When you’re selling high-ticket items, it’s rare for customers to make a large purchase during their first encounter. They usually take their time, considering their budget and the value of the investment.
You might already be using free webinars or other resources as lead magnets to draw people in, which are great strategies. But let me introduce you to something that might just change the game- The Tripwire Offer Strategy
A tripwire offer is a proven funnel strategy that, if used correctly, can help you boost conversion of your high ticket sales funnels significantly.
In this article, you will learn more about Tripwire offers and how you can use them in your sales funnels to generate more revenue.
After reading this article, you will
- Understand what a Tripwire offer is and why it works
- How you can plan the right Tripwire funnel
- How to create a sales funnel using a tripwire offer in WordPress
- And a bonus section with unique tips to make your tripwire strategy more successful.
Eventually, you will be able to plan highly-converting sales funnels for your high-ticket products and start closing more deals.
So let’s begin.
The Concept of A Tripwire Offer And Why It Works
A Tripwire offer is when you let your prospects get a glimpse of your service, but not for free. The tripwire offer itself is basically an irresistible, high-valued product that you offer at an insanely low price.
Normally a tripwire product costs between $5-$50 at most. Now, this may not earn you a lot, but this small offer will open the door to selling your core offer to your prospects.
The idea is, when someone has paid for this small offer, they have already given a commitment of interest. This is a sign that if they have the budget and are impressed with the value they get from your initial offer, they may end up paying for your core high-ticket service down the line.
Let us look at an example:
Let’s say you coach start-up business groups to become successful in Social Media Marketing. And suppose your complete live sessions cost about $2000.
Now, not many start-ups will want to invest that amount of money off the bat. So what you can do is you can offer a paid Webinar, maybe for $10, to teach them to run their first Paid Ad, while promising them to get results based on your proven portfolio.
Once you create a funnel for this, you can advertise your funnel, and eventually, you will see several people signing up for your webinar.
Since it’s only $10 dollars, many will take the chance to see if it is really valuable. Now, once you host the webinar, if you manage to impress them, then you can offer them your core service which, if within budget, a few will gladly accept right away.
For others, you can run email marketing campaigns to bring them back to your funnel to offer your core services and eventually close more deals over time.
Since the tripwire product is of such a low price, it’s often irresistible to many who end up taking the offer even if they do not need it at the moment. So besides starting a funnel journey, the tripwire offer also helps to pay for the paid Ads you may have run to promote your funnel.
But more importantly, it helps you build up a long-term lead list that you can explore over the next few months to try and convert.
How To Plan The Right Tripwire Funnel Offer
Now that you know why tripwires work, your first step is to plan & create the right Tripwire offer and decide when to offer it.
Let’s walk you through some of the proven Tripwire offer strategies so that you can choose the right one for your business.
i. Split The Core Offer For Tripwire
This is a technique where you split your core offer product and break it into 2 or 3 parts.
In this regard, you can offer one of these parts at a low cost as Tripwire offer, and then funnel them into the bigger portions at a much higher cost.
Following are some cases where you can use the split offer approach as Tripwire.
- Multiple Online Courses
Let’s say you have a complete course in teaching “How To Run A Successful Affiliate Program To Earn A Fortune.”
What you can do here is you can split it into two:
– How To Recruit Your First 50 Affiliate Partners
– Complete Course On Running A Successful Affiliate Program To Earn A Fortune.
You may charge a small amount, maybe about $20 to get access to the first part of the course, i.e., “How To Recruit Your First 50 Affiliate Partners”. And then you can create a complete funnel around the prospects who purchased the first course, and convert many of them to subscribe for the complete course, maybe at about $500.
- Paid Workshops And Webinars
Let’s say you are willing to signup people into joining your Paid Workshop on “Building Up Your Own Online Coaching Business,” which may cost about $1500. Initially, you may host a paid webinar for about $50, maybe to teach “How To Start Building A Lead List For Your Business Coaching Service.”
Most of the people who will join your webinar will probably be start-up Business Coaches or Coaches that are struggling to find success.
Read the last line again. You can see I can pinpoint exactly what type of people will attend this webinar. That’s exactly what a paid webinar will help you identify.
The attendees in your webinar are your potential leads, and you can go ahead and pitch them your Paid Workshop and later run funnel campaigns to convert them.
- One-to-one Coaching Into Complete Service
Let’s say you are a Personal Fitness Coach.
You can offer to go for a paid 1-hour coaching session online at about $5. Most people who are concerned about their health and fitness will not mind spending $5 to see if you are the right coach for them.
You can take this opportunity to impress your potential clients in that 1 hour and then offer them your complete service, that may cost about $500 a month.
