Have you heard about the value ladder and want to know what it is? Click here to learn about the value ladder and why you need to have one.
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Hi there, my name is Richard and you are now going to learn about the value ladder and how to create one.
The first time I learned about the value ladder was in the book DotCom Secrets by Russell Brunson. This system to do business is very important and I think everyone should create a value ladder in their business.
What most people think when they are reading about the value ladder is that they need to create everything at once. That way this is a huge task and overwhelming. You don’t want to create everything at once, but to start with one step in the ladder.
Russell Brunson, the co-founder of ClickFunnels, is teaching us to begin with the middle of the value ladder and improve it until you are selling for $1million a year. First then you want to create the other steps in the value ladder. More about this later.
Why do you want to create a value ladder?
If you have an expensive product you are selling, it's very hard to get new customers. You have not provided any value to the customer so they don’t trust you with their money. So you need to give them value first so they know you will deliver.
On the other side, if you only have cheap products to sell, you will struggle to make money. You will get new customers, but if they want more, you don’t have more to provide them so they go to other businesses that satisfy their needs.
So how do you solve this?
What is a value ladder
A value ladder is a system that you are recommended to have in your business. You want to have different products at different prices where you are providing the correct value at the correct price based on the customer’s needs.
When you create your value ladder, each offer should solve one problem and agitate another one. This way you can make people climb your value ladder.
You can see the picture below that shows you the principle for this.
I will give you some generic examples below for a value ladder later in this post.
The bait
You give something away for free, this can be a case study, report, mind map or cheat sheet. This is so you can give them value and educate them on their problem and how you can help them solve this problem or need.
This step is so you can get people into your business so you can educate them further on how you can help them.
You can create multiple baits to get people into your business.
The frontend offer
Then you have a low priced offer where your audience is taking a low risk to order this product, but they still get a lot of value. If they are still interested in your business and still have their needs, they will naturally want more.
You are also using the frontend offer to check if the subscriber will become a paying customer. Once you have turned someone into a paying customer, it's easier to make their climb your value ladder. A subscriber may never become a paying customer.
Another goal with the frontend offer is to make enough money that will pay for advertising. That way you will get customers for free. A paying customer is worth way more than subscribers.
You can create multiple frontend offer in your business to get different types of people into your business.
The middle
In the middle of the value ladder, you have your main offer. Your goal is to get most of your customers to this part of your value ladder where you can give the most value to a big audience.
Many people like Russell Brunson and Steve Larsen also recommend you to start with the middle of your value ladder when you are new. That way you are making money from the beginning.
You want to have only one offer in the middle of your value ladder. If you have multiple value ladders, you will not focus. Instead of having one awesome value ladder that makes you a lot of money, you have multiple ok ones that will typically generate less money.
The backend offer
Some customers want even more value and to those, you can offer a more personalized offer to a higher price. They have learned what you can do for them and believe they will get even more success with more personalized help. They understand that they need to pay more for this personalized help, but know from experience that you will deliver what you have promised.
The backend offers can have many steps where the price and value are increasing for each step.
The continuity program
You also want a continuity program to receive recurring payment for a healthy cash flow that will help you grow your business.
The Benefits of a Value Ladder
You want a value ladder to grow your business and help so many people as possible.
According to Jay Abraham, there are 3 ways to grow your business.
- Increase the number of clients, get more new prospects into paying customers
- Increase the average transaction, get each client to buy more at each purchase
- Increase the frequency that the average client buys from you, get each customer to buy from you more often
So how do you get more customers? You offer them a free or low priced product to get them inside your business. That way you can educate them further on how you can help them.
You can increase the average transaction by using sales funnels, but you also want to do this with a value ladder where you increase the average customer value by offering more products.
A value ladder is needed for every business that wants to grow.
How to Create a Value Ladder
There are different approaches to this, but the one Russell Brunson and Steve Larsen recommends are to start with the middle of your value ladder.
Start with your goal, what do you want to solve?
Then you create an offer where you are solving their problem. One tip is to do some offer hacking, both to get inspiration, but also see what you need to include in your offer that everyone else is also doing.
When you have the middle of your value ladder, you are actually ready to start promoting your offer and earn money.
Then you take one part of your offer that is the sexiest and gives a wow effect. This will be your frontend offer. Feel free to add some bonuses in addition to this offer. You now have a frontend offer that hopefully your audience will love.
The reason for you want to make your frontend offer sexy and valuable is that you want to overdeliver. You want your audience to get hooked and give you money. When they receive the offer, you want them to be impressed so they want to order more. Because they now know that you will overdeliver and give them more value then what they pay for.
As long you are over-delivering on each step, people will naturally ascend your value ladder for more.
One tip to structure your value ladder is that your customer begins with a done by you offer, then a done with you offer and ends with a done for you offer.
The done by you offer can be an ebook or book. The done with you offer can be a course where you are teaching them and also offering support. And the done for you offer can be an offer where you are doing most of the work for them.
If you want to learn more about value ladders, I highly recommend you to read DotCom Secrets by Russell Brunson.
