High-Ticket vs. Low-Ticket Offers: Which Should You Choose For Your Business?

When you’re trying to build a business that works for you, it’s important to make sure that you’re creating the right types of offers that will get you to your revenue goals in a way that actually works for you.

So it’s important to understand the difference between high-ticket and low-ticket offers.

Because if you want to have a $10k month, let’s say, you can get there in any number of ways depending on what you’re selling.

You could sell one or two higher-priced offers, or a ton of really, really low-cost offers, or several middle-tier offers, or some sort of combo. There’s an endless assemblage of ways to make this happen.

But they all have different pros and cons that may or may not work with how you operate or what would work best for you.

In this post, let’s go over how high-ticket offers function in your business, how low-ticket offers function, and how to decide what’s the right option for you and your business.

Should You Focus on High-Ticket Offers?

A high-ticket offer is usually about $500 or more. At least that’s my definition, but it’s different for different people.

There are times when it seems like selling something higher-ticket will get you to your goal more easily. 

That’s mathematically correct. It only takes one person to say yes to a $10,000 offer to hit a $10,000 goal.

But at the end of the day, if you don't feel comfortable with a $10,000 offer, or if you don't feel comfortable selling one, you're not going to be able to competently show up and sell that.

And then you're gonna have zero sales. 

There's a lot of psychology in this. 

I don't necessarily agree with the idea that selling higher priced things to fewer people makes life easier. 

But if you have the confidence and the marketing strategy in place, go for it!

So, What About Small-Ticket Offers?

On the flip side, while it may feel less scary to sell something for $100 versus $10,000, you also need to get in front of way more people in order to hit your revenue goal.

There's no set conversion rate for any industry or anything like that. But generally speaking, we need to get lower-cost items out in front of way more people. 

It’s easy to think that if what you're selling is $30 or $50, wouldn't everyone just get it?

The answer is 100% no.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t be successful.

There are several programs now where people will teach you how to create small paid offer funnels. Sometimes they're called “self-liquidating offers." Courtney Foster-Donahue calls them “pocket products.” LEP calls them “tiny offers.”

These offers are usually between $20 and $50. 

You've probably seen paid ads for these types of offers, which is why they're called self-liquidating offers – because of how the cost of advertising weighs against the profits.

Here’s an example of how this typically works:

Let's say you buy a $37 thing from a paid ad. 

Generally speaking, there will be an order bump on that sales page. It might be something that's $20, something that partners well with the thing you just bought. 

Then, when you're at the checkout page, a one-time offer pops up. It may be something that's a little bit more, but it's also complementary with the other things that you just got, not something way out of left field. It’s a natural suite of products designed to help you with your intended goal. 

So, you're paying to get these customers in your orbit at, say, $10 per new lead. Not everyone is going to get the one-time offer, but let's say, on average, people spend $85 on this funnel, then you have made a profit of $75 on average.

A profit is a profit. And your lead cost has been liquidated by what people are purchasing from you.

This is one way to make pretty good money from low-ticket offers, and it works really well when you have it set up correctly.

Do You Need Multiple Offers to Make a Low-Ticket Offer Work?

Not everyone needs to sell two or three different offers right off the bat. You could offer just an order bump, or just a one-time offer.

Or maybe you just get people into a funnel after that first low-ticket purchase – then you can nurture them on the back end, like in your email list, and sell them into much higher priced stuff later on.

But trying to sell one low-ticket thing really requires knowledge of ads or outsourcing.

There's nothing wrong with doing that. Unless you’re morally or ethically opposed to paid advertising or selling.

It is something that can totally be done, though, and be done really well. 

This isn’t what I see a lot of people doing.

What I see so often is people selling lower-priced things by trying to market them organically to enough people to get enough conversions to hit their revenue goals.

This is really hard. Like much, much, much harder. Unless you're super lucky.

If you already have a gigantic, really engaged platform, maybe you can simply send out an email of a low-cost thing and people will snatch it right up. If that is the case, that is amazing. Congrats. You always know that there's money in your list. And you can do that when you have a lower-cost thing. 

But if you are still in that list-building process, or even in the social media channel growth process, it’s much harder. 

That’s not to say you can't put something out to your list or your social channels and people won’t purchase it. You absolutely can. But it's going to be harder.

If one lower-cost item is your only thing and you are trying to sell it month after month, you need to regularly add new people to your list to get it in front of fresh eyes all the time.

Am I Even Marketing to the Right People?

And while you’re thinking about your offers and pricing and considering your audience, ask yourself this: Who are you marketing the offers to? How does it fit into your overall suite of offers?

There's more to think of than low-ticket versus high-ticket offers.

It's important to understand that different people like different price points. 

Different types of offers are actually going to be meant for different people.

It's not as simple as just saying, “This thing is really inexpensive. Of course people would want it.” 

I'm going to illustrate this with myself.

I used to struggle with this as I was raising my own rates, because I thought, “Oh my gosh, I'm gonna have to give more to these higher-cost offers. How am I gonna sell them to the people I'm speaking to right now? They're not even buying this thing for $500. How can I get them to commit to monthly commitments at that rate?”

What I had to grapple with and change my thinking around was that I'm actually speaking to two different people with one-time and monthly offers. 

I kept getting stuck on the same question. If the people in my audience are not the right people for a $1,500 total commitment, then they’re certainly not the right people for $1,500 per month, six-month commitment, right?

Or if they are, if I haven’t been selling the other lower-cost thing, maybe it's because it's not the right thing. Or maybe my messaging is off. 

