Craft Your First Winning Offer: A Step-by-Step Guide

Today I want to walk through an often overlooked way to create your very first offer.

An offer is simply a solution (service, product, course, software) that you offer to your ideal customer that solves one of their challenges. And, in return, you get paid.

If you can learn to create an offer that your prospects actually want, you’ll have a much better chance of impacting more people and making more money.

And if you follow this process, you won’t be guessing — you’ll know with certainty that you’re creating the right offer.

Unfortunately, most people spend months or years creating an offer only to find out that nobody wants it. But you can avoid that.

Here’s how.

Start Narrow

To get started, take stock of what problem you could help people solve, by reviewing your practical experience.

Generally, these are “wide” problems. They are big, expensive, and complicated.

Based on what you’ve done in the past, you might:

• Help eCommerce businesses improve their SEO.
• Help creators earn more revenue through improved landing pages.
• Help people make more money by securing a job at companies like Apple or Google.

When you know the “wide” problem you can help people solve, don’t put together an offer right away. Instead, start with a lead magnet. A lead magnet is a free asset or service that you give away that has mutual benefit: 1) The prospect solves a problem and 2) You collect their contact details.

Your lead magnet should solve a “narrow” problem that, when solved, opens up the prospect to the larger “wide” problem that you solve.

For example, if you help creators earn more revenue through improved landing pages, you might consider a 15-minute on demand video where you teach them how to write the best landing page headlines possible.

And by showing them how to solve that “narrow” problem, you build authority and trust.

But that’s just a sliver of what they’ll need to fix the “wider” problem. What about constructing the page properly from top to bottom, using the right images, the best calls-to-action, collecting and displaying testimonials, writing body copy, and so on?

One problem solved. And many more opened up.

But don’t create that offer yet!

Collect Data

The most common mistake I see business owners make is sending people who opted into the lead magnet to some generic thank you page. This adds very little value for your prospect, and does basically nothing for your business. What a missed opportunity.

Instead, you should send them to a page with a simple survey that’s positioned to help them.

Here’s some data you might collect and some of the answers you might get (using our landing page example).

Do you already have a landing page or are you building your first one?

• Building their first page: 81%
• Already have one built: 19%

This first data point already tells you that your core prospect is a beginner. And this is valuable information! With this in mind, you could follow up with some additional multiple choice questions:

What’s the #1 challenge you’re facing?

• 74% say they don’t know how to structure and build a page.

What are you trying to sell on your landing page?

• 65% want to sell an online course.

What is your current online course revenue?

• 91% say they are making less than $1,000 per month.

This is amazing data that you can use. And although we have solid multiple-choice data, it’s great to ask at least one open-ended, free-form text question to close out your survey. You’ll learn so much from what people share.

For example:

Using one word, what are you looking for in a solution?

• Affordable: 37%
• Easy: 25%
• Step-by-step: 21%
• Proven: 9%

The answers here are helpful in learning what your prospects actually care about.

Not what you think they care about.

Build Your Offer

Here’s how I would summarize the data you captured:

1. Customer aspirations: Easy, affordable, step-by-step, proven.
2. Who, specifically: First-time online course creators.
3. Demographic: Making very little money, or none yet.
4. Solution style: Low-touch, low-ticket, paint-by-numbers.

With this data, you can now build an offer that your prospects are already telling you they want!

It sounds like a simple digital course could be the perfect solution here. You could make it short, easy, and step-by-step. And it should meet their #1 criteria of being affordable.

You can toss this data into a simple ChatGPT prompt to get a nice little pitch to put together (and sell) your new offer.

Here’s the output it gave me:

I show first-time online course creators how to leap from concept to cash flow with ease.

If you're ready to launch your first course, but feel lost in the maze of creating a high-conversion landing page, I can help.

My short course is designed for those just starting out - offering an easy, affordable, step-by-step path to success. This $97 course is like a paint-by-numbers process for creating high-conversion landing pages.

I'll provide you with proven templates and straightforward strategies that demystify the process of creating a landing page that sells. It's not just about having a great product; it's about presenting it in a way that resonates with your audience. Get started today.

Not too shabby.

With this new language, you can simply email the people that took your survey (and match the criteria) to ask them if they’d like to buy it on pre-sale. And if enough people do?

Then go build it.

Congrats, you have an offer your audience actually wants (because they told you).

And now you’re off to the races.

P.S. This is a small sneak preview of my flagship course, The Creator MBA. 14 Chapters and 111 Lessons of instructional video that will teach you how to build a lean, profitable internet business (even if you're just starting or don't have an idea).

Join 4,000+ internet entrepreneurs here.