they value. What do they care about? What really means something to them? Why do they care? Understanding their value system greatly helps in determining the worth of your offer since you’ll better see what they value and how they assign meaning (worth) to it.

The Worth of Your Offer

As you work backwards, you are now establishing an offering that you need to determine the value of this offer according to your market. Consider the value you wish to bring to the market, then begin crafting what that would entail. Do you want to sell a high volume of $10 items or sell very specific high-level solutions for $1,000? As you can tell, these are extremely different scenarios and markets. Let’s say you choose the latter and wish to maintain a great margin to ensure your profitability. Now you should begin to iron out what a $1,000 offer would look like. What could you provide that would be worth this to your buyer? This naturally leads to the next step of discovering what exactly the offer is. (This process can be applied to the $10 offer as well)

Your Offer

You’re now two-thirds of the way through this unorthodox approach and have reached the crux. What exactly is your offer? Based on the two steps before this, you should have a solid grasp on not just who you’re offering to, but how they may assess the value of the offer. You have a better gauge of what they like and what they don’t value. This will essentially be a nice map to guide you through the creation of your product or service as you address the points that really matter to your audience.

You not only understand how they may view your offer, but you have a better feel for what should and should not be included. You’ll understand what add-ons you could additional offer that they may be more than happy to upgrade to. If you don’t understand your audience or what they value, how would you ever know this?

This clarity will ultimately now guide you to best determine where you can reach these buyers and how you should market your offering toward them. Some audiences may enjoy tapping on ads and exploring products while scrolling social, others may prefer to not be bothered and may enjoy less aggressive marketing.

Your audience shouldn’t be like all the others. You want them to be specific because then you can be the one who best understands them and “gets them”. They will find you more relevant and in-tune with what they value. And when your audience feels you understand them, your brand builds trust and loyalty. No matter your method of marketing, when you better understand your audience and craft your offer to fit them you’ll be five steps ahead of any competition.