You might have heard the concept of the value ladder at some point in your online marketing journey. It was introduced by Russell Brunson and I will explain it in this article.
The value ladder is a principle that Russell Brunson introduced in his book DotCom Secrets. It’s based on the idea that when you engage with your dream customer you do it by bringing your customer through different stages that can be represented as a ladder. At each stage, you provide more and more value to your customer and you get paid more in return.
Let’s go through it in detail and while reading this article think about how you can apply the value ladder to your business today.
Yes, it can be applied to any business!
Table of Contents
What is the Value Ladder
The value ladder is one of the concepts at the foundation of building sales funnels.
Russell Brunson talks about it in his book DotCom Secrets together with a lot of other principles that you can use to build profitable funnels for your business.
Let’s see what Russell has to say about the value ladder in the following video…
I’ve heard about the value ladder for the first time while I was reading Russell Brunson’s DotCom Secrets. One of those books that changes the way you look at your business.
It was a new concept to me. Then I realized that we live in a world where all the businesses around us that are successful implement their version of the value ladder.
Think about a free trial for Amazon Prime or Audible. Amazon gives you free value and in return, it keeps customers for life.
The value ladder is a framework that gives you a clear vision of where you want to bring your clients. From the moment they find your business for the first time (bottom of the value ladder) to the point where you can serve them in the best way possible (top of the value ladder).
On the left-hand axis of the value ladder, you can see Value, and on the bottom axis Price. The more you go up the ladder the more value goes up, the more you move towards the right the more expensive price becomes.
The idea is that the more your customers progress through the value ladder of your business the higher the value you provide to them and the higher the price of your products or services.
The relationship with your future customers can start with the value you give them for free in exchange for an email address.
This step is extremely important because it makes people aware of your business and provides immediate value to them: this is the first step of your value ladder.
Building a Relationship with Your Future Customers
But, what is the rationale behind the value ladder?
The value ladder allows you to build a relationship with your future customers by adding value to them first.
Would you buy something very expensive from someone if you meet that person for the first time?
Likely not, you might want to understand if you can trust that person first. You might want to see if that person can give you value first.
Provide value. Value builds trust.
This is what the value ladder does, it gradually builds trust with your prospects starting with a very low-risk offer, something you can offer for free to give value first.
The first step of the value ladder is very low risk because it doesn’t require any big commitments from someone who has heard about your business for the first time. There is no risk in providing an email address to receive something for free that you need right now to solve a problem you have.
As soon as someone receives value the natural reaction is to ask for more value. That’s why people start looking at what else your business offers that could help them even more.
And the more value someone wants the more money that person is willing to invest to get there. This is how natural progression through the steps of the value ladder works.
With the value ladder, you build trust with your customers over time. This increases the customer lifetime value for your business.
How Does the Value Ladder Apply to Your Business
Do you have a value ladder in your business right now?
If you don’t you are not alone. Very often most businesses just sell a single product.
The excuse could be:”I don’t think the value ladder applies to my business”.
But if you stop for a moment you might be able to identify a lot of other different ways you can provide value to your customer. This is the starting point to start creating your own value ladder.
How can you add more value to someone who has just bought your product?
Provide value, do it in a cool way, and give people a good experience and they will buy from you again and again.
As Russell says in the video: “Every page in your funnel is the next step of a mini value ladder”.
I’m really committed for you to seeing how the value ladder applies to your business today:
- Are you giving something of value for free to your prospects?
- How many products or services are you selling in your business at the moment? If it’s just one start thinking about where it sits on the value ladder.
- What other skills or potential products do you have that would allow you to add more steps to your value ladder that you are not using right now?
It’s very easy to underestimate our knowledge, to underestimate the difference we can make to someone else with the expertise we have built over the years.
There is a lot more you can offer to your customers outside of what you already offer them.
Why a Continuity Program?
You might have noticed in the picture of the value ladder included in one of the previous sections, that one element part of the value ladder is a continuity program.
The creation of a continuity program makes your business more profitable and sustainable.
Why?
That’s because a continuity program allows you to predictably know what your business will approximately earn month after month. The idea is to offer a subscription service to your customers.
An example of a continuity program could be the subscription to software that simplifies a specific process in your business.
Another example is the subscription to services like Audible to listen to your favorite books or Netflix to watch your favorite movies or TV shows.
Those services give consistent value to their customers over time and in exchange, they get a consistent and predictable monthly revenue.
The continuity program offered by Russell Brunson is ClickFunnels, a software that helps entrepreneurs create funnels to sell their products or services online.
Conclusion
Now that you know what the value ladder is, how will you use it in your business?
If you only sell a single product or service what could you give for free before your core product to increase the number of your potential customers?
If you already give people something for free and then sell them a product or service, what else could you sell them after your core offer as the next step of your value ladder?
This process will require a bit of thinking and creativity but once done it will allow you to scale your business online.
Also, if you haven’t read the DotCom Secrets book yet I strongly recommend it. It will give you a completely new way of looking at your online business.
I’m a blogger and entrepreneur. I want to help you in your journey to build your business online.
