Offer the Right Bonuses for your Continuity Program

Offering bonuses for your Continuity program can add value and increase subscriptions and sales.

But, offering the wrong bonuses, or trying to attach a value to bonuses that are clearly fraudulent will hurt sales…and your reputation.

The right bonuses compliment your Continuity Site and help your subscribers, clients and customers solve problems, and achieve benefits.

The wrong bonuses are worthless to your subscribers, clients and customers.

For example, if you run a Continuity program for Internet marketers, you will only make your prospects laugh (and they will never convert into customers) if you offer an eBook on “Tax Laws of the Nineteenth Century.” So, while Internet Marketers may be interested in tax laws, ten year old tax laws are the “Dark Ages” for the Internet.

Another example: if you run a Membership Site for Golfers, a bonus discount for fishing rods will fizzle.

And for the mammoth “value set of bonuses?

You have seen this before…

• Product #1: a $497 value
• Product #2: a $297 value
• Product #3: a $197 value
• Product #4: a $97 value
• Product #5: a $97 value
• Product #6: a $77 value
• Product #7: a $67 value
• Product #8: a $67 value
• Product #9: a $47 value
• Product #10: a $47 value
• Product #11: a $27 value
• Product #12: a $27 value
• Product #13: a $27 value
• Product #14: a $27 value
• Product #15: a $17 value
• Product #17: a $17 value
• Total Value: a Whopping $1,632

And, this insane bonuses offer for a $27 product is only for a limited time until the marketer comes to his senses…

Of course, a bit of due diligence can find these same bonus offers on Free Giveaway sites, and on eBay for as low as $0.01 each.

The other problem with bonus offers occurs when your bonus is better than the product that you are trying to sell.

And, sometimes, if your bonus is available elsewhere, you have sold another product and lost a sale for your own product. Great going!

The idea of a bonus is that the added products value pushes prospects who are “teetering” on the edge of the “buy, don’t buy decision” into the abyss. Then, you hope that they don’t grab your product and request a refund.

But, if you have to “motivate” your prospect that much, you are better now selling to them. In the long run, a customer of this type will prove to be more trouble than profit.

Advice: If you cannot find a bonus that is a “hand and glove” fit for your product. Either…

• Create the bonus product yourself
• Skip offering a bonus and don’t offer anything

So, avoid the Late Night Infomercial strategy of, “But wait, not only will you get this $149 value package for two payments of $19.95, but we will throw in a second package at the same price. Pay only shipping and handling for your extra set of gimmicks.”

But offering $1,600 worth of bonuses for a $27 product destroys your credibility because no one believe that you would offer such a deal.

Also, avoid “over discounting” your product.

What would happen if you walked into an electronics store, and the high-pressure salesperson offered to sell you a $1,100 52 inch plasma TV for only $300.

Would you buy?

Probably not without an extra-close examination and not without the extended product warranty because you would assume that there was something wrong with the product. Someone loosing so much profit must be motivated by a defective unit, scratches and dents, a returned product or a pending product recall.

Your initial reaction would be,”What’s the catch?” or, “What’s wrong with it?”

Instead of increasing your confidence in that store, such an offer would decrease your confidence about all the other products that that store sold. In the same way, “Clearance Pricing” will ruin your Continuity program.

So, instead of relying on bonuses to sell your continuity program, make sure that your program stands on its own.

And the way to do that is though market testing and determining exactly what your clients and customers want. If what you are offering makes sense as a continuity product, i.e., there is a sound rationale why the client or customer needs to keep paying. Some of these reasons include:

• The subscriber or customer uses up the product. Example: The teenager runs out of acne goo and must reorder or face another outbreak and social stigma
• The product requires constant updates. For example: Virus-making criminals continue to devise insidious programs, and the company that makes the Anti-virus product must keep developing, updating and testing their solution
• Clients and customers want to be entertained with new stuff. Example: Cable subscribers pay for premium movie packages because for major portions of the year, network television shows “re-runs”
• The market place keeps changing. For example: Tax laws keep changing, so an accountant or business manager must keep up with these changes. A service that reviews these changes and digests them saves the business professional lots of time
• People want to get together to share strategies, techniques and tactics. This is the allure of Web 2.0 Social Medial networks

So, tread the sales waters of your continuity program carefully, with market survey charts and maps. And, beware of counting in bonuses to propel your conversions to success. Navigate with your continuity product pressing on under its own power, and only add bonuses that offer a watertight fit with your continuity product.