Is your current campaign not converting enough leads? Maybe offering your target audience some freebies aren’t enough to engage them. People often value what they pay for. That’s where you can use tripwires as part of your marketing strategies.
What is a tripwire?
A tripwire is an affordable alternative to the core products or services of your business. It convinces your audience to buy something smaller or less costly than your other offers. Once they purchased the tripwire, you can lead them into different campaigns where you can upsell your more expensive product or service.
You can also use a tripwire to lure your previous customers back into your funnel. Since they’re already warmed up to your business, it will be easier for you to get them back.
Why are tripwires beneficial for your business?
A tripwire is a stepping stone for building trust and driving your prospects down the sales funnel. You give them something that can solve their problems for an affordable price which makes it hard to pass up. People who purchase your tripwires are more likely to buy your core offers.
Businesses use tripwires in different ways:
- Increasing customer base
- Leading target audience to your more expensive products
- An in-between offer from lead magnets and your main products or services
- Creating a sense of urgency to prospects by including a countdown to an offer which makes it effective as a conversion tool
- Getting previous customers back in exchange for cheaper deals
How to create an effective tripwire
Whenever you’re designing a marketing strategy, you should always identify the following: purpose, target market, their pain points, and your solution to their problem. It’s similar to designing your tripwires. Incorporate these aspects to build a good strategy and effective tripwires.
Start creating your tripwires with these steps:
- Examine your current product and service lines
- Look into the product that gets most sales
- Design a new, scaled down version that still has value for a lower price
- Create a campaign for your core products to customers who bought the tripwire item
- Feature the tripwire in different marketing channels
- Include the tripwire as an upsell after prospective clients sign up to your lead magnet, making it the next step in the funnel
Types of tripwires
You can’t simply give your leads a meaningless offer. It has to be helpful to them and is connected to your lead magnets and your main offer.
There are different types of tripwires you can use based on your business model:
Physical products
These products can be small but can still be significant to your target market. It’s something that can be shipped right to their doorstep.
For example, if you have a pet shop business, you can offer your audience a dog leash or pet food and they can just pay for the shipping fees. You can also provide free shipping while customers pay an amount that’s considerably cheaper than the original price of your product.
Digital products
Digital tripwires are great because you can really offer your audience something cost-friendly and valuable. Creating it is also inexpensive, and in most cases, free! There are lots of options available and your consumers can have it right away.
Here are some ideas for digital tripwires:
- Audio: podcasts, audiobooks, and audio courses
- Designs: templates and planners
- Video: webinars, mini-courses, mini-workshops, and tutorials
- Written: ebooks, reports, courses, and worksheets
- Others: free trials
Tools for creating tripwires
Offer your prospects some quality tripwires by using these tools:
Audio and video:
- Ocenaudio and Audacity: free tools for audio editing
- Livestorm and Webinarjam: webinar hosting platforms
- FreeConferenceCall: for recording audio, videos, conference, and interviews
- Fleeq.io: for creating mini-course and video tutorials
- VSDC and Lightworks: has free and pro versions for video creation and editing
- Adobe Premiere Pro and Final Cut Pro X (Mac): these two are hailed as the best video editing tools. They have free trials. The pro version is costly compared to the previous video editing software mentioned above.
Design and written:
- Easil and Canva: a designing tool you can use for ebook, covers, planners, and templates
- MailChimp: for your email list and creating templates
- Adobe creative suite – a variety of software for your creative needs
Others:
- Google Analytics and CrazyEgg: contains various tools to measure visitor’s website behaviour
Tripwires in the sales funnel
Your aim is for audiences to finally make a purchase. You can’t settle for them saying that your offer is nice. You have to entice them until they can’t resist your offer and say: “I NEED to have that”.
In the customer nurturing stage of the sales funnel, you can use tripwires to give your prospects a better sense of your offer. From there, they can decide whether it’s worth their time, money, and trust. You can also use tripwires to regain old customers back by giving them great deals then slip them to another campaign that promotes your core products.
Discover more about the sales funnel here.