Since they signed up on the initial offer, they are already in your funnel and you can try and convert them to go for your full service in the next couple of months.
ii. Low-cost Trial As Tripwire Offers
If you are selling a high-ticket product or service, then a trial would be more convincing. But most people make the mistake of offering free trials.
You can rather offer a trial for a small fee, let’s say $5 on a 15-days trial. This little investment will mean the buyer will surely test out your product or service. And after a first-hand experience, there is a higher chance of a conversion.
Following are some examples of implementing a paid trial as a Tripwire offer.
- Trial On A Software Subscription
Software trials are the most common cases you will see online. But very few incorporate a paid trial. However, it is proven that paid trials actually work for the right software.
Ahref used a 7 days trial offer for $7 as Tripwire and then followed up with the monthly subscription offer. This worked really well. Ahref is one of the best at what it does and many people who took the trial ended up going for the monthly subscription as the tool proved to be as valuable as it claims.
You, too, can take a similar approach if you are confident with your software’s output. This strategy can be used to promote WordPress plugins.
- Gym Service Trial
If you own a Gym, you can offer a low-cost trial membership for a month. And if the client is satisfied, you can then offer a 6-months membership with a personal trainer.
So, this will not be a funnel for instant conversion. The initial discount will help you collect potential clients and you can then follow up with a sales funnel for your core offer and start reaching out to them via email and SMS campaigns.
- Supplement Supplies On Trial
Most people are very reluctant to switch the supplements they already take.
Now, let’s say you sell protein shakes. So what you can do is you can offer a first-time prospect to purchase a sample pack at a low cost of $20. And then you can offer him to get weekly supplies of your protein shakes at the original price, which could be about $200.
Having such sample packs helps to let buyers try out your supplies and then, you have a chance to convince them to go for the original packs at a higher price.
iii. ‘Free product – Just Pay For Shipping’ as Tripwire
This is an ingenious tactic that has worked really well for a while now. People love free stuff whether it is for business purposes or for everyday life.
Offering a free product always draws attention, but if you offer it as a lead magnet, then most people will take it but not bother using it anytime soon.
Rather, you can offer to give your product for free, but ask the buyer to cover the shipping fees.
Now, this product is rather the first part of your whole funnel. People who take the offer will get educated about your core product and then, you can run sales campaigns to bring these buyers into your core sales funnel and sell your high-ticket service.
Let us look at some of its use cases.
- Send A Free Book To Sell More Books
You probably have seen many writers offering to give you the book for free if you cover the shipping fees. What you probably don’t know is this has 3 specific purposes,
– It acts as a branding for the writer himself,
– The reader may refer the book to his/her friends
– The reader may want to read more books from the same writer.
The third purpose is mainly what you should be looking at if you are willing to create a sales funnel for books.
The idea here is, you offer this one book for free, and charge for shipping. Then you offer him a collection of books by the same writer. If the first book was good, chances are, the buyer will be interested in spending good money on buying a whole collection.
- Offer A Valuable Document To Promote Your Service
This is rather an old-fashioned technique that still works to date.
Let us look at ClickFunnels, for example. They are offering to send the Funnel Hackers Cookbook for free if you just cover the Shipping. This sounds amazing because that book is a gem.
But, let us look at the big picture here. This book is so well-written that people became a fan of Russell Brunson. Plus, the book also highlights several techniques that people can pull off using ClickFunnels. In fact, there are several soft CTAs to promote the tool. So, after reading this book, most readers will end up trying out ClickFunnels.
This can be a great approach for online coaches, psychiatrists, or counselors as well.
iv. Heavily discounted Initial Offer
This is a common Tripwire marketing strategy where you offer many correlated services but start with a low-priced offer on the initial service.
It is a common approach by most service providers, such as home cleaners, dentists, web development agencies, funnel builders, and many more.
Let us look at some of the cases where this is used.
- A Low-cost Cleaning Inspection
HVAC service providers offer $2 – $5 cleaning and inspection service as a tripwire offer. Afterward, they can offer their core repair services that usually cost more.
Most people are more likely to take the repair service after the inspection.
- Dental Whitening To Get Started
Most dental clinics offer low-cost checkups and teeth whitening services to bring in more clients. Then they market their regular dental service to their clients. Most clients end up going for regular monthly checkups for healthy teeth.
- Discounted Template Into Complete Service
A web designer can attract clients by selling web page templates at a discounted price. And then he/she may offer personal service for any specific requirement or at least for maintenance.
Important Factors To Make Your Tripwire Offer Successful
The above strategies are all proven approaches when using the Tripwire Offer. And the use cases mentioned for each strategy probably gave you a good idea about which approach is more suitable for your business.
