Use bonuses, guarantees, and scarcity to increase the perceived value of your product
20 mins
On This Page:
- Stack Your Value
- Tactic 1: Enhance Your Offer by Value Stacking
- Maximizing Value with Bonuses
- Establishing Strong Guarantees
- Tactic 2: Implementing Scarcity and Urgency
- Rolling Cohorts to Drive Scarcity
- Amplifying Urgency with Seasonal Promotions
- Tactic 3: Customizing with Add-On Subscriptions
- Final Thoughts
Stack Your Value
The secret to making your offer irresistible isn’t always adding more—it’s making what you already offer feel like it’s worth more. That’s what this guide is about: stacking value.
You’ll learn how to use bonuses, guarantees, and scarcity to increase the perceived value of your service—without changing what you actually deliver. These tools trigger urgency, reduce buyer hesitation, and make your offer too good to pass up.
Let’s dive into how to stack value so prospects feel like saying yes is the obvious choice.
Tactic 1: Enhance Your Offer by Value Stacking
There are three elements to the value stack when offering a design product. All three of them enhance an offer to make a prospect feel like they better click the “buy” button immediately before the opportunity goes away.
- Bonuses: Use bonuses to give the impression that the prospect is getting more for their money.
- Guarantee: Use guarantees to reverse risk so prospects see no down side to buying your product.
- Scarcity and urgency: Use scarcity to decrease perceived supply and urgency to increase demand through perceived exclusiveness.
“But wait… there’s more!”
See what I did there? That feeling of getting something extra. That’s the power of a bonus.
Maximizing Value with Bonuses
Remember last chapter you bundled your products into a process? And the process had steps that happen in a sequential order, right? Each one of those steps is a solution to one of your prospects problems.
Transform your product offer by presenting the initial steps in your process as valuable bonuses, making your core offer seem even more enticing.
The last step in the process is the most valuable one, because it’s the closest to delivering the prospects desired outcome. However the previous steps are crucial because you can’t get to the final step without them.
Get this: That last step is the one you’re selling and the previous steps are bonuses you’re providing for free. This is completely a psychological tactic.
Understand this: A single offer is less valuable than the same offer broken into components.
The reason this works is we’re increasing the prospect’s perception of the price-to-value ratio. We anchor the price to the final step in your process. Then with each increasingly valuable bonus, that discrepancy grows wider and wider until the prospect feels it’s such a good deal it would be stupid to pass it up.
Think about the famous Ginsu knife infomercials from late night TV in the 90’s. The host starts the commercial by showing you a steak knife that costs $39 and by the end of the commercial he’s added a bread knife, chef’s knife, cleaver, a potato peeler, and five paring knives… all for the same original price of $39 for the bundle.
Presenting all the steps in your process except for the final one as a bonus, massively increases the prospects perception of the value of your offer.
Simply put: We want to employ bonuses because they expand the price to value discrepancy and get people to purchase who otherwise wouldn’t.
Establishing Strong Guarantees
The single greatest objection for any product or service being sold is risk. Risk that it doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do.
So, reversing risk with a guarantee is an immediate way to make any offer more attractive.
The key is to identify a client’s biggest fears. What are they most afraid will happen if they pay you?
Hint, their fears are tied to their objections:
- They’re afraid your process won’t work for them.
- They’re afraid your process is too hard or inconvenient.
- They’re afraid your process will take longer to work than you advertised, or worse, it won’t work at all.
Reverse their fears into a guarantee.
Address key customer fears by introducing robust guarantees, making your product a safe and appealing choice.
There’s two types of guarantees, you can use one or both but I recommend using both.
- The “unconditional Satisfaction-based refund”: If at any time they’re not satisfied with the level of service they’re receiving from you, they can request a refund. This is unconditional so it’s a little risky if you’re dealing with small-time customers pinching pennies. But if you only accept quality customers that are fair and good intentioned, you shouldn’t ever have to refund anyone, as long as you hold up your end.
- Second type: The “Conditional We-hit-Your-Goal no matter what” guarantee: If you do not achieve your goal in this time period, I will keep working for you, free of charge, until your goal is achieved. This essentially guarantees they will achieve their goal no matter what, but it eliminates the element of time. The key to this guarantee is to list actions a customer must take in order to be successful, those actions are conditions of the guarantee. This prevents lazy customers from working with you for free, forever.
