Do you offer launch bonuses or incentives when you're launching your programs, courses, or products?

If so, how confident are you that these bonuses add to your main offer? Do you feel like you’re picking willy nilly and just offering random things to add to the stack, hopefully adding value to your main offer?

If you’re not sure or the bonuses don’t really seem to have any effect on whether people buy or not, today’s episode and post are for you.

First, let’s talk about a question I always get — do I need to give bonuses and why?

First, let’s talk about a question I always get — do I need to give bonuses and why?

Let me just say that I don’t think you need to give an extensive list of extras, but I do think providing a few at key points during your launch is important.

Here's why we include bonuses:

• make their buying decision
• convince their partners why it’s an important bonus
• justify spending money > that’s why your bonuses should be useful
• feel like they’re getting a deal
• The main reason is that you want to add “answers” to other reasons people may say they aren't ready, they need something else first, or they need something after.

But before you just go adding bonuses so people can get their money’s worth…it’s important to make sure there’s nothing that overshadows the main offer.

Look for bonuses that:

1. Enhance the main product or service by adding valuable information in action.
   • For example, you could include interviews/case studies giving knowledge in action, they can be past customers and specifics on how they achieved success.
2. Provide the first step, something they need to do before they dive into the main product, course, or training.
   • For example, inside Fearless Launching, I include Templates for Trello, Asana, and also to help you create your launch lead magnet and your webinar slides even.
3. Provide the next step before/after they’ve used your product, learned from your core content and training.
   • For example, one of past bonuses in Fearless Launching was a Relaunch masterclass with me and Laura Roeder. Now, I include a list building bonus training to help people who are just getting started.

Important: Don’t give bonuses just for the sake of adding more stuff to your product.

Jen Louden told me once about bonuses and teaching (because that’s her thing) and she talked about stripping things out of the course each time you do it. Click here to listen to my interview with Jen about this and teaching courses.

Also, another great interview with a course/teaching expert is Marisa Murgatroyd. Check out that interview as well…she has some amazing tips to make your course more finishable!

Now, let’s dive into 4 launch bonuses you can and should experiment with during your next product launch.

1. Limited Time Offer Launch Bonus

When you first open the doors of your launch, you can help the people who are ready to go, excited, chomping at the bit, make their decision fast and give them extra help to take that action, simply by offering a short window where they'll receive some thing if they purchase–

• Discounted enrollment, free upgrade, anything that helps them save money
• A special package of bonuses only available for the early adopters, people who decide in the first few days
• Or both!

I do the same thing usually during my launches. For the first 48 hours, we’re open, I generally have an instant discount! It works well to get people who are already planning to enroll a little bonus for taking action fast.

This even works if you have a SAAS business or you sell a product all the time. You can create limited time offer “sales” or “promotions” that are pretty much discounts on your offer! Kajabi does this sometimes or offers more education based bonuses.

2. Mid-launch surprise bonus

If you’ve ever been through a launch, you’ve likely experienced the mid-launch doldrums. No one is buying… or hardly any sales come in during this time. Usually, this is very normal for any launch where the class starts on a specific date.

To ignite some launches during that stretch in the middle, it’s important to give people some type of incentive to encourage sales.

One of the ways to do this is by announcing a brand new limited-time bonus.

“We’ve just added a brand new bonus” that will help you do x, y, and z!

Look at these last-minute bonuses as amazing energy boosters for yourself and anyone who’s considering buying but maybe missed out on that first fast action bonus.

Here's a last minute bonus I loved from Hilary Rushford:

3. Fast Action Launch Bonus During A Webinar/Event

If you do webinars, hangouts, live interviews during your launch (or to open up your launch), you can add another bonus for the people who attend live. This one’s also fun because it’s a way to change the energy of a webinar–give a surprise…and funnily enough, some people do decide last minute that they want to offer a fast action bonus.

A few tips from people who know: put a timer up, start Q & A, and remind people about the bonus before the timer finishes up.

This bonus needs to be juicy…it has to solve something people are like…holy crap, that's what I want!

I've done a lot of the things below, but the best thing you can do is something you don't have to deliver yourself – so remember that when you create a bonus that gives you extra work!

• short 1 on 1 call for the first 20 people who purchase
• special group call (especially works well if it’s not a live class)
• a pdf guide no-one else is getting
• a masterclass
• piece of software
• physical gift
• invite to a live event
• combination of the above

Think value – think solving a big problem, something juicy!

Here's something I'm considering offering in an upcoming webinar…

Which Launch Bonuses Work The Best?

Try each one out or all of them during your next launch. The only way for you to know how they work is to test it out. For me – these three are my sweet spot go to bonuses. I like getting creative with the “what” I offer, but I always come back to this type.

Go through each type of bonus and come up with one thing you can do for each. Grab those post its, write down your bonus ideas and then on each post-it, make sure you write what that bonus will do for your customer. Finish your … “so that” statement I talked about in the episode!

What Bonuses Have You Offered During Your Launches and Promotions?

I want to know what bonuses you're either thinking about offering or have offered in the past! Tell us if you feel like it worked or didn't and why.

And if you want to learn more about the bonuses you can offer during your next launch, let me know…this was a fairly short post about 3 different types of launch bonuses that I use, but it's the tip of the bonus topic iceberg!

If you want more ideas for bonuses and why they work…let me know.

Recommended Resources & Training:

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