What is a value ladder, why is it important to the success of your business, and how will it build trust and loyalty with your target audience?

As a first year entrepreneur, you see established brands selling their high cost offers with ease. Yet, you are trying to sell a low cost offer and no one is buying. What is it that the bigger brands are doing that you aren’t?

That’s where the power of the value ladder comes in. A value ladder helps to prime your audience for your high ticket offers.

Perhaps you have been on social media for a while and you are sharing valuable content consistently, but nothing has come from your efforts and you aren’t landing clients or making sales.

If so, it’s time to learn about the customer journey and how to implement an effective value ladder into your business. Having a value ladder is powerful as it will help you move your target audience from not knowing who you are to loving your content and buying from you.

While we may think our offers are worthy of immediate sign up, and that we are an authority and trustworthy… People who don’t know you, will not buy from you. And, even if they do know you, they may not be at the right stage to buy from you.

Enter the value ladder.

A value ladder aligns sales and marketing concepts, and will help you convert a cold audience to a warm and then hot audience based on the value you provide.

In this article, you will learn about the power of the value ladder and how to implement it into your business.

You will learn:

• What a value ladder is
• Why you need a value ladder in your business
• Upsells, downsells and backend sales
• Example of a value ladder
• How to get started.

What is a value ladder?

A value ladder is a flow of your offers that increases in value and price, meeting your prospects where they are at in their journey to becoming a client.

The ladder takes a prospect from awareness of your brand through to their decision to buy your high end offer.

When a prospective client first comes across you online, they know nothing about you, right?

So the chances of them purchasing your high ticket offer that is worth $1000+ is pretty darn slim.

BUT, what if you were to create a free or low cost offer that was enticing and attractive to your ideal client? You have removed the price barrier, so your ideal client is more likely to sign up for this enticing offer at a free to low cost.

Your ideal client will then be able to see the incredible value you provide. And you are able to demonstrate with that low cost or free offer that you are an authority. This is where your ideal client will begin to build trust and confidence in you, your authority, and your brand.

A value ladder helps to meet your prospects where they are at in their decision-making process and the stage they are at with knowing your business.

A value ladder clearly sets out your offers in price and value. Knowing that, your goal is to structure your offers so that you can hold your prospect’s hand through their journey of getting to know, like and trust you, and naturally move them along the ladder of your offers from free, to low, mid and then high end.

What’s key to moving your prospect further along in your value ladder is that every offer should be related.

So, it is a natural progression for your prospect to purchase the next enticing offer on the ladder.

And when they do, they will receive more value and gain a higher transformation.

Why you need a value ladder in your business.

A carefully created value ladder has the power to drive prospects to your business, boost your mailing list, increase loyalty and return customers, and catapult brand visibility.

Your goal is to have offers that meet your audience where they are at in their decision-making process.

Because, while we would like to be able to get everyone to purchase our high ticket offer from the beginning, it’s not going to happen!

You need to warm your audience up, and allow them to get to know you, see the value you provide, and build trust and confidence in you. The more trust and confidence your audience has in you, the more likely they will buy from you.

A value ladder helps you do that.

A value ladder helps you to convert a cold audience to a warm and then hot audience. All with the value you provide.

The hotter the audience, the more trust and confidence they have in you, the easier it will be to sell to them, and the easier it will be for them to hand over their cash to you.

AND, the more your audience gets to know you, the more value you provide and the higher the transformation will be, the higher the price.

So, let’s look at this in detail.

• If you have a cold audience, they don’t know you yet, so your goal is to demonstrate your authority and the value you provide. You can use a free or low price offer as bait to entice and attract them.
• With a warm audience, they know and like you at this point, but are not ready to purchase your high end offer. You have offers that meet them at this point. This offer has more value, a higher transformation, and an increased price than your free or low priced offer.
• With a hot audience, you have loyal clients! This is the client who is ready to buy your big ticket offer!

I equate a value ladder to enticing a bird to eat from you hands. That bird is initially cautious and it won’t come to you if you ask it to. But, the more seeds you provide, the more it will begin to trust you. You aren’t going to throw all the seeds at this bird and expect it start feeding from you. It’s a process. First, you will put the seed down and then step away from it. But, over time that bird will start feeding from your hand.

Upsells, downsells, and backend sales.

Once you have an offer suite of free to low, mid and high end, you can now more easily upsell and downsell.

To understand what this means, let’s look at a couple of examples.

• If you have a free guide, before your prospect downloads it, you can upsell them to your low priced offer.
• Or, if you having a discovery call with a prospect about your high end offer and they are not yet ready to commit, you can downsell them to your mid end offer.

Having a range of offers that vary in price and value means you can meet your prospects based on where they are at in their decision-making process.

