In today's blog post Michel pointed out the trend towards using exit pages (often with virtual assistants) and how offering a discount on your exit page without a good reason why may not be the most intelligent strategy.

In my opinion discounting is the lowest form of marketing.

It tends to reduce perceived value instead of increasing it and if your only strategy is to underprice your competitors it's just a matter of time before someone with deeper pockets than you and a better back end marketing strategy than you will send you broke.

Put another way in effective marketing discounting is never the primary marketing strategy it's a part of a more powerful strategy like breaking even on the front end to capture leads and make your profits off back end sales.



So what can you offer on your exit page?

I've tested various exit offers and the one we found made the most sales was revealing bonuses that weren't offered in the sales letter.

But I you really need to think about why your prospect is leaving your sales page in the first place.

As Michel points out most people aren't leaving due to price.

You need to make an attempt to deal with the most common objection or problem people have when they leave your sales page.

Another obvious strategy is to offer an email course or gift related to your product in exchange for an email address (or even just right there to download).

That can help pre-educate prospects who are already leaving on why they should buy from you.

Here's a gift for you to give you some more ideas. A full 13 page report you can download free...
5 Unblockable Exit Page Secrets

This report reveals a range of simple but very effective ways of keeping exit traffic (or any traffic) on your site longer, building their trust and turning them into loyal clients who will buy from you over and over.

Yes I did say build trust and loyalty. One of the biggest reasons prospects don't buy from you is because they don't trust you. Building trust takes time.

Kindest regards,
Andrew Cavanagh

Great post Andrew! As usual..

As a surfer, pop-ups don't bother me too much, but those chat assistants are annoying to me, usually making it tough to get away from the site, probably not a good thing if your trying to get away from a website. Course with so many marketers using them, guess they give some return.

It does seem like a last ditch, please buy this tactic. Also makes you wonder how many visitors are turned off by it. Not just the please buy mentality, but how many might be think, "gee, if I bought before I would have paid more".

I really like your exit ideas. Particular the instant download report, another great chance of trying to sell them and at regular price. Or as you said, another chance to build trust, or both. Sure gets me thinking.

Thanks again!

I agree. Never discount your product if they try to leave. You may get a few more sales, but it always makes me feel if they're offering a discount only AFTER I try to leave, then the value isn't there, like Andrew said. But also, what does this tell you about them as a trustworthy individual? What happens then next time they offer another product? Is this the *real* price? Am I gonna get hit with another discount when I try to leave?

Not only does it CONDITION them to leave your sales page to see if they get a cheaper price, they're going to be disappointed if they don't. They'll come to expect that as the norm, and it's not the type of customers you want to attract.

And like Andrew recommends, I set up my my exit popups to offer a free goodie that ultimately shows them the value I provide. Most of my customers (through tracking, I've learned this) only buy my products after they've come to know me, through my freebies, front-end products, and other content, and because they've bought from me before and know what to expect.

Get a reputation for overdelivering, and you'll attract like-minded people who go out of their way to tell others about you.

Some of my customers are among the most passionate when it comes to this. In fact, sometimes it can turn other people off when your customers are pitching for you without any promise of reward (i.e. no affiliate commissions and the like), because people think they're hawking your stuff only because there's a commission in it for them or you paid them to do so.

Even if nothing is farther from the truth, you know you're doing something right when that starts happening.

John

Great feedback and elaboration from both John and Ron.

If you're absolutely determined that you must make a sale
from your exit page here's another idea Michel touched on
in his blog with a little twist.

On your exit page you could offer a downsell.

If your product contains a series of reports and audio you
might offer just one of the reports at a lower price.

Then immediately after they buy you could make another
attempt to upsell them to the whole package or offer them
a package that included some of the other parts of the
package.

Personally I think it's way better to use the exit page to
build trust.

Exit pages are a fantastic strategy but all these attempts
at the hard sell are likely to increase the chance that
code makers on browsers like Firefox and Internet Explorer
will find a way around them.

If everyone was ADDING VALUE TO THEIR WEBSITE FOR VISITORS
with their exit pages then it's unlikely anyone would want
to block them.

Kindest regards,
Andrew Cavanagh

I agree with the comments but .... I've been testing the exit chat software and so far the results are very impressive.

Granted I totally customized the responses so that obviously has an impact on things.