Now, you do understand that the Tripwire offer should be related to the core offer. But there are more things you need to consider when using this strategy in your sales funnel.
i. Ensure Low Cost But High Perceived Value
The cost of the Tripwire offer is what makes it special. If it’s not of low cost, people are usually reluctant to try it out. At the same time, you have to ensure you are able to express its value upfront so that people are confident in getting the offer.
A low-cost offer that DOESN’T SEEM VALUABLE will always be considered as ‘not worth a penny.’
Even if the price is low, you have to clearly point out its value. The buyer has to feel like this will be more value for the money spent.
Likewise, your product/service actually needs to deliver the value you promised.
Your buyer will only be convinced to take your high-ticket service if they feel your service can truly make a difference.
They will judge your value based on their satisfaction with the initial offered service/product.
ii. Keep The Tripwire Product Incomplete intentionally
As much as you want to deliver the highest value with your tripwire offer, you have to keep some strings attached to be able to convert these buyers to your core product.
So, you need to keep your tripwire product incomplete so that it encourages people to purchase your core offer.
Set up your tripwire offer in a way so that the buyer is left wanting more. The initial product or service should be a small portion of the core product, and somewhat dependent.
Later you can offer the core product by highlighting the missing Legos that your clients won’t get in the tripwire offer.
For example, you can offer a beginner’s crash course on Web Design service.
Since it’s a beginner’s course, it will only cover the basics. Within this course, you can leave hooks and jargon in reference to certain topics in the Advanced course. This will create a curiosity among the readers to look into the Advanced course.
You can then attempt to run a sales funnel campaign to try and convince them to take the Advanced course
iii. Craft A Ready-to-deploy Tripwire Product
Your tripwire product should be extremely easy to use and ready to deploy, which will solve a small but specific problem for your clients.
For example, you can create a ready-made DFY template that people can easily plug & play on their website, before offering them to purchase your Premium Theme.
Or, let’s say, you can offer a highly-efficient execution list to run content marketing successfully, and then offer your Digital Marketing Training service.
iv. Keep Limited Slots For Your Tripwire offer
Yes, we love unlimited leads. But to sell tripwire offers faster, it is wise to embrace the concept of Scarcity.
Announce that this offer is for a specific number of people only, let’s say 50. That way, many will sign up simply because they do not want to miss a potential high-valued product at a low cost.
For example, if you are hosting a paid webinar as Tripwire, then you can limit the registration to 50 attendees only.
This will create a ‘fear of missing out’ scenario and will help to reach your target leads much faster.
See this example, here it’s mentioned that only 4 seats left for yoga training enrollment.
v. Use The Urgency Psychology In Your Offer
The Tripwire offer itself seems too good to be true, and if it’s available all the time, that is another red flag. It’s crucial not to make your buyers think negatively of your offer.
So what you can do is, you can keep the Tripwire offer accessible for a limited period only.
Smart sellers don’t stick to only one tripwire for years because overtime, this becomes monotonous, and there’s nothing new to offer to attract new clients.
Creating urgency with a limited-time Tripwire funnel will help to make potential clients take a faster decision as to if they really need it.
There are other factors involved in increasing your tripwire conversion. For example, your offer page copy should be very persuasive, and the page design should be specialized in highlighting the benefits of the offer. These are basic things that you need to work on whether you run a sales funnel or not.
How To Create A Tripwire Sales Funnel Within WordPress
Here are some successful Tripwire funnel flows that you can implement right away. Depending on your business type, you may test multiple tripwire flows before choosing the highest-converting one.
1. Using a Tripwire Upfront
Steps:
Tripwire offer > Mid-ticket offer as Order bump > Higher-ticket offer as Upsell
For example, a funnel for selling Gym Accessories would be
- A Workout Mat at a low cost as a tripwire offer
- A pair of Dumbbell as order bump at the checkout page
- An Exercise Bike as Upsell
2. Offering a Tripwire after Lead Capture
Steps:
A Landing Page To Capture Lead > Tripwire offer at checkout > Core offer as upsell
For instance, a funnel for selling a Personal Growth Program may look like this,
- A free Checklist on “Productivity Improvement” to capture the leads on the landing page.
- Offer a tripwire at the checkout with a 7-day plan to “Overcome anxiety & boost self-esteem in a Week”.
- Offer your core service “60 days Anti-procrastination program” after the checkout as a one-click upsell offer.
3. Using Tripwire + Upsell for Hyperactive Buyers
Steps:
Tripwire offer >> Immediate Upsell offer >> Downsell offer
Let’s imagine a funnel for selling Graphic Design Software…
- $1 Trial On a Graphic Design Software 3 days as Tripwire
- Offer a Lifetime license worth $499 as upsell offer.
