Risk Removal

If you’ve done your job as a copywriter well, you’ve made a big promise. And you’ve made additional claims about benefits as you’ve written your body copy. Hopefully you’ve resolved your reader’s objections and asked for the sale (we’ll cover that in the next segment). Now we want to remove all of the risk so the offer is a total no-brainer for your prospect. 

This should feel like the easiest decision ever. But your reader may still worry about what happens if this doesn’t work? Or what if it doesn’t work for me? 

That’s where your guarantee comes in. This should remove the risk for anyone who buys. The standard is a money back guarantee. If for some reason the product doesn’t work as promised, the buyer can get their money back.

But while that is the standard, it is not the only option you have. Remember, the job of the guarantee is to remove the risk for your buyer. So promising their money back is a good start, but what if you promised double their money back. Now not only have you removed the risk, but they may lose out on hundreds, maybe even thousands of dollars if they DON’T buy. We’ve even seen one brand offer triple your money back, but that’s definitely on the edge of what most marketers do. Another option is money back plus a certain amount of additional dollars which would differ depending on the cost of your offer.

If your offer is $50 or less, you could offer a money back + $10 if they don’t get the results promised in your promotion. Notice all of these examples make the offer more enticing. Like we said, a no brainer.

What you don’t want to do is have your guarantee add friction to the buying decision. We’ve seen a lot of marketers say things like, “if you do the work and show us what you’ve done” you can qualify for a refund. We understand why they do it. They want to reduce refund requests. But I would suggest if you’re getting a lot of refund requests on a good product, it’s because you are attracting the wrong buyers. If you add conditions to your guarantee, you’re making it harder to say yes to your offer.

Let me show you an example from a notable internet personality. This person offers the following guarantee…

I’m so confident that you’ll see results when it comes to time freedom and your bottom line that I’m giving you 30-days to test the principles that I’ve used in my own business over the last 12 years.

You have nothing to lose — only time to focus on the vision that drives you every. single. day. For more details, click here.

But when you click over to the fine print, it is a lot more restrictive and adds friction to the policy that makes buyers hesitant to join. It reads…

In order to qualify for a refund, you must submit proof that you did the work in the course and it did not work for you. In the event that you decide your purchase was not the right decision, within 30 days of enrollment, contact our support team at support@email.com and let us know you’d like a refund by the 30th day at 11:59 EST. You must include your coursework with your request for a refund. If you request a refund and do not include your coursework by the 30th day, you will not be granted a refund.

The work that you need to submit with your request for a refund includes ALL of the following items:

•  Your 3-5 Annual Business Goals
• Your morning start-up and evening shut-down rituals
• Your Profit Predictor Calculator filled out with at least one product
• A snapshot of your asset and document management system
• A snapshot of a project plan inside your project management tool

We will NOT provide refunds more than 30 days following the date of purchase. After day 30, all payments are non-refundable and you are responsible for full payment of the fees for the program regardless if you complete the program.

Please note: If you opted for a payment plan and you do not request a refund within 30 days, with the required coursework at the time of your refund request, you are required by law to complete the remaining payments of your payment plan.

If your guarantee needs to be that restrictive, you might be talking to the wrong prospective clients. As a copywriter, you should help your clients craft a guarantee that removes risk, rather than adds friction.

Guarantees aren’t the only way to remove risk. Free trials or low cost trials like $1 for the first week, also removes the financial barrier and allows buyers to give it a try before making full payment. If the offer fixes a real problem and they can try it out for $1 or $7 for a week or 21 days or some other appropriate trial period, you’ve removed the risk of buying today. You could even go one step farther and offer a freemium or try before you buy offer. Most people who do this have a short trial period, maybe 3 or 7 days, before the payment is collected.

Two other options we’ve seen used effectively… one is to let your buyer set the price. This works well for many low cost offers—things you might sell for $20 or less that get your prospect into a funnel where they can buy more products or services. You may lose money on the front end offer if prospects choose to pay only a dollar or two. But if whatever they buy leads to a second product that now costs more, you can start to make more money.

Here’s how our friend Todd Brown executes this risk removal strategy in one of his book funnels…

The second risk removal technique is to let customers wait to pay until the work is done. For obvious reasons, we would caution you in using this one. But if you know you’ll get results and you are certain your clients will pay… let’s say your offer will definitely generate thousands of dollars of income, you might have an offer where there is no payment up front and you take the payment on the backend. Or you collect the standard fee or price after the customer has used the product effectively. I’ll show you an example of that in a moment.

Before we wrap up, let’s take a look at a couple of guarantees you might want to model your own guarantee after.

We already took a look at a fantastic guarantee in the segment about proof. If you missed it, go back and check that out. It is a great example of a guarantee that removes all risk and makes the buying decision a no-brainer.

Here are some other examples… this guarantee from Aldi is simple:

Not only does Aldi replace the product if it’s defective in some way, they also give you your money back. So you have your money and the product. The buyer really can’t lose here.

Here’s another example I found and saved a while ago. It’s for a training called email triggers and unfortunately I can’t remember who the expert is that put on this training. The cost of the program was high… $3000 for a single day. And the guarantee reads like this:

You will make back your investment in 14 days of the workshop. Yes, in just two weeks you’ll get your ROI. Honestly, it’ll be within one email for osme of you. For others it’ll take a few days or a little longer.

You obviously have to implement what I’m teaching… but if you implement it and show me that it didn’t work… I’ll refund your $3000. I’ll pay for your hotel and flight. And I’ll pay an additional $3000 on top of that.

That’s a great guarantee. Again, you have nothing to lose.

Here’s a similar guarantee from our friend Tom Matzen…

Here’s a no-brianer guarantee from a copywriter. This is risky, but can really pay off if you can deliver on your promise…

I’ll do all the work to bring you a new 5-6 figure paycheck… totally risk free without increasing ad spend, building new funnels, or hiring and managing new staff. You only pay if we get results.

I’ll show you one more example… I showed you a “pay what you want” example from Todd Brown earlier. Here’s another promotion from him…  the hook is the idea of removing the risk. The headline reads: 

Putting his own money on the line, Todd Brown guarantees…

“Give me two days and I’ll double the revenue you get from every sale! …and you only pay after I’ve done it for you.

The take away from this segment is you as the copywriter need to do whatever you can to make it easy for your reader to say yes to your offer. Don’t give them hoops to jump through. Remove the friction. Remove the objections. Make it easy to say yes. 

Use the examples I shared here as well as the hundreds of other guarantees you’ll find in the swipe file included with the course.