How to break customer skepticism
I ignored Apple’s offer, but not the lesson it taught me. If you’re in business, you’ll want to hear this.
I bought a new pair of AirPods on Saturday.
Three days later, Apple sent me an offer for 3 months of Apple Music for free.
I’m already subscribed to Spotify, and so I didn’t take the offer.
But here’s the lesson.
We live in a world filled with skepticism. Thanks to the number of scams, bad companies and get-rich gurus – the average customer today is a skeptic.
Businesses that want to break skepticism must first provide value.
WTF is “provide value”?
Ahh, if it isn’t the overused “provide value” word again.
Provide value has been said so many times by marketing gurus, that we don’t know what provide value means anymore. Is it:
- Sharing some knaw-ledge in a video?
- Making a meme or joke?
- Sharing a sob-sob, LinkedIn story?
Well, the best definition of providing value I’ve came across is this:
You provide value to display you can help your customers, by actually helping them.
- For Apple, it’s a 3-months totally free access to Apple Music… to get me hooked.
- For a fruit stall, it could be giving away a pack of fruit taster… to earn trust.
- For a SaaS business, it could be giving away a 14-day free trial… so the user sees the benefit.
- For a co-working space, it could be free passes to their space…
- For a book author, that could be giving away their first chapter for free…
The idea is that you WOW your prospect so much with your free or low-ticket offer, that they think your high-ticket offer must be amazing.
I’ve often come across brands who don’t want to give anything away for free, or even at the very least, create a low-ticket offer for prospects to actually try their product.
Their reason? As an “expensive” brand, we don’t want to look cheap by discounting or giving away our products.
And yet, I see Apple (a brand that sold an RM820 pair of earphones to me) giving away things for free.
What’s your “free sample”?
What’s one irresistible ‘free sample’ your brand could give away to win trust? Hit reply and tell me (share photos if possible) – I will feature the best ones.