Last week my profit fix for your website was to use testimonials as a means of assuring your visitor of your capability and credibility. To give this even more punch you can use another tool in the marketer’s armoury – the guarantee. Along with testimonials, guarantees are one of the most effective ways of increasing your conversion rate on your website. A guarantee in marketing language is known as a risk reversal. In other words, you are taking away the risk from your customer when they buy from you. So, if you can remove the risk you eliminate one of the major buying objections your potential customer may have.
A guarantee is a way of reassuring your prospect that your product or service is worth their investment. Probably the best-known risk reversal is a money-back guarantee. Let’s take a closer look at how they work.
Money-back guarantees often put business owners off perhaps because they fear that all their customers will take advantage of them in one go. However, it’s ludicrous to think that if you sold a hundred products you would have to give the money back to a hundred people or even fifty people, the real-life statistics aren’t anywhere near that figure. Think of it like this: if you offer a money-back guarantee and that increases your sales by 50% even if your return rate goes up to 5% overall, you’ve still increased your sales by 45%! In fact, studies indicate that at most only 1-2% of your customers will ever use your guarantee.
In reality money-back guarantees do increase sales and that’s why businesses use them.
If you’re still uncertain about the likely usage of the guarantee then use your existing return or refund rate as a guide to how often your guarantee is likely to be used.
Don’t forget that your visitor may be looking at 5 or 10 other websites who offer something similar to you and so offering a guarantee differentiates you from your competition and offers a huge confidence boost to your buyer.
And if you want a bit of reassurance, then Google “money-back guarantee” and just see how many companies are flourishing using this technique.
However, it’s not the only technique in the guarantee arsenal. There are lots of different approaches you can take, for example, you could offer these:
- Guarantee the quality of your work. “If our repair fails in the first 90 days then we’ll do it again for free” or “If our cleaning fails to meet your high standards of excellence, it’s free”.
- Guarantee your service. “If we are late to your appointment, it’s FREE” or “If our technicians are not the most cheerful and pleasant people you’ve ever met, it’s FREE”.
- Guarantee your product: “If you don’t like it within the first 30 days we will give you 100%, no hassle refund.” (That’s called a limited guarantee but you could extend that to a lifetime guarantee.)
- Although not directly seen as a guarantee you could make an introductory offer, the classic one being, a 30-day free trial or something simple like “Zero fee set-up charge”
Using a guarantee on your website is especially powerful because it can provide that final push your visitor needs to feel confident enough to get in touch or buy your product there and then. And confidence is a big factor in people’s purchasing decisions on the Internet. The more confidence you can give them, the greater the likelihood they will buy from you and guarantees are a perfect way of making that happen. Don’t forget that most of your competitors won’t even attempt this so any guarantee from you will give your sales pages 10 times more impact!
