What is a freebie and what does it do?
Offering a free product is a common way to find leads in the online world. The free product is usually a digital download and is something that helps a prospective customer solve a problem – hopefully the same problem that your paid products and services solve. It’s somewhat similar to going off to Costco and being offered a free sample of the food products as you wander the aisles. You taste the product, and Costco hopes that if you like it you will add that product to your shopping cart.
Often used in digital marketing, a lead generation (lead gen for short) freebie is delivered to the prospect who asks for it through an immediate digital download after that person has provided you with their name and email address. In the online world a freebie lead gen piece is used to create your list of prospective new customers, so that you can reach out and market to those prospects using e-mail and social media.
What are some examples of free lead gen that can be digital downloads?
You can be as creative as you want to be when you design your digital lead gen. Here are just a few examples of what you might use.
- Audio recordings
- Videos
- Sample chapters of your book
- An e-book
- An e-course
- Checklists
- Templates
- Case study or “white paper” on the topic you offer paid solutions for
- Short live workshops or webinars
- Complimentary evaluations for prospects of a piece of their business or home, based on what you offer as solutions from your business
- Quizzes
TIP: You can download a no-cost copy of The Ultimate List of Opt-In Incentive Ideas to Feed Your Funnels from my friend Cindy Bidar. She has compiled a great checklist of lead magnet ideas in her list. (This is my own affiliate link.)
What to do with your lead gen piece once you have it
One of my own email subscribers asked the question, “what do I do with my lead gen once I have it? How do I use it and where do I post it?”
Here’s how I think strategically about lead gen, what it should do, and what to do with it once you’ve got it, which I answered in this video.
The truth is that we should think about how we are going to use our free lead generator before we start to design it. We have to answer a few key questions.
- What can we offer that is truly useful to someone who doesn’t yet know us but needs what we offer?
- Will what we are offering lead the prospect to take the next step with us?
- What is the next step we want the prospect to take?
- Do we have an email system set up to collect and store the names and email addresses of those who want our free offer?
Get my 5 Step Lead Gen System (free resource)
If you want to sharpen your lead gen skills you can download my entire 5 Step Lead Gen System course, which helps you get better results from your lead generation offers, even if you now have free lead gen offers that aren’t helping you build your prospect list or don’t see many follow-on sales. To get a free copy of my 5 Step Lead Gen System course browse to my complimentary products page.
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