I'm using a small 1 time only discount and its working VERY well.

I think its important to get as many people into your front end offer as possible because as most of us know its your backend where you make most of your long term profits.

so why not to whatever you can to get as many people 'in the door' as possible?

Like anything it all depends on your market, your relationship with them, your price point, pricepoint vs the rest of the products in your market etc.

I had the most annoying exit pop ever in existence. It had
a baby crying, a obnoxious stop sign flying in your face, and
discounted the price.

And it increased profits quite a bit.

For some reason I took it off, and can't remember how to
reload the damn thing.

Some may think it's the "lowest form of marketing" but then
again lot's of people just like to bitch about lots of stuff.

Some people HATE squeeze pages too. Should I stop using
those as well?

Personally, I like to make sure my business brings in more
money and as long as I'm not doing anything unethical, that
should be the main priority in my mind.

And just for the record, I actually love the fact that my exit
pop was the most annoying thing I had ever seen.

It SCARED THE PISS out of people when they tried to leave the
page.

Word of warning, don't keep your speakers on loud on this site.

Hey Jason.

I never said nor would I ever say that exit pages or exit page offers
are the lowest form of marketing.

I said discounting is the lowest form of marketing.

Exit pages are an absolutely BRILLIANT form of marketing because
they allow you to market to a defined segment of your prospects...
people who are leaving your sales page or your website.

If you can work out why they're leaving (you could do a survey
on your exit page to find out) then you can create an offer
specifically for that exit traffic.

That's very powerful.

But I think annoying the hell out of your prospects will just end
up killing this marketing method even if it does work short term.

Internet browsers will simply be adapted so exit pages no longer
work in much the same way that they were adapted so that
pop ups and exit pop ups don't work.

To put it another way, if filling websites with annoying hard sell
exit pages becomes common place we'll lose another very effective
marketing strategy.

That would be a shame.

Kindest regards,
Andrew Cavanagh

And inevitable. Marketing tools and techniques are like any other, they're basically value neutral in and of themselves. It depends on who's using them and how they choose to use them.

Those who use such tools to market to the lowest common denominator are the bottom trawlers. They drag their nets indiscriminately across the "sea floor," w/out regard to the damage they do the ecosystem.

I was recently browsing a "work at home" message board, and the amount of mistrust and ill-will out there toward marketers is somewhat sad to see, but certainly not unexpected.

Unfortunately, there's no way to keep folks from abusing tools. The market will eventually become inured to them, and those tools may eventually be rendered completely ineffective, or even declared illegal.

But, if worse comes to worse, we can always fall back on offering a great product or service that actually delivers on it's promises.

Hey Andrew,

My exit pop offered a discount for anyone leaving, I guess I left
that part out.

And I'll admit I've abused this strategy to the maximum. When I first
created the exit pop I was told I did it wrong, and that it was too annoying.

My reply was... "Sweet, annoying is exactly what I want."

I literally beat these people over the head to buy my stuff. (This is
a niche business that I barely pay attention to, but is quite profitable).

Heck, I don't even send these people content in the emails. I just
keep coming up with different ways to say "buy my ****".

It's definitely not a business to model, and I'll agree in the long term
may not be helping marketers as a whole with the exit pop strategy.

However, I'm curious why you think "discounting" is the lowest form
of marketing?

A few friends and myself have been teaching a discounting strategy
for the last couple years and it's collectively brought in hundreds of
thousands of dollars, and boosted profits by as much as 600% some
days(maybe even more).

I've done really well with some discounting strategies.

Is "Nordstrom" the lowest form of marketers because they do
1/2 off sales on their clothes?

Is "Target" the lowest form of marketers because they have
blowout sales on slippers?

Is "McDonalds" the lowest form of marketers because they run
deals on the Big Mac?

I'm a bit confused here?

Why is discounting such a low form of marketing (especially when
it has been proven many times over to increase revenues)?

And yes, I'll admit to be a "bottom trawler" a few times.

I've used and abused!

It's not like that was my intention going into the strategy, but
I'm just too dumb to figure out technology sometimes and the
damn thing just worked fine how it was so I left it and annoyed
the hell out of others.

But the buyers are damn happy cuz the product RULES.

And that's one reason I've never had a problem marketing so
hard because I've always been so confident in the product themselves
that I was willing to go to the edge on the marketing.