# Guarantee Design

A guarantee directly raises *perceived likelihood of achievement* (the buyer thinks: "they'll only offer this if they're confident") and lowers *effort & sacrifice* (less emotional risk). It's one of the highest-leverage levers in offer design.

The wrong guarantee hurts more than no guarantee. Pick the type that matches your business model.

## The eight guarantee types

| Type | What it promises | When it works | When it backfires |
|------|------------------|---------------|-------------------|
| 1. **Unconditional money-back** | "Refund anytime within X days, no questions" | Low-priced info, high-trust audience | High-priced/high-touch; refund risk eats margin |
| 2. **Conditional money-back** | "Refund if you complete X and still don't see Y" | Courses, programs requiring effort | Sophisticated buyers; harder to honor publicly |
| 3. **Better-than-money-back** | "If it doesn't work, full refund + $X" | Confident delivery, ample margin | If you fail; the few failures explode publicly |
| 4. **Service-level / SLA** | "If we don't deliver X by Y, your money back" | Productized services, agency work | Vague SLAs you can't measure |
| 5. **Performance-based** | "Pay only when X happens" (rev share, results-based) | Sophisticated B2B, high-confidence delivery | Long cycles, hard-to-attribute outcomes |
| 6. **Anti-guarantee** | "No refunds. Make sure you want it." | Premium audiences, mature buyers | Confused / first-time buyers; reads cold |
| 7. **Outcome-or-extension** | "If you don't get X by Y, we continue free" | Coaching, services with extendable time | Open-ended cost; choose with care |
| 8. **Comparison guarantee** | "Beat [competitor]'s result or refund" | When you can credibly compare | When you can't measure the competitor cleanly |

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## Picking the right one

Decision tree:

1. **What's your buyer's biggest perceived risk?**
   - "What if it doesn't work?" → money-back family (1, 2, 3)
   - "What if you don't deliver on time?" → SLA (4)
   - "What if I pay and get no results?" → performance-based (5) or outcome-or-extension (7)
   - "Is this real or scam?" → comparison or specificity-based (8)

2. **What's your refund tolerance?**
   - Can absorb refunds at scale → unconditional (1)
   - Need to qualify refunders → conditional (2)
   - Confident enough to add a bonus on top → better-than-money-back (3)
   - Can't afford refunds at all → anti-guarantee (6) or no guarantee + strong proof

3. **What's your buyer sophistication?**
   - Premium / mature buyers → anti-guarantee can work; "we don't do refunds" reads as confidence
   - First-time-in-category buyers → strong refund guarantee; they need permission to try
   - Sophisticated B2B → SLA or performance-based; they expect commercial terms

4. **How measurable is the outcome?**
   - Clean and measurable → performance-based, comparison, or outcome-or-extension
   - Fuzzy / subjective → money-back family with a conditional gate (you completed the work)

---

## Examples by business type

### Course / cohort

**Strong:** "Complete all six modules within 60 days, submit the final exercise, and if you haven't [specific outcome] we refund in full." Conditional on effort, clear on outcome.

**Weak:** "100% money-back guarantee." No conditions = refund magnet for buyers who never engaged.

### Coaching / consulting

**Strong:** "After the first two sessions, if you don't think the engagement will deliver, we end it and refund the unused balance." Mid-engagement off-ramp builds trust.

**Weak:** "Satisfaction guaranteed." Means nothing.

### Productized service / agency retainer

**Strong:** "First month is a paid pilot. At the end, if you don't see [specific milestone], you don't pay for month 2 and we end on good terms." Clear gate, clear out.

**Weak:** "We'll work until you're happy." Open-ended cost. Don't.

### High-ticket info product (community, mastermind)

**Strong (premium audience):** "No refunds. The application process is rigorous because the value is real. If you're not sure, don't apply yet." Anti-guarantee works here.

**Weak (premium audience):** Generic 30-day refund. Reads cheap.

### Low-ticket info product (template, swipe file)

**Strong:** "30-day no-questions refund." The transactional bar is "I bought it, looked at it, didn't want it." Unconditional fits.

**Weak:** No guarantee. The buyer's risk is too high for the price.

### SaaS

**Strong:** Free trial *or* annual-prepay-with-money-back-in-first-30-days. Reduces friction without locking in unhappy users.

**Weak:** "Cancel anytime" alone — not a guarantee, just standard SaaS terms.

### Direct response / paid traffic

**Strong:** Double-your-money-back or comparable risk inversion. Direct-response buyers expect risk-reversal-heavy offers.

**Weak:** Vanilla 30-day refund. Doesn't differentiate from every other ad on the platform.

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## Writing the guarantee

The guarantee text matters. Patterns that work:

**Specific terms:**
> If, after completing the first 4 weeks of the program, you can't point to one specific business outcome you've achieved, email us and we'll refund 100%.

**Confident tone:**
> We know this works. If it doesn't for you, we don't want your money.

**Acknowledge the awkwardness:**
> Guarantees feel slimy. Here's ours anyway: if you do the work in modules 1–3 and don't see meaningful traction, we refund.

**Patterns that don't work:**

- "100% satisfaction guaranteed!" — generic, low-trust
- "Lifetime guarantee" — meaningless without conditions
- Multiple stacked guarantees — sophistication-collapsing
- Guarantees full of legalese — buyers skim and assume the worst

---

## Common mistakes

### Promising more than you can deliver

"Double your revenue or your money back + $1,000." If even 1 in 50 buyers fails and gets the bonus refund + writes a public review, the offer is permanently damaged.

Stress-test: what happens if 10% of buyers invoke the guarantee?

### Conditional guarantees with too many conditions

"Refund if you watched all 24 modules, completed the 6 exercises, attended every live call, and posted in the community at least once per week."

Buyers read this as "they made it impossible to actually get a refund." Trust drops.

Two conditions max. Three only if they're closely related (e.g., "completed the course AND submitted the final project AND emailed us a question").

### Hiding the guarantee in the fine print

If your guarantee is your strongest perceived-likelihood lever, *put it on the sales page in 24pt text*. Move it above the buy button.

### Forgetting to test it

Re-read your guarantee text every six months. The wording that worked a year ago may now be undermined by something you've changed about your offer.

### Treating guarantees as a substitute for proof

Strong proof + weak guarantee > strong guarantee + weak proof. Order matters. Build proof first, then layer on the guarantee.

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## The honest case for NO guarantee

Anti-guarantees ("no refunds, this is final") work when:

- Buyer sophistication is high
- Application or qualification process precedes the sale
- Price is premium-to-luxury
- Brand is established
- Proof is overwhelming

What you're saying: "We don't need a guarantee because the work is real, the buyer has self-qualified, and we won't engage in transactional refund games."

The wrong audience reads this as cold or scammy. The right audience reads it as confidence. Know your buyer.

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## The diagnostic

When auditing an offer with no guarantee (or a weak one), ask:

1. **What's the buyer's actual risk?** Make it concrete. ("$2K and I might not get more clients.")
2. **What guarantee structure reverses that specific risk?** Match it to one of the eight types.
3. **What's your honest refund tolerance?** Calculate refund rate × refund cost; can you sustain it?
4. **Does the guarantee match your audience sophistication?** Premium buyers want anti-guarantee; first-time buyers want unconditional.

Most offers don't have the wrong guarantee — they have *no* guarantee at all. Adding any guarantee is almost always a lift. Adding the right one is the lever.
