Here’s a story about Dominos pizza and a framework to make an Irresistible Offer.

Today I wanted to talk to you today about Irresistible Offers and how to create them fairly easily.

We going to be touching on the framework here and may go in more depth in another blog post.

An Irresistible Offer is like the name suggests an offer that is a no brainier and why not try it.

Easily the most famous is the dominos pizza offer.

So let’s start there

 

Here’s the story of a pizza chain that was relatively unknown for years until it launched a now legendary marketing campaign.

Tom Monaghan started this business in Michigan, in 1960 with the purchase of a single store called “Dominick’s.” When Tom chose to expand, the former owner of Dominick’s wouldn’t let him keep the name, so he had to come up with a new one.

One of his employees suggested “Domino’s” one night, and it stuck. When Monaghan purchased the first store, he began with a 15-minute lesson in marketing from Dominick himself, and he was off and running.

What allowed him to build a $4 billion business from a single store?

 

The 30-minutes-or-free guarantee was as responsible for our growth as anything.

—Tom Monaghan

The success wasn’t overnight. Monaghan experienced some extreme ups and downs like most do along the way but it wasn’t until he developed the classic offer that Domino’s began to explode.

Tom Monaghan knew what people wanted

• They wanted the convenience of delivery pizza.
• They also liked their pizza piping hot.

So he created the guarantee: “30 minutes or less… or it’s free.”

It’s not an exaggeration to say that this took the pizza world by storm.

By the time Domino’s was forced to stop using the “30 minutes or it’s free” campaign as the result of a lawsuit in 1993, they were the number-one pizza delivery company in the entire United States. And the “30 minutes or it’s free” guarantee became part of our lexicon.

The Framework

An Irresistible Offer is composed of three main elements:

1. A Touchstone
2. Believability
3. A High ROI Offer

High ROI Offer:

What do you offer that makes it worth it for your consumers investment.

Touchstone:

A touchstone is the the main offer that answers these 4 questions.

• Here’s what we are selling.
• Here’s how much it will cost.
• Here’s what’s in for you.
• Here’s why you should trust

Believability:

This is we’re you show that you can be trusted with stuff like social proof, scientific proof, technical proof or just plan logic.

Examples:

Let’s look at some examples of what the framework looks like when used.

The Dominos Example:

 

Here’s how domino’s used it. Notice how they used the high ROI offer to back up one of its unanswered touchstone questions.

Touchstone

Here’s what we are selling.

Fast pizza

Here’s how much it will cost.

Here’s what’s in for you.

pizza immediately when you’re hungry, or a free pizza.

Here’s why you should trust

if we don’t keep our promise, you’ve got a free dinner.

High ROI Offer

a better pizza for a good price

Columbia House Records example:

The Touchstone—“10 CDs for 1 Cent”—is a good one. So good, in fact, that a variation of it has been used by numerous CD and book clubs for many years—and is still used today.

For anyone interested in the science of marketing, this approach is really interesting. On the surface, it communicates three of the Big Four points beautifully. Then, it gets you halfway there toward the final hurdle… and stops. That’s because there’s a catch to this Touchstone.

Touchstone

Here’s what we’re selling:

cheap compact discs.

Here’s how much it will cost you

one penny.

Here’s what’s in it for you

cheap music.

Here’s why you should trust us

hey, what do you have to lose? (It’s a low risk, but it still leaves the consumer skeptical—and justifiably so.)

High ROI Offer

So, what’s the high ROI offer?

As you might imagine, it’s not really 10 CDs for a single penny. You must agree to purchase a subsequent number of CDs at a higher price.

As I said at the beginning of this journal entry this is not a full tutorial but a look at the framework to introduce it to you and show how others have used it. We will be doing a more in depth post on this in the feature.

That’s all for today until next time this has been Jack Thomson’s