Before we move onto examples of a value ladder, I want to mention backend sales.

While backend sales aren’t necessarily something you will consider in the early stages of your business, you want to know about them because they will help you reach your revenue targets later on.

Backend sales are sales that only your mailing list are privy to. These could range from 1 hour strategy sessions, or month intensives with you. You don’t promote these to the public. These are only for your audience that has established trust and confidence in you.

Examples of a value ladder.

There are many variants of values ladders and they differ in complexity. As a new business owner, a simple value ladder is all you need.

Let’s look at an example:

• Free offer: 50 Ways to Build Your Following on Social Media
• Low end offer at $27: Social Media That Sells – DM scripts to build community and hashtag groups to build visibility
• Mid end offer at $697: Group program – Social Media Roadmap and Business Foundations
• High end offer at $1997: 1:1 coaching.

You can see that each offer is related.

As you can see, from your perspective, you are moving your prospect further along the value ladder with intention.

And, for your prospect, it is natural for them to move further along the ladder as more enticing value is being provided at a higher transformation.

At every step as they get to know you, like and trust you more and more, the price increases.

People who know you, like and trust you, buy from you.

At the bottom of the ladder is enticing free content that attracts your cold audience. With this free offer, you are proving your authority with the value you provide.

What happens as you then move along the value ladder is that the more they get to know you, the more value you provide, but this time at a price.

A value ladder allows you to thaw a cold audience by providing enticing, valuable content at a free or low cost.

And, the more value you provide with your offers, the higher the price.

Let’s look at another example.

Without knowing it, your prospect is being intentionally moved along your value ladder.

• BLOG. Let’s start with a blog. Here you are sharing your knowledge and proving your authority.
• FREE GUIDE. At the end of the blog, you have a free, enticing guide that relates to the topic of the blog for readers to download.
• UPSELL. When readers go to download the guide, you upsell with a complementary low price offer. These offers need to be incredibly enticing that they won’t be able to get anywhere else, and will have them saying, “I cannot believe this is free / at such a low price!”
• EMAIL. Now they are on your mailing list. Here you can continue nurturing your prospect and building the trust and confidence in your brand further with email sequences, and getting to a point of selling to them.

As you can see, that first offer is irresistible, something a prospect would normally have to pay for. So, your first offer is either free or at a low price, and it acts as bait.

With that offer, without any pressure whatsoever your ideal client can clearly see the amazing value you provide.

Your intention is to provide so much value that is makes it easy for your prospect to choose you over your competitors.

You then become the go-to gal and they want to purchase your further offers!

A couple of things to remember with value ladders:

• Value ladders meet your prospects where they are at, and help them move along as they build trust in you.
• Value ladders also help weed out people who are not your target audience and aren’t suited to your offers.

How to create a value ladder for your new service-based business.

Remember that there are many ways to create a value ladder that works for your business.

Knowing that, here is a simple structure to get your value ladder kickstarted.

1. Define your ideal client and identify their primary pain points and struggles
2. List your offers and price them. (As a new business owner, you may only have one or two offers)
3. Create an enticing, free offer to hook your cold audience. You want your audience to see your offer and think ‘WOW, I can’t believe this is free!’ Examples: Blog, guide, video masterclass, webinar.
4. Break down your low end offer which should complement your free offer. Your low end offer should provide a step up from your free offer and provide a higher transformation. This could be templates, swipe files, a video training, an audit, or mini course.
5. Define your mid end offer. Your mid end offer provides a higher transformation, more value, and will require a higher financial investment. While your low end offers may identify problems that need fixing, for example an audit, the mid end offer provides solutions. This could be a group program, mastermind or 1:1 sessions with you that provide a roadmap.
6. Detail your biggest transformation and your highest priced offer. This is generally an active offer which provides 1:1 time with you, for example a 3-month coaching program.

If you are a new service-based business owner and you are ready to learn the fundamentals to grow a thriving business, download my latest freebie – Business Growth Accelerator Blueprint.

This free guide provides you with the fundamentals to starting your business, and the know-how to expand your visibility, community and authority.

Hi, I’m Simran! I’m a marketing and business coach with over 7 years of experience in marketing. Prior to that, I worked as a lawyer.

With all the experience and knowledge I gained in corporate, when it came to starting my business, I didn’t know where to begin. I found starting a business really overwhelming and it prevented me from taking action for a long time.

I don’t want that for you!

That is why, today, my mission is to help new service-based business owners start and grow a thriving and smart business from day 1.

I help you catapult your visibility, community and authority, and build solid foundations that will set your business up for long term success.

simran@simranksingh.co

KEEP READING:

• 10 ways to build your authority online

• Build a profitable business with effective time management

• How to grow your email list as a beginner

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