- Upon rejection of upsell, offer a $99 Annual license as downsell
A funnel is not limited to just one strategy. You can combine multiple strategies to get make it more successful.
As you can see in the scenarios above, you can use order bumps, upsells and downsell offers to plan your tripwire sales funnel more efficiently and get better results.
Now, the scenarios above may seem complicated, but don’t worry. It’s actually quite simple. You will find several funnel builders that can help you build Tripwire sales funnels in WordPress easily.
And one of the best funnel builders you can use to do so is WPFunnels.
WPFunnels will let you plan the funnel steps visually on a drag and drop canvas, and then you can set up your funnel steps with the offer products, and persuasive copies to turn it into a sales funnel that converts.
Now, it can often get confusing how to distribute your products among the order bumps or upsell. The visual canvas will make it easier to plan the offers for your funnel.
Let’s go ahead and learn to create a Tripwire funnel using WPFunnels, which will give you a good idea of how you can create your own funnel flow using this plugin.
Step-by-Step Guide To Create A Tripwire Offer Funnel Using WPFunnels
For this guide, we will create the following funnel –
Core Offer: A Personal Life Coaching Service worth $1000.
Tripwire Offer: 3-Days BootCamp On Staying Motivated In Every Scenario for $15 only.
Lead Magnet: A Checklist For An Organized Daily Life.
Following will be the funnel steps for this case:
- A Landing Page offering ‘A Checklist For An Organized Daily Life.’ as a lead magnet upon providing a Name & Email.
- Offer a 3-day BootCamp with instant sign-up for $15.
- Make an Upsell Offer for your Personal Life Coaching service at a 20% discount, i.e., $800 instead of $1000.
- A Thank You Page with instructions on the next step.
So in WPFunnels, you will need to create a funnel with four steps:
- Landing
- Checkout
- Upsell
- Thank You
However, you will also need an Automation tool for this.
Normally, you would want to send a copy of the lead magnet via email when someone signs up. Plus, you would want to follow up with the people that do not accept your offer.
For this purpose, we will use FluentCRM along with WPFunnels.
Now, let’s go ahead and create the Tripwire Sales Funnel for the Personal Life Coaching Service.
Step-1: Create A 4-step Funnel
- With WPFunnels, import a pre-made funnel template or create a funnel from scratch. [Guide]
For this case, you may import the Life Coach funnel. Once you import it, remove the Downsell step and you will have the four steps funnel required.
Step-2: Offer Your Lead Magnet On Landing
- Edit the Landing Step and design the page to promote your Lead Magnet. But do keep hooks for the core offer at a lower section on the landing page.
- On this page, use the WPFunnels Opt-in form to collect leads for people who want your checklist. [Guide]
- Set up an integration so that when someone signs up, their data will be sent to FluentCRM and added to a certain list and tag. [Guide]
*You may choose to use other automation tools such as MailChimp, ActiveCampign, ConstantContact, or other supported tools with WPFunnels, other than FluentCRM.
- Then, you can set up email automation in FluentCRM to send out the lead magnet.
Step-3: Set Up The Tripwire Offer
- Once the Landing Page is ready, go back to the funnel canvas and assign your Tripwire product as the main offer in the Checkout settings drawer. [Guide]
- Next, edit the checkout step and update the hero section content with your Tripwire offer copy.
- Allow the prospect to signup immediately via the checkout form.
**Make sure to edit the checkout fields to keep only the ones you need.
The Tripwire offer copy should be carefully devised to highlight the benefits of this offer, and why they should get it, plus a hook to whats next.
- Anyone who signups up for this offer, set up an automation to send their data to FluentCRM with a unique tag.
**This tag will help you determine the people who have accepted the lead magnet but didn’t go for the Tripwire offer. So in FluentCRM, you can run email automation to target people without this tag, and run an email funnel to promote either your Tripwire offer or your Core offer.
Step-4: Offer A Post-Purchase Upsell With Your Core Offer
- Now that you have the Tripwire offer ready, assign your Core service as the Upsell offer. [Guide]
- Offer a small discount on your offer to make the buyer feel important. In this case, you will give a 20% off on the $1000 service. You can easily offer this discount on the Upsell settings drawer. [Guide]
- Then edit the Upsell page and devise a persuasive sales copy for your core service.
**Make sure to highlight what they will get, how this will change their lives, and your past notable accolades.
4. Later on, set up an integration to send the buyers’ data to FluentCRM with a unique tag for those who accept the Upsell offer.
