Your offer is the granite foundation of your marketing campaign. Get it right, and everything else will fall into place. 

Your headline will grab readers, your copy will sing, your ad layout will hardly matter, and you will have customers running to your door or website.

Get it wrong, and even the best looking, best written campaign will sink like the Titanic.

In my view, here is what makes the best offers tick:

• Urgency or scarcity: The offer is good until Wednesday or there are only 5 left you have to hurry.

• Risk reversal: When the seller in the transaction takes the risk. If we business owners believe in the delivery of our product or service, we should have no problem offering a risk reversal.

• Adding more value to your product or service: When I was in the Frozen cookie dough business the problem the customer had was, they didn’t want to take up valuable oven space baking cookies. So, I knew the value of a customer (a very important metric to know by the way) and I gave away a free convection oven with every opening order.

• Packaging and bundling: The important point here is that when you package products together it makes it more difficult for the customer to comparison-shop. When I was in the Ski business everyone sold ski packages, skis boots, bindings and poles but the customer had a real hard time comparing prices because all the packages had so many different makes and models. I took it one step further and did clothing packages where I bundled a hat, sweater, bib and parka for a first price point of $99.95. Packaging and bundling gives the perception of value.

With these components, you are well on your way toward creating a great offer!