There's so much more to selling an offer than just saying, “Here’s this thing. It's amazing. And it's only $50.” There's a lot more to it, even if it’s $1,000. There's more nuance and thought that needs to go into the marketing for it.

The more clarity you can get on who is perfect for that particular offer and speak directly to them, the easier any offer on the spectrum will be to sell.

Why?

It doesn't always make sense to sell something that is super inexpensive, hoping that people will buy more.

For example, I have a podcast interview with a Pinterest expert, Presh Rodgers where we talked about this a bit.

There are some really great, lower-cost (under $2,000) resources on learning Pinterest. Some are even free. Some are programs you can invest in that give you all the ins and outs of Pinterest marketing.

However, I personally do not want to spend my time, energy, or attention on that. I just don't.

I’m very lucky to be at a point where I would rather spend $3,000 on a done-for-you Pinterest strategist than purchase a $300 mini-course on Pinterest for entrepreneurs.

But you see, I’m that client who decides the lower-cost options aren’t for me. I’d rather spend $3,000 than $300 to use my money and time in a way that better suits my business needs, rather than trying to learn all the finer details of Pinterest.

This makes me a very different buyer than Erika from four years ago, who was just getting started in the online space. 

Back then I might have said, “Ooh, a $300 Pinterest course. Hell yeah, I'm gonna go through that! I'm going to leverage it. I'm going to get more traction out of these blog posts. I'm going to get more people on my list. What a great value, $300.”

That Erika would have used her time to learn and execute. 

Now, I do not want to use my very limited time on learning and execution. I would rather leverage more money to get results.

Again, I’m very fortunate to be at this place.

And some of your clients might be in this place too.

This is where it's important to note that even if right now you're thinking, “Where am I gonna find these people? I don't know how to reach these people. I don't know how to speak to these people. Who are they?” 

Trust that if you have a lower-cost offer and clients aren’t biting, there are other people out there with different needs, different desires, and they would be happy to pay you more than that.

The Solutions Are Different for Everyone

So, we’ve come back to the dichotomy of the high- to low-cost spectrum. 

There are people on that spectrum who buy at lower costs, and there’s all the way up to those upper echelon people, who are buying a $10,000 offer.

There are people out there who will want you, as a service provider, to take care of everything at a premium price so they don’t have to deal with that problem themselves but will still get results.

And then on the other end of the scale, at the $100 offer, there are people who may not want to spend a lot of money, but are also willing to DIY it more to get results. 

There’s always a trade off between investing more time or more dollars to solve the problem.

And when they’re in the middle? 

Depending on what you do and who you serve, it's generally a combo of things done with you that require a moderate amount of the client’s time and energy.

And there are always exceptions.

Here’s How You Find Your Solution

So where do you go from here? How do you hone a suite of products that work well together on this spectrum to help you hit your revenue goals?

For starters, get really clear on who you serve, how you serve them, what their struggles are, and what their desires are.

Then, think about the ways you're going to serve them.

For example, social media managers and strategists could have low-cost workshops, mini courses, full courses, anything like that on the lower end of the spectrum. These would probably be under $1,000, or even under $500. Just walking people through things like content planning, hashtag research, graphic creation, and then they are going to DIY it. 

Then at the highest end, the same social media manager would provide a $10,000 done-for-you brand package with branding assets, a launch calendar, and would execute a full-fledged social media marketing strategy.

And for the people in the middle, maybe it's an offer for a $2,000 four-week group program where the social media marketing manager goes through all of the key components that they utilize with done-for-you clients to teach them that framework so they leave knowing how to effectively manage their own social media for themselves.

Or it could be an intensive, where clients meet up with the service provider, create a plan together, and the clients get a few templates they can use and the information they need so they can post for themselves.

If this was you, you would be marketing each of those as part of your business as a whole. 

But when you speak about a specific offer, you're going to want to get more nuanced with your messaging for who you are speaking to. 

It could be somebody who has taken your course and might now be ready for the done-with-you intensive. You need to discern their needs and their desires and what they're willing to invest in.

Your clients are going to fit into smaller niches of people who are perfect for each offer. You want to talk about that in your messaging. That way you can go back and follow up with that person who already invested in a done-with-you intensive and say, “Hey, I wanted to check back in. It's been six months since we spoke, but I have room for another full-management client. Interested?”

Chances are someone who knows your methodology works, who trusts you, and who is getting results from your previous work with them already will be more open to take things up a level.

There's a natural flow up the ladder of your offer suite to get people who are already in that flow to experience a new way of working with you. 

This doesn't mean that everyone is going to perfectly graduate to the next thing all the time. But when there is a next logical step that makes sense, you have something that organically makes sense for your clients.

And if you just want to have one offer, you're also allowed to have one offer. You don't have to have an offer stack or anything if you don't want to.

But as you grow and learn and gain more experience and knowledge, it makes sense that your prices rise over time. That's also a way to naturally make more money in your business overtime.

So again, there’s no one-size-fits-all for high- and low-cost offers.

Whatever you feel comfortable with, do it. If that’s a super high-cost item – hell yeah, go for it.

If you have to work yourself up to certain offers, that’s okay too.

But if you find that you’re struggling to figure this all out, just remember: You're speaking to a person who may want a different offer, but they still want the same result. Just get a little bit more nuanced with your messaging around your offers.

And always, always continue to bring new people into your orbit. If those people have the opportunity to know that you even exist, then they will be able to see themselves in your offers better and be more likely to invest in them.