The product staircase concept, otherwise known as the Value Ladder, has been around for many years and for good reason, it works.

Most businesses however have never even thought about this concept, most build products or create services with no thought at all to their relationship and how one product should be a stepping stone for the next.

Well now's the time to get your thinking helmets on and start to strategically plan out your product staircase once and for all.

The concept is a simple one. People need a few touches of a business before they buy. It's not rocket science to recognize that fact. Most of the time you target audience is just looking for a solution to a simple problem that is stopping them moving forward, blocking them from growth.

So the first step on the ladder needs to be something which will solve their problem and they can do it for free. This could be the first time they have ever heard of you, your business of your products. They don't know you from Adam, they have no reason to trust you and in their mind it's just a punt. They have no idea if what you have will solve their problem, but for free they are willing to have a go.

Remember this when you build you landing page, remember this when you put your lead magnet together and remember this when writing your follow up sequence. What you create here MUST impress. It must be good, professional and actually solve their problem fast, or comprehensively. You never get a second chance to make a first impression.

The overall end result of your product staircase is to start with the end in mind? What's you main product you want to sell? what's you big ticket product or service?

Now you can think of the steps that would make sense to your ideal client to get them there. There's not many people who would buy a $10K training program the first time they meet you, some people will want to solve problems that you can solve but will never do your $10K program. 

So the product staircase enables you to put together a number of steps an ideal client may take to get to the top of that staircase.

Let's go through the process

FREE Premium Product (Lead Magnet)

The product staircase starts with a free giveaway. This is your opportunity to start the conversation. Most of the time you will create a free gift such as a download, video, free trial, sample of mini training program. This is what we call the top end of the funnel. The first thing someone may ever see of you and your business, so it has to be good. It has to have value and it MUST solve a problem. 

The point is that if someone takes you up on your free offer they have self selected themselves in to receive more info from you, they have told you "I'm your target market, impress me' which I'm sure you will.

You now have them on your database and if you have the right software then you will be able tom follow them up, put them into your sales and marketing funnel the offer at the end could be a tripwire product. The next step on your product staircase.

Low Cost High Value Products (Tripwire)

A tripwire product is simple a low cost but valuable piece of content. Typically is would be solution based content, maybe a video series, training, tutorial or how to series. It could also be a 5 day challenge or a mini course.

These tripwire products separate lookers and freebie junkies from buyers. People who are motivated to solve a problem in their lives and happy to spend some money to achieve something or overcome something. 

Tripwire products could range in price from just $5 to about $50.

These are great for self liquidating sales funnels, where you can use paid advertising to push people through to your tripwire offer. The people who take up the offer fund more ads... 

Don't think about making money on these offer, they are really there to get people to:
1 - experience your business for a low investment
2 - Get people into your funnel so you can upsell them to more sophisticated solutions on your value ladder.
3 - to self fund advertising campaigns
4 - Build you reputation, authority, visibility and engagement.

Mid Range Value Product 

This is normally a money making program and part of your revenue. However it is a mid range program that is affordable to many. You will be driving people here both from your funnel, the people who bought your 'tripwire' product, but also to to a wider audience through discovery calls, speaking events and funnel driven webinars.. 

Typical price range would be $300 to $1,000 but could also be a lower cost recurring membership program.

You should be seeing this as a precursor step to getting people into your higher ticket products and services.

High Ticket programs are where all your top clients reside. This could be a mastermind program, high level coaching program or ongoing service.

As you can see, using the product staircase or value ladder will give you a clear path from free content, and more importantly show you what free content you should be creating to pull ideal clients into your funnel so you can have continuity from those free products all the way to your high ticket solutions.