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Things you’ll learn in this episode of Doing It Online

• • • When you should never EVER use a money-back guarantee
    • My suggestions for when it’s a good idea to offer guarantees. 
    • Plus, how to protect yourself (+ your IP) when you do offer them.

  

  This week I answered the question: Do you need to offer money-back guarantees? And if yes, what should they be? There are definitely two sides to this, and I have to say I can understand both perspectives. 

  But! Every business is different and even if you DO refund on a digital product…how does that even work? It’s not like they can just give back all the knowledge they just got from you…?
  
  It’s a tricky one!
  

  Let’s chat it through together…

  

   

  Money-back guarantees: the origin story

  The history of the money-back guarantee is a bit salesy and gross. They used to be encouraged to be used in a business as a way of making people feel “secure,” and it wouldn’t matter if the buyer ever actually finished the program or not. The hope was they’d see the guarantee, pay and forget. 

  They were just used to make more sales.

  Ew, right?

  The Hello Funnels perspective…

  Personally? It’s pretty simple. I think you never, ever add them in to trick or manipulate people. You only add them in if they make sense.

  And there are 2 important factors in this. You want to be able to protect your intellectual property and also your team and your energy. So, it really becomes a personal choice. 

  I do go into all of this in more detail in the episode, (I always do) so it’s worth giving that a good listen if this is something you’re working through right now. 

  Now, I have to say, we don’t get asked this often at all, but when it does come up we have a clear plan to follow. Our policy is basically that we’re happy to offer a 7-day refund on anything that doesn’t require a time commitment from myself or my team. 

  Anything that does? That’ll be a hard no for a refund. 

  This is partly because we don’t want to lock our content out and detract from the experience of our real customers just to protect ourselves from the very small number of people who will come in and do the dodgy thing. 

• Over to you…

  A few quick tips for you:

  Know the requirements for your location. Every country is different. In Australia, we aren’t required to give a refund for a change of mind. In America I think it’s a little bit different. So get to know your rights and obligations first. 

  If you do offer refunds, I’d recommend keeping the refund period short. Seven to 14 days is a good window. 

  Make sure for any products you do offer a refund for that you drip feed out your content so they don’t get access to everything so they can’t jump in, download everything and then ask for a refund. 

  And lastly, remember this is about offering what’s right for you and your business.