Posted by Have you ever released a new product or offer and heard crickets? You’ve spent all this time making sure that you deliver the greatest thing out there, but when you release it to the world, people barely pay it any attention. That can not only be frustrating and confusing, but it can also make you believe that nobody wants what you have to offer — which is not true.
It can look like people aren’t interested for a variety of reasons: They simply screenshotted your offer and saved it for when they are able to buy, or maybe they only made a mental note of your offer, got sidetracked and forgot.
Related: 6 Tips on How to Engage Your Customers Through Social Media Strategy
Here are two ways to increase engagement on your offers.
1. Give people rewards
A sure way to motivate someone to do what you ask him or her to do is by increasing the value of the reward he or she will receive. Consider giving away your offer for free to a select number of people in exchange for testimonials or referrals. This also works if you offer them lifetime access to something or give them something at an extreme discount. Imagine Apple giving free Airpods to those that rate and leave a review of their products — the response would be enormous.
The key to offering this kind of incentive, though, is making sure it’s actually something worth putting in the effort you want people to put in. What does this look like?
As an example, think back to when you were a kid and had to do chores. You would have given your left kidney to get out of doing them and go to a friend’s house. So naturally, if you were told, “You can go over to your friend’s house if you do your chores,” not only would your chores get done, but they’d also get done perfectly.
Make your incentive an actual incentive.
Additionally, you can offer to pay. People generally respond to a cash incentive. One way to do this is to set them up with an affiliate link, which allows them to receive a percentage of the sales generated from customers clicking that link. This offer could read something like this: “Receive a 25% commission for every person you bring that subscribes to our service.” Affiliate links work well because you can use the same strategy for multiple offers. You can also offer cash for referrals. This is similar to the affiliate system in the sense that people get paid, but the referral system typically pays them a fixed amount per referral.
Determine what people want to receive — then deliver on it.
Related: 10 Innovative Ways to Excite Your Customers
2. Make it easy for people to say yes
When making your ask of someone, make sure it’s as easy as possible for him or her to say yes. Be clear with what you are asking, what your incentive is and include all necessary information with the request. Consider how you might react if a friend asked you to support his or her new venture but never told you how exactly what that meant. It leaves too much up in the air, and most of the time, we don’t end up showing support in the best way possible.
Take this incomplete ask, for example: “I just started a new podcast, and I’d like your support.” Instead, it would be more effective to say, “I just started a new podcast, and I’d like you to please download, rate and subscribe. Here is the link, and let me know if you’d like me to text you a reminder.”
In addition to making your ask clear and low effort, creating scenarios where you have things in place such as 30-day-money-back guarantees, free trials or low-cost investments increases the odds that people will engage with your offer.
Here is an example: “I just created a new self-help app that I’d love for you to download, rate, and review. In exchange for your prompt download, rating and review, you will receive free access to the premium features of the app for two weeks. Have your friends also download the app and receive free access to premium features for up to six months! Here is the link to the app in the App store and the Google Play store.”
Related: How to Engage Customers on a Dime
Many people want to support our endeavors, but they just need a little help doing what we need them to do — in the timeframe we need them to do it.