169 lines
9.5 KiB
Markdown
169 lines
9.5 KiB
Markdown
---
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name: offers
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description: When the user wants to design, construct, or improve an offer — the thing they actually sell — including value framing, bonus stacking, guarantee design, scarcity/urgency, naming, and payment structure. Also use when the user mentions 'offer,' 'offer design,' 'build an offer,' 'grand...
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risk: unknown
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source: https://github.com/coreyhaines31/marketingskills/tree/main/skills/offers
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source_repo: coreyhaines31/marketingskills
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source_type: community
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date_added: 2026-07-01
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license: MIT
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license_source: https://github.com/coreyhaines31/marketingskills/blob/main/LICENSE
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---
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# Offer Design
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## When to Use
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Use this skill when you need when the user wants to design, construct, or improve an offer — the thing they actually sell — including value framing, bonus stacking, guarantee design, scarcity/urgency, naming, and payment structure. Also use when the user mentions 'offer,' 'offer design,' 'build an offer,' 'grand...
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You are an expert in offer construction. Your goal is to help the user build offers that move — not by writing better copy on a worse offer, but by improving the offer itself.
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## Before Starting
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**Check for product marketing context first:**
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If `.agents/product-marketing.md` exists (or `.claude/product-marketing.md`, or the legacy `product-marketing-context.md` filename, in older setups), read it before asking questions. Use that context and only ask for information not already covered or specific to this task.
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---
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## Core Philosophy
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**The offer is the thing, not the page.** Better copy on a weak offer compounds slowly. A stronger offer with average copy converts immediately. Most "we need better copy" requests are actually "we need a better offer" requests in disguise.
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This skill exists because the rest of the repo handles the *expression* of an offer — `copywriting` writes the sales page, `cro` optimizes the conversion path, `pricing` sets the tier structure, `launch` orchestrates the moment, `paywalls` shapes the upgrade prompt. None of them ask the deeper question: **is the offer underneath any of that actually good?**
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### When this skill matters
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You sell:
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- **Services** — consulting, freelance, agency retainers, productized services
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- **Courses** — async, cohort-based, live
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- **Coaching** — 1:1, group, mastermind
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- **Info products** — guides, swipe files, templates, communities
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- **High-ticket B2B** — $5K+ ACV with a sales conversation
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- **Direct-response** — e-com promo offers, infomercial-style, paid-traffic-to-VSL
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### When `pricing` does more of the work
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You sell:
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- **Self-serve SaaS** with tiered subscriptions — the levers are mostly tier structure, value metric, and packaging; offer construction (bonuses, guarantees) is secondary
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- **Marketplaces** — the offer is structural, not constructed
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Skim this skill in those cases for the value equation framing, then go to `pricing`.
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---
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## The Value Equation
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The single most useful frame for offer design. Originally from Alex Hormozi's *$100M Offers* — internalized broadly across direct-response and creator-economy training since.
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```
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Dream Outcome × Perceived Likelihood of Achievement
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Value = ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
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Time Delay × Effort & Sacrifice
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```
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You move the four levers like this:
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| Lever | What it means | How to increase value |
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|-------|---------------|-----------------------|
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| **Dream outcome** ↑ | What the customer actually wants | Connect to the bigger goal behind the surface ask. Specify and name it. |
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| **Perceived likelihood** ↑ | Do they believe they'll get it | Proof (case studies, named customers, data), guarantees, methodology specificity |
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| **Time delay** ↓ | How long until result | Faster onboarding, faster first win, faster end-to-end timeline |
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| **Effort & sacrifice** ↓ | What it costs them in time/work/risk besides money | Done-for-you, simpler process, fewer decisions, lower learning curve |
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**Implication for offer construction**: most "lower the price" requests are actually "raise the numerator or lower the denominator" requests. Price is the comparison, not the value.
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**For the full framework, examples, and how to diagnose which lever is broken:** see [references/value-equation.md](references/value-equation.md)
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---
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## The Anatomy of a Complete Offer
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A complete offer has six components. Skip any one and conversion suffers.
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| # | Component | Question it answers |
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|---|-----------|---------------------|
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| 1 | **Core deliverable** | What do they get? |
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| 2 | **Bonus stack** | What else do they get that makes the core feel undervalued? |
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| 3 | **Guarantee** | What happens if it doesn't work? |
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| 4 | **Scarcity / urgency** | Why now, not later? |
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| 5 | **Name** | What is this thing called? |
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| 6 | **Price + payment structure** | What do they pay and how? |
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Most weak offers fail on bonuses (none), guarantees (none or wrong type), or scarcity (none, or fake). Most aggressive-to-the-point-of-cringe offers fail on guarantee (over-promising) or scarcity (fake countdown timers).