Step-5: Thank Your Client And Guide Him With The Next Step
On the canvas, edit the Thank You Step and design this page with instructions on what’s next. [Guide]
And that’s it. Your Tripwire funnel is ready.
Now here’s the thing. Since it’s a Tripwire funnel, most of your buyers will not purchase the Upsell right away. Does that mean you let them go?
No. Now that you have the funnel to get qualified clients, you need to create a second funnel for your Core offer only.
So for this case, we will create a 3-step funnel where we will have a Landing page to promote the Core offer, a checkout page to sign up for the core service, and a Thank you page to instruct on the next step.
Let’s go ahead and do that.
Step-6: Create A Second Funnel With 3 Steps
- In WPFunnels, you can import the Life Coach Free template to get the 3-steps: Landing, Checkout, and Thank You.
- Here, first assign the core product, i.e., Personal Life Coaching service, as the main product at the checkout.
- Next, edit the Landing page and write a persuasive sales copy to promote your service. You may also highlight any discount that you have offered for this service. In this case, a 20% discount to save $200.
- Once the landing page is ready, edit the checkout page and optimize it to match your core product.
- Then, edit the Thank You Page and provide information on the next form of contact or details about getting on a call.
Step-7: Set Automation To Bring In Buyers From Your Tripwire Lead List
- Now, in FluentCRM, set up an automation for people who has a tag for Tripwire acceptance, but not for Upsell acceptance. [Guide]
- Make sure to include the link to this second funnel in the CTA of the automation email
And that’s it. Your funnels are ready and you can start your sales funnel campaign.
**P.S. Only promote the 1st funnel. Use the second funnel only to convert the ones that did not convert in the Upsell in your first funnel.
3 Proven Tripwire Examples to Get Inspired
As you approach the implementation of your own tripwire strategy, let’s look into some real-world tripwire examples that stand out in their effectiveness and innovation. These cases not only show the diversity of tripwire approaches but also illustrate how creatively they can be adapted to different business models.
1. Blue Apron: Meal Kit Discount Offer
Blue Apron draws in food enthusiasts by offering the first meal for free, showcasing the convenience and quality of their meal kits. After the initial free meal, they present a tripwire offer that includes a 50% discount on all meal plans for the first month.
This pricing strategy encourages new users to continue with the service at a reduced rate, allowing them to experience the full benefits of regular meal kit deliveries before committing to the standard pricing.
Funnel details
- Funnel type: Single Step Tripwire
- Lead Magnet / Content Asset: First Meal Free
- Tripwire Offer: Discounted Meal Plans for the First Month
- Tripwire Price: 50% off the total cost for the first month
2. Exceed Nutrition: Offer Wall Style 2-Step Tripwire Funnel
Exceed Nutrition introduces a unique twist by using an offer wall after their lead magnet, which presents a free vegan recipe pack. This method showcases multiple tripwire offers, allowing customers to select which product best suits their needs.
By doing so, Exceed Nutrition not only caters to a broader audience but also enhances the chances of matching the right offer to the right customer, thus boosting the potential for sales.
Funnel details
- Funnel type: 2-Step Tripwire Funnel (with offer wall step)
- Lead Magnet / Content Asset: Free Plant-Based Client Recipe Pack
- Tripwire Offer: White Label Recipe Pack
- Tripwire price: $47 (50% Discounted from $97)
3. Canva: Low-Cost Design Tool Offer
Canva attracts users with its vast array of free design templates, suitable for all types of digital content creation. After engaging users with these templates, Canva introduces a tripwire offer for their Pro version at just $1 for the first month. This approach effectively showcases the enhanced features and tools available in the Pro version, encouraging users to upgrade by demonstrating clear value at a low initial cost.
Funnel details
- Funnel type: Single-Step Tripwire
- Lead Magnet / Content Asset: Free Design Templates
- Tripwire Offer: Pro Version at a discounted rate for the first month
- Tripwire Price: $1 for the first month (regularly $12.95/month)
These examples showcase how businesses can effectively utilize tripwires to enhance customer engagement, increase sales, and smoothly transition leads into loyal customers through strategic, value-oriented offers.
Author’s Note
Tripwire funnels are among the most successful sales funnel strategies out there. And if you sell high-ticket products or services, then this tactic can be a game changer in helping you close more deals every month.
Make sure to run different Tripwire offer campaigns every month so that you can get a regular number of clients and people do not get bored with the same campaign over and over again.
As you just saw, it’s really easy to create Tripwire funnels using WPFunnels and FluentCRM. So if you are using a WordPress site, then don’t waste any more time and start creating your Tripwire sales funnel now.
Get WPFunnels today.