“Use a strong guarantee” is standard advice in direct marketing.
Without a strong guarantee, your sales will slow to a trickle since buyers are hesitant to buy products over the Internet, phone, or by mail sight unseen.
But what exactly makes for a “strong” guarantee?
A strong guarantee has 5 defining characteristics and your guarantee should possess these qualities too.
First, length: as a rule of thumb, the longer the guarantee, the better.
Typical guarantee periods are 10, 15, 30, 60, 90, 180, and 365 days.
Of these, 10 days is the weakest, because it requires the prospect to act too quickly for comfort.
The buyer is afraid that, if he puts the product aside, the guarantee coverage will expire, and he’ll be stuck with a product he can’t return.
And so he doesn’t order in the first place.
30 days is a standard guarantee period, and certainly adequate.
60 and 90 days are better. All the information products I publish and sell online are guaranteed for 90 days.
I don’t like lifetime guarantees, because it creates a financial liability on the books that may be problematic when it’s time to sell your business.
6 and 12-month guarantees may be worth testing, but won’t work for some products. For instance, a 1-year guarantee doesn’t make sense for an annual directory.
The second consideration is the conditionality of the guarantee.
Meaning: are there strings attached? Or is it unconditional?
A conditional guarantee might say: return the product in saleable condition for your money back.
The buyer is concerned that you will quibble with him over “saleable condition.”
That is, you will refuse to issue a refund for a book he returned because, say, the dust jacket has a smudge on it.
Another conditional guarantee is the one used by many sellers of small business and investment home study programs.
They say: if you are not satisfied, send back the course for a refund; just “prove to us that you made some effort to follow our system”.
When you ask for a refund, they ask for more and more proof—and whatever you send, the seller counters that “you didn’t do what we said” (or do enough of it)—and denies your refund on that basis.
Much better is to offer an unconditional guarantee. Tell the customer all he has to do is return the product for a full refund—no ifs, ands, or buts—without question or quibble.
The third quality of a strong guarantee is that everything is clearly stated and spelled out.
Be careful about wording that the consumer can misinterpret.
For instance, a performance-based guarantee—”If you do not earn extra money trading options with our program, return it for a refund”—sounds good but contains a potential concern…
Does it mean that if I DO make some extra money with the product, I can’t return it? Even if I only made ten bucks?
Rewrite the guarantee so there is no condition or ambiguity stated or implied: “If you do not make extra money trading options with our program, or you are not 100% satisfied for any other reason—or for no reason at all—just return the program within 90 days for a full refund.”
Fourth, the guarantee should be graphically emphasized within the promotion.
Don’t bury it in body copy or put it in an asterisked footnote in 8-point type.
Print the guarantee in 12-point copy with a large, bold headline. Put a box or even a certificate-style border around it to make the guarantee stand out.
Fifth, how generous is the guarantee?
The best guarantees are unfair—but unfair in favor of the buyer, not the seller.
That means if the customer takes advantage of the guarantee, the seller is, in a sense, getting ripped off.
Example: for regular books sold via mail order, the guarantee is simple: return the book and we will send you your money back.
But think about the same guarantee for e-books…
Can the customer really send you the e-book back?
Do you expect them to send back the copy they printed out…or sign an affidavit that they erased the e-book from their hard drive…or shredded the print-out? (Some online marketers have done just that!)
Most information marketers skirt the issue of returning e-books in their guarantees.
They say: if you are not 100% satisfied, let us know within 90 days for a full refund.
No discussion about returning or erasing or not using the e-book takes place.
In the landing pages I write to sell the e-books I publish (see for example www.myveryfirstebook.com), I go a step further: I turn the fact that the customer does not have to return the e-book to me into a benefit.
I say: “If you are not 100% satisfied, let us know within 90 days for a full refund. And keep the e-book free, with my compliments. That way, you risk nothing.”
In a recent Internet marketing seminar, DP, who heard me talk about this point in my presentation, said that he too tells his customers to keep the e-book even if they ask for a refund.
But DP has split-tested it. And he swears that “keep the e-book free” increased his conversion rates on average by 21%.
The bottom line? Make sure your guarantee is:
1. Long—90 days is ideal for most offers.
2. Unconditional – no strings attached.
3. Clearly stated with no ambiguity or possibility of misunderstanding.
4. Highlighted with bold typography, color, and graphics so it really stands out on the screen or page.
5. Overly generous so that if the consumer exercises the guarantee, he is essentially taking almost unfair advantage of you, the seller.
The overriding principle of a strong guarantee is to take all the risk off the buyer’s shoulders and place it on the seller’s shoulders—as it should be.
Bob Bly is the author of “World’s Best Copywriting Secrets” and has written copy for more than 100 companies including IBM, Boardroom, Medical Economics and AT&T. He is the author of more than 75 books and a columnist for Target Marketing, Early To Rise and The Writer. McGraw-Hill calls him “America’s top copywriter”.