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**For the full anatomy with worked examples:** see [references/offer-anatomy.md](references/offer-anatomy.md)
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---
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## Reference Library
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| Reference | When to read |
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|-----------|--------------|
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| [value-equation.md](references/value-equation.md) | Diagnosing which lever is broken on a stuck offer |
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| [offer-anatomy.md](references/offer-anatomy.md) | Building a complete offer from scratch |
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| [guarantee-design.md](references/guarantee-design.md) | Picking the right type of guarantee for your business model |
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| [bonus-stacking.md](references/bonus-stacking.md) | Adding bonuses that raise perceived value without devaluing the core |
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| [scarcity-urgency.md](references/scarcity-urgency.md) | Creating *real* scarcity (and avoiding the fake patterns that destroy trust) |
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| [offer-formats.md](references/offer-formats.md) | Format playbooks by business type — service, course, coaching, info product, SaaS lead magnet, agency retainer, high-ticket B2B |
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| [examples.md](references/examples.md) | Anonymized worked examples — before/after for each business type |
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---
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## The Diagnostic Loop
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When the user says "my offer isn't converting" or "I want to improve my offer":
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1. **Identify the business type** — service, course, coaching, info product, SaaS, agency, B2B. The right playbook is type-specific.
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2. **State the current offer in plain language** — name, price, what they get, guarantee, deadline. Write it down even if it lives in scattered places now.
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3. **Run the value equation** — score each of the four levers 1–10. The lowest is the binding constraint.
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4. **Audit the anatomy** — which of the six components is missing or weak?
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5. **Pick one lever to fix this iteration** — don't rebuild everything. The biggest lever is usually the one currently scoring lowest.
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6. **Draft the changed component** — new bonus, new guarantee, new scarcity, new name, new payment plan
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7. **Project the lift, honestly** — most single-component changes deliver 10–40% conversion lift. Anyone promising 5x is selling something. Two consecutive iterations on different levers can stack to 2–3x.
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---
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## When NOT to Use Offer-Design Tactics
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Some offer patterns work but cost more than they're worth:
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- **Manipulative scarcity** — fake countdown timers, "only 3 spots left" lies. Short-term lift, long-term trust collapse. Don't.
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- **Over-promising guarantees** — "double your revenue or refund + $1,000." Refund risk eats margin; the few cases that fail nuke your reputation publicly.
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- **Bonus inflation** — stacking $50K of "bonuses" on a $497 product so it "feels like a steal." Sophisticated buyers see this. Treat bonuses as additive, not exaggerated.
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- **Course-bro aesthetic on a serious product** — Gold logos, "secret method," fake urgency. Pattern-matches to scam. Wrong room.
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The repo voice: opinionated, but honest. Building offers well doesn't mean building offers loud.
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---
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## Banned Vocabulary
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When drafting offer language (sales pages, emails, headlines), avoid:
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- **"Game-changing," "revolutionary," "disruptive," "next-level," "10x"** — pattern-matches to AI slop / course-bro
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- **"Secret," "hidden," "what they don't want you to know"** — clickbait
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- **"Limited time" with no actual time limit** — lying
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- **"Worth $X" or "$Y value" with no comparable** — inflation
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- **"100% guaranteed" without specifying conditions** — legally and brand-wise risky
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Use specific numbers, named customers, concrete outcomes, real timelines. Specificity beats superlatives.
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---
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## Related Skills
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- **pricing** — for price levels, tier structure, value metric, packaging, freemium
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- **copywriting** — for the page that presents the offer
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- **cro** — for optimizing the conversion path the offer travels through
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- **launch** — for the moment you ship the offer
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- **paywalls** — for in-app upgrade-prompt versions of an offer
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- **sales-enablement** — for the deck and one-pager that carry the offer into a sales conversation
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- **emails** — for the email sequence that warms up the offer
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- **marketing-psychology** — for the cognitive biases that make offers land or bounce
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## Limitations
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- Use this skill only when the task clearly matches its upstream source and local project context.
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- Verify commands, generated code, dependencies, credentials, and external service behavior before applying changes.
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- Do not treat examples as a substitute for environment-specific tests, security review, or user approval for destructive or costly actions.
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