Why you DON’T want to start your funnel with a tripwire

Despite what many people may believe, the majority of extremely successful online marketers do not use a trip wire.

Even though they often teach YOU to use one.

Here’s why I don’t think it is always the best strategy to use.

Look at offers from people like Rich Schefren, Frank Kern, Jeff Walker, Dan Kennedy, and Jay Abraham. None of them start their funnel with a tripwire.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with a tripwire offer, but it’s certainly not the only way to acquire new customers. If you really want to start with a lower-priced offer, start around $20 or $29.

Psychology of offers

Take a look at the psychology of the strategy. When someone comes to you and you offer a little $7 product, and then from there you try to sell them a higher-priced product, you are asking the prospect/customer to gradually step up with you.

In contrast, most of the highly successful internet marketers start with a high-priced offer. Something in the range of $200 to $500. What this does is it gets the “cream of the top”, so to speak.

There is a certain percentage of people who are going to take advantage of the higher offer like that.

Then we create a frame of value around the product for those who don’t jump in right away.

Very often, after the higher one-time payment, we come back with a payment plan. We get a number of people who jump in there, because instead of $299, now they can get started with three payments of $99.

If they don’t take advantage of the payment plan, we’re able to drop them down to a lower-priced version of the product, say, a $69 dollar version that we break out of the main product.

For example, if your main product includes weekly coaching calls with you, plus videos and swipe files, maybe you offer a streamlined $69 version that doesn’t include any of the calls with you, but it still includes the modules and the swipes.

What you have done, is establish the positioning of the higher price point.

At the end, if you want to, you can roll out a trip wire offer for anyone who hasn’t yet become a customer at the higher price points. But now they have a completely different mental frame; you have completely changed your positioning and how they view you.

Create and establish value

As another example, when I was running the marketing at Strategic Profits for Jay Abraham, we would hold events for $20,000 or $25,000. He would market those events to his list and get a certain number of people to pay that price to be in attendance.

The whole purpose was to create and establish value and worth around the information. Six months later, Jay could go back to the list and make an offer for the recordings of the same event that people had paid $20,000 to $25,000 to be a part of live. Now you could get this same event for one-tenth the price, $2000, and save yourself 90%.

Think of the frame that he just created. It makes that two grand for the DVDs look like an insane bargain.

Imagine if he hadn’t set that mental frame, and hadn’t positioned the live event for $20,000. What if he just tried to sell you a $2000 set of DVDs?

It’s a totally different perspective.

It reminds me of an individual who is told that they have cancer, and they have to go through massive treatments for the next six months, but there is a great likelihood that they will survive. That’s terrible, horrific news for them.

Then imagine that the person is first told that they have inoperable cancer and only a year to live. The next day the doctor calls back and says, “Wait, we made a mistake. You don’t need surgery. You just need to go through treatment for the next six months and you’re going to live.”

Now the person is thinking, “Thank God. That’s the greatest piece of news that I could have gotten today!”

I know that is an extreme example, but now you see that it’s all based on how you frame something.

For that reason, I don’t like to start with a trip wire. We start high and then go to lower-priced options. You might want to try this too.