Buying traffic is easy.
Converting them is hard.
And turning them into repeat customers is even harder.
Look, most purchases are one-time transactions.
People arrive.
They buy.
They disappear.
If that’s your entire model, you don’t really own a business.
You’re simply selling a product.
A real business works differently.
It provides distinct values to its customers at distinct price points.
It’s like climbing a ladder. The higher you go, the more you receive, and the more you pay.
That ladder of ascending value is called: The Value Ladder.
The Value Ladder
It shows:
- how to craft multiple offers,
- how to position them at distinct price points,
- how to use funnels to guide customers from one step to the next.
Imagine value on the left and price on the bottom. As customers rise through your ladder, both value and price rise with them.
Typically, it begins with a free or low-commitment offer, then:
- front-end offers that you typically sell between $1–$100,
- middle offers around $200–$2,000,
- premium back-end offers above $2,000.
Your value ladder can be modest or massive. Size matters less than intention.
Define the Mission Statement
Before building your value ladder, answer three questions:
- Who is your dream customer?
- What results are they chasing?
- How does your opportunity help them get there?
That becomes your value ladder mission statement:
We help (who) to (achieve what results) through (what new opportunity).
After making this big promise, you design distinct opportunities at each step, each delivering a higher level of value.
And with every step they take, users move closer to their ultimate goal.
A few years back my friend Anup, built his business around this concept. But he learned this the expensive way.
See, he used to sell a $199 UX course by pushing paid traffic straight to a landing page. And the page had everything marketers worship:
- clever hooks,
- a decent story,
- an irresistible offer.
Yet sales refused to happen.
Why?
Because prospects didn’t trust him.
They couldn’t judge the value in advance.
And many weren’t even sure they had $199 to risk.
Frustrated, he told me about the situation. And knowing nothing better, I suggested he flip the approach.
Start with a squeeze page whose only goal was: give free, genuine value in exchange for an email address.
His mission became:
We help (professional UX designers) to (learn selling and becoming independent) through (our No-BS UX Design Anymore course).
Now, people could experience him before paying.
It made them think:
“If the free stuff is this good, the paid course must be serious.”
That single shift built:
- credibility,
- conversation with the doubts in their head,
- confidence to purchase the $199 step.
Once the outcome was proven, climbing higher felt natural.
So he designed two more products:
- A live event for $1,499.
- A mastermind for $5,000.
Fewer customers, yes—but deeper commitment and larger impact.
That’s exactly how ladders behave.
Funnels Must Evolve Too
Each level on your value ladder requires a different funnel.
- Free offers need simple lead funnels.
- Front-end offers need unboxing funnels.
- Middle offers require presentation funnels.
- Back-end offers demand phone funnels.
But no matter what funnel you use, the backbone never changes:
Hook → Story → Offer.
If conversions struggle, the fault is always hiding in one of these.
Fix those.
Don’t fix the soul of your idea.
Leave a Reply