What are tips for determining what goes in the offer, and then quickly putting it out there to test?
Crafting and testing a productized offer is an iterative process.
You’re going to start with your best guess, collect information and feedback through research, interviews, and conversations, and then use your findings to craft the next version of your productized offer.
If you’re thinking about launching a productized offer, start with a first draft using a simple structure and then start testing your offer in conversations:
The basic structure I like for a productized offer is:
- Fixed price (e.g., $500)
- Fixed timeline (e.g., “You’ll receive the deliverables three weeks after kickoff”)
- Fixed scope (e.g., “I’ll do A and B, but not C”)
Here’s an example of what this could look like for an imaginary Podcast Graphic Design business. Their initial Productized offer could be:
Get updated art for your podcast! You’ll receive new podcast cover art and a set of banners to use on social. The price is $500, and this will take three weeks from kickoff to delivery.
What goes into the scope of your offer? You want to include the essential outputs and deliverables that your client will need.
What’s missing from the structure is the why behind your productized offer — the sizzle.
- Why would a customer buy this service? Why aren’t they?
- What’s the pain or problem they’re experiencing as the trigger?
- What objections could someone experience when considering purchasing this service?
The answers to those questions are what adds marketing sizzle to your offer1 and go into your sales page.
Sizzle comes out of having conversations with prospects or people in your industry or target market and learning from their questions or feedback. But sizzle isn’t required to take your first draft productized offer live and start testing and collecting feedback.
Once you have an initial draft of your productized offer, you want to start showing your offer to people and having conversations with them about it.
Do people you show your offer to like it?
Throw money at you?
Have questions, hesitations, or objections?
These are all valuable outputs from testing.
For me, the quickest path to testing a productized offer looks like using quick + easy-of-the-shelf tools. e.g., put up a short, initial sales page or overview page in Google Docs or Notion and then start outreach.
Why use off the shelf tools? Because that removes the trap of fiddling with your offer on your website to ‘get it perfect.’ Get your text into Google Docs or Notion and move forward.
There’s a lot more to the process of crafting + testing a productized offer. To help you succeed, Marie Poulin and I are putting together a course on how you can design your productized offer. More on that in a few weeks time.
Excelsior!
Kai
p.s., Got a question about the whys, whats, or hows of designing a productized offers? Send me your questions (kai@kaidavis.com) or thoughts. I’m excited to hear from you.
- For a deeper dive on these ‘Why?’ questions, your recommended reading is The Brain Audit by Sean D’Souza https://www.amazon.com/Brain-Audit-Customers-They-Dont/dp/0473175045 ↩
