Don’t Offer A Dud

Tell me if this line brings up any memories for you…

“BUT WAIT… there’s MORE… !!”

We all remember those infomercials (or at least the memes)…

… but I doubt anyone would think of that as a gold standard to live up to with their marketing in 2025.

And yet… I see an absolutely WILD amount of folks doing essentially this exact thing when they offer their online course, coaching program, or membership site.

Sure, it looks a little different… but it still feels just the same to their prospective buyers.

So, I’ve got a little challenge for you. It’ll take about 8 minutes (promise).

For this week’s Sunday blog, I shot a quick little video of how I see entrepreneurs making this mistake every. single. day.

Give it a look… and then take a quick minute to double check and make sure you aren’t doing it yourself…

My name's Dan Walker and I want you to stop doing this with your marketing. And I don't just mean don't throw things off buildings. Although, yeah, that's also probably a little questionable.

What I'm talking about is what's called the thud factor. And this is a term. This used to be a thing in marketing, say, I don't know, 10, 15, 20 years ago, especially online marketing. But really, it was everywhere.

And it was the thought that if – when you actually – when your client actually got your thing, ‘cuz this was back in the days, think like you're actually shipping a course to somebody and CDs and books and stuff like that, that when they would set the box down on their desk or when the shipping company would come and set it down on their porch, it would make a big thud and see how impressive your thing is.

It's such a big, weighty, meaty item. It has so many things in it. Isn't that more valuable because it's more stuff? More stuff is more valuable, right? This is the good old but wait, there's more kind of theory. And stick with me here ‘cuz I know this is kind of marketing 101. 

And I know that you know that more stuff doesn't mean more value, but stick with me here. This one, it's kind of nefarious the way that this one can show up sometimes.

Here's how this usually plays out right now in the real world…

Someone has their offer. Good thought, huh? How's their offer? This is their course. Say someone's teaching how to learn how to play the piano for the first time. So, you got your course, right? So, what do we put in our course? and more specifically than what we put in our course. This usually shows up in the way that we talk about our course. So, let's describe what goes into this big beautiful learn-how-to-play-piano course.

Well, first of all, we have a nine module course. Yeah, that makes a thud. Then we've got a five-hour video demonstration. Oh, that's a thud.

We've got a 200-page report on the things that people usually mess up when they're learning to start playing piano. Dang, that's valuable. That's going to make a thud.

We've got an hour-long onboarding session so that when you buy this course, you can jump on a Zoom call with someone and over the course of an hour, they're going to guide you through the whole course and you can learn the inside and out of all of it. Nice thud there, huh?

What else do we got here? We've got 17 hours of demonstration recordings. 17 hours of your life you can spend watching somebody and seeing how they do it. Oh, that's a thud. 

Then you know what? We could sweeten this pot a little bit more, right? I mean, if you like to play piano, maybe you like to play guitar. How about we throw a whole guitar course in there, too? That'll really sell them thud. Which brings us back to this moment right here when this entrepreneur takes their brand new shiny nine-module piano course that they're super duper proud of. And they know that it works and they know that if people take it, they're going to get good at piano and they're going to love it.

But they take this offer, they launch it, and it ends up being a bit of a dud. So, what really happened here? Where did they go wrong? Well, the problem is that this entrepreneur, they took the magic and they turned it into modules. Instead of selling the transformation, instead of selling the result, instead of selling the ability to play the piano, the ability to express yourself through music, the ability to light up a space with music, instead of selling that, they sold well, they sold this. They sold, they sold a whole bunch of stuff that nobody really wants.

And look, just to be clear, I'm not saying that nobody wants their course. It's a great course and they really do get people to the transformation that they promise. But the problem here is that in that offer, this person, they didn't sell the transformation. They didn't sell the result. They sold a whole lot of work. An hour-long onboarding session, that's an hour that someone could spend actually learning. Instead, they're spending an hour getting walked through a program – nine-module course. Let's talk about what the course actually is going to do for them, not about the fact that it's going to be in nine modules.

A 200-page report. How about we talk about how you're going to identify the key mistakes that mess up new piano players and how to avoid them instead of talking about you're going to get 200 pages to read. And don't even get me started on bonuses. That's a whole another area where people try to thud their way to success. Instead, think about it like this.

Your job is to sell the transformation. Your job is to sell the end result. And just remember that everything leading up to that is a cost. Not just the money that someone actually has to spend to buy your offer, but also the time that it takes to consume it. Think about it. If you want to learn a skill, say you want to learn how to play piano, would you rather have 12 months of lessons to get to the point where you can play your first show for your friends, or would it be more valuable if you got three months of lessons that got you to that point?

I mean, in one case, you're getting 12 months of lessons instead of three. That's four times as many lessons, dude. But on the other hand, it's four times longer until you get the results you're looking for. This is absolutely crucial, and it's something that I see so many people get wrong.

In fact, I got a little bit of a challenge for you. Go back, look at your offer, whether it's one you've already put out or one that you're currently planning on. Look at your pages. Look at your squeeze pages. Look at your sales pages.

What are you promising? Are you promising a result? Are you promising a transformation? Or are you promising a thud?

And hey, let me know in the comments how you fared.

All right, I'm gonna go clean up that mess of an offer. And um I'll see you next week.