What is Tripwire Marketing?

It’s easier to sell a product or service to someone who has bought from you before. It’s a matter of trust. That’s always been true, it applies to ‘brick and mortar’ shops, and maybe even more to online businesses where you often don’t meet your customer face to face.

Selling a so-called “tripwire product” is a great way to build trust between your company and your potential customers, and can turn leads into customers as a part of a larger digital marketing strategy.

How does tripwire marketing work?

It’s a fairly simple idea – but it’s important to remember, your objective is not to make money from the tripwire offer, but to grow your customer base.

A tripwire funnel involves offering a high-value product/service at a very low price, making it an irresistible deal. With a cheaper, inexpensive product, there’s a lower barrier to entry and people are more likely to try something low-cost, low-risk with a lower level of commitment. With this in mind, you should aim to offer something simple, but useful, for around £5 – £30. It should be considered a minor loss leader product.

Your first objective is to convert cold traffic into buying customers.

The second objective is to segment these new customers and identify which ones you can nurture with email marketing, social media, and other marketing channels to upsell your more expensive products or core service.

If you can deliver a good product, demonstrate your customer service skills, and build that all-important trust – these people are much more likely to buy from you again than cold leads. People who bought tripwire products were “10 times more likely to purchase the core offer” according to DigitalMarketer.com. Imagine what that could do for your conversion rate.

Tripwires vs Lead Magnets

Tripwires and lead magnets are similar but work in slightly different ways.

A lead magnet generates leads by giving something away FREE in exchange for their email address – to build your email list. But a tripwire is a low-cost offer that turns your leads into customers, i.e. an offer you might send to your email list. They are often used together, as in this example…

Using a tripwire offer ‘mid-funnel’ before pitching a high ticket offer is traditionally where they would be placed in a larger digital marketing strategy. It’s particularly useful to help identify which of your prospects who are most likely to purchase your products/services.

However, as lead magnets are not as effective as they were a few years ago, another increasingly popular option is to put the tripwire offer at the top of the funnel supported by targeted Social Media Ads and PPC…

There are pros and cons to using a tripwire as lead generation rather than a lead magnet. You’re selling something rather than giving away something for free, so you will get less leads. However, the leads you will gather tend to be better qualified, more likely to buy your core offering, and you can recoup some of advertising costs. If you’re worried about filling up your mailing list with email subscribers who only want freebies, this could be an option for you.

Components of a Successful Tripwire

A tripwire can’t just be any offer.

• A tripwire must have value in order to sell.
• A tripwire should be specific and related to your core offer.
• Your tripwire product must be high quality.

Much like selling anything, your offer needs to offer enough value for your prospects to want it, and part with their money to buy it. You might also want to offer a “money-back guarantee” to assure people that there’s no catch.

However the second point is more important – to help you understand which of your leads are more likely to purchase your core offering, the tripwire must in some way be related to it. A quick (but stupid) example is if you offered low-price spanners as a tripwire, how will that help you understand which customers will buy a gym membership from you? However, if you were to offer a half-price spin class, you’d be in a much better position to sell gym memberships.

Lastly, your tripwire item must be high quality. The objective is to build trust with your new customer, and your tripwire will be the first thing they buy from you. In order for them to even consider buying from you again they must be impressed with your offering, if it appears that you’ve cut corners or delivered something shoddy, you’re unlikely to ever sell them your core service.

Leveraging Fear of Missing Out

This is an optional component but can help get more leads off the fence and motivate prospects to buy. Let them know that your offer is not going to last forever to create a sense of urgency.

You can say you have a certain number of items that will sell out if they don’t act fast. Or for digital products, you can set a time limit or count down for how long the offer will be available.

Some Tripwire Product Ideas

We’ve used the spin class idea earlier to illustrate a point, but there are lots of types of tripwires out there. Here are some other tripwire ideas to get you thinking…

Part of an existing product

This is a common method of creating a tripwire offer. Sometimes called a ‘splinter offer’ because the concept is to break off a part of a larger product that can be used on its own.

For software, you can offer simple features, with other more advanced and useful features locked. Only when they buy the full software product do they get access to all the features. Free trials of Software As A Service often work this way, or you can offer a lower rate for the first 30 days.

If you sell online courses or workshops – offer the first few modules at a reduced price. Or can you repurpose your course into ebooks or videos to offer?

Books and eBooks

Thanks to self-publishing on platforms like kindle and on-demand printing, books have become a viable revenue stream – and with lower costs the sales of eBooks are growing faster than printed books.

This can be adopted for tripwire products.

The easiest method is to offer a downloadable eBook on your website. Or you can go down the print-on-demand route, which is a bit fiddlier but the customer then has a physical product, which is often perceived as better value. If you’re offering physical books, another option is to give the book away free, but the customer pays for delivery.

A note of caution – while adding ebooks to Amazon is easy, we wouldn’t recommend this approach. Amazon won’t share any customer data with you, which is the point of this exercise.

Excel and Spreadsheets

Spreadsheets are an interesting way to generate customers. With a bit of knowledge they can be easy to create – most businesses already deal with statistics, planning or accounting in one way or another, so you’ve probably already got this expertise within your business somewhere.

Pre-made spreadsheets and calculators are very valuable to the right customer – believe it or not, there are even online marketplaces dedicated exclusively to spreadsheets, for example: https://spreadsheetnut.com/

A good spreadsheet should explain how to use it correctly, so be sure you provide easy-to-follow instructions or better yet film some instructional videos on how to best use them.

Templates

Maybe spreadsheets aren’t your thing. But the concept can be expanded for other items – from MailChimp email templates, copywriting guides, leaflets and PowerPoint slides, there are templates out there for nearly everything.

Not creative? Is it possible to distil some of your industry knowledge into a ‘cheatsheet’ or ‘swipe file’? Many industries have complex strategies or tactics used by their employees to achieve success, you may have developed your own methods for doing things. -can you offer some of these as a Checklist or a Best Practice guide? Do you have Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) that can be anonymised or made more generic to work in other businesses?

You shouldn’t underestimate the value of demonstrating your knowledge and expertise, especially if it can save your customer some time.

Tripwires in your marketing funnel

A tripwire marketing campaign can be an incredibly valuable addi­tion to your existing marketing plan. Tripwire campaigns can ensure a smoother customer journey to convert your leads into buyers. And because they’re inexpensive, people tend to be more willing to give them a shot. If you haven’t tried a tripwire in your marketing funnel, you could be missing out.