Reversing risk is the number one way to increase the conversion of an offer. Experienced business-people spend as much time crafting their guarantees as the deliverables themselves. It’s that important.
Go ahead and make your guarantee something big, like a 25% increase in sales.
The beauty of guaranteeing a large ROI (return on investment), like 25% increase in sales, even if you only get them 5%, it shows that your process works and they’ll be thrilled.
There’s nothing unethical about making big promises if you can deliver even close to the promise.
Consider this: In 2009 Coca-Cola promised “happiness in a bottle”. In 2005 McDonalds promised their burger would “feed your inner child”. Do you think anyone returned a bottle of Coke because it didn’t make them “happy” enough, or returned a Big Mac because they didn’t feel their inner-child got fed? No.
As long as you provide enough value that your customer received a positive ROI, they will not request a refund, because buying your product was a smart move that they don’t regret.
Tactic 2: Implementing Scarcity and Urgency
Scarcity relates to the limited availability of your solution, while urgency is tied to time constraints.
Understanding human psychology helps us here: people are drawn to what is scarce and feel compelled to act quickly when time is limited.
Our goal is to position your solution as a sought-after, limited resource, enhancing its value and appeal.
By strategically reducing the perceived availability and highlighting time sensitivity, we not only boost demand but also enable you to command a higher price for your service.
Both tactics enhance the perceived value and demand for your service.
Essentially, we're making your offer too good and too urgent to pass up, encouraging immediate action from your prospects.
Rolling Cohorts to Drive Scarcity
Rolling cohorts introduce scarcity by setting specific start dates for your service.
For instance, stating that your program begins anew each month creates a window of opportunity for your clients.
The less frequent these start dates, the more urgent the need to join becomes.
Consider limiting the number of new clients you onboard each period – this not only manages your capacity but also amplifies scarcity.
Let your prospects know how many slots are available and how quickly they're filling up. It's a transparent way to show that your service is in demand and that waiting isn't an option if they're serious about joining.
This method grows in effectiveness as you consistently reach capacity, reinforcing the value and demand for your service over time.
Amplifying Urgency with Seasonal Promotions
Deadlines catalyze decision-making.
Instill urgency in your prospects by setting a deadline for your current pricing.
For example, a special rate available only until the end of January creates a clear timeline for action.
Time-limited offers pressurize decision-making, leveraging innate procrastination tendencies.
Seasonally naming your promotions ties them to a specific timeframe, enhancing the urgency.
This approach nudges prospects to commit now, leveraging the natural human tendency to delay decisions.
When prospects are aware that delaying could mean missing out on a beneficial offer, they're more likely to act swiftly and secure their spot or take advantage of your current pricing before it escalates.
Tactic 3: Customizing with Add-On Subscriptions
Let's talk about how you give more value to your services with some extras, kind of like when you're picking out features for a new car. Your proprietary process is like the standard car model, and you offer two special add-on subscriptions for those who want more.
The first add-on subscription is very exclusive access to you - think of it as a VIP service where you give personal advice, help them come up with ideas, or go over their projects together. Make this service really pricey because it's special and you're offering your personal time.
You can set up this VIP access in three levels: the first level would be a single 30-minute chat each week, the second level offers two chats a week, and the third level would include three chats a week. Price the highest level so high that it's just for those who really want that extra attention.
Another monthly subscription you offer is where clients get consistent help from you, similar to what some popular design services offer like design joy made popular by Brett Williams. They can sign up or leave any time and get a certain number of design tasks each month.
By having these extra options in the form of subscriptions, you let your clients customize your service to fit what they're looking for, making them more likely to choose you and stick around long term.
Final Thoughts
You’ve just learned how to stop selling your time and start selling outcomes.
By choosing a specific market, identifying painful problems, and packaging your services into a clear, valuable process, you now have a repeatable offer you can scale, price higher, and deliver faster.
Remember: you’re not a freelancer doing tasks—you’re a business solving problems.
When you:
- Sell a solution, not your hours
- Present your offer as a proven process
- Stack value with bonuses, guarantees, and scarcity
- Speak directly to your ideal customer
You become impossible to ignore—and hard to replace.
This course gave you the mindset and tools. The next step is execution.
Now go launch.
If you haven’t already, download the Workbook and Checklist PDFs to apply what you’ve learned. The real progress happens when you put this into practice.