Episode #019: Creating High Converting Freebies
Creating High Converting Freebies
In today's episode we're answering the question:
What makes a GREAT and HIGH CONVERTING Freebie?
When you tune in you'll learn...
-> The 4 key elements of a high converting freebie
-> How to choose the best format for your freebie
-> The important steps to create a freebie that converts
So tune in, and enjoy the show!
Links Mentioned on the Show From Zach:
Full Transcript:
This is Not Your Average Online Marketing Podcast, episode number 19. And in this episode, we're talking about what makes a freebie or lead magnet great and high converting? So let's get into it.
Hey, hey, hey, not so average marketer. I am really stoked for this week's episode, because we've been doing a lot of behind the scenes stuff in the business, creating new freebies, content, trainings, and it's been so much fun. I recently created a workbook around creating the perfect freebie, which we'll link up at the end of this show.
But I thought, wow, because we created this freebie, it's already been getting some positive feedback. Why don't we do an episode where we talk through how to create a really great freebie? When I talk to people about running Facebook Ads to grow their email list, a lot of times, one of the pushbacks I get is, "Is my freebie good enough?" Or even sometimes people say, "What should my freebie be?" I want to do an episode where I talk about what creates a high converting freebie.
Now, just to be super clear, if you don't know, a freebie or a lead magnet is something that you give away in exchange for a name or email. It's usually a PDF, a mini course, an audio series, but it's something digitally tangible that people can download in exchange for a name and email that moves them into your fold and gets them on your email list.
So for me, there's really four key elements to a high converting freebie. And what I want to do today is give you some of the key elements, talk you through some examples, help you figure out how to develop your own freebie and share with you my freebie creation and launch process. So let's do it.
So what makes up a great freebie? Well, the first thing that I tell people is that your freebie needs to be relevant. What some people do is, for example, let's say I teach Facebook Ads, but I know that Instagram Reels are really hot right now. I could make a freebie on Instagram Reels that will probably perform pretty well. It's probably going to get some traffic and traction, which is great.
But if I'm selling a Facebook Ads offer and I bring people onto my email list with an Instagram Reels offer, there's going to be a disconnect. So before you make a freebie, you need to think about, what do you want to sell down the road in your emails and your launches? Is this actually related to your core offer?
I always start there, even though there's more important elements, but I always start there, because when I come up with an idea, I want to ask myself, is this idea going to lead people down the correct path? And if not, what do I need to tweak, change or revise?
Second element of a high converting freebie is, is it desirable? Now, a lot of times we hear in the education space, teach what you know, teach what you're good at, teach what you're an expert in. But the reality is you've got to make sure that it's not just what you know, it's what people actually want.
So let me give you a really specific example. I have a friend who does Instagram training and she could do a training that's like how to create the perfect Instagram bio. And is that important? Yeah. Do people need that? Yeah. But let me tell you, people looking to learn Instagram generally want more followers, more sales, or how to use hashtags or how to use Reels. So we need to ask ourself before we create our freebie, is this something people are actively asking or looking for? Is this something that they really want to download? So it can't just be information. It has to be information that people want to use.
Now, this is where it gets interesting. It's more than just quality information. It also needs to be in a digestible format. What I mean by that is make sure it's usable. So we have to get in the mindset of someone who's signing up for our email list. Generally, we're advertising for us with Facebook, we're interrupting their scroll and saying, "Oh, get my thing, get my thing. It's really going to help you."
But if they go to get my thing and it's a three hour training and 10 modules, and I'm going, "I'm going to give so much value that people just can't stand how much value is there," that can backfire. Because there's not a massive investment in your freebie. They've given their name and email, which is great. But it's like, is there really a major commitment yet? No. So too much content will actually overwhelm new subscribers. It doesn't mean it can't be robust. It doesn't mean it can't be valuable, but it needs to be digestible and manageable for a new customer.
And that brings me to the fourth and final element of a really good freebie, which is that it's valuable. Now, I think we've all downloaded a freebie where it's like five or 10 words and a bunch of blank pages. And it's like fill in this space on your own. There's nothing wrong with that.
But for me, when I create a freebie, I'm asking myself, is this really valuable? Does this serve my audience? It's not just superficial information. Because in my experience, people will take note of high value, first touch information, and they'll be more likely to join you later down the road when you promote a product, because they're going to remember, "Oh my gosh, that freebie was so good. How good is the paid content going to be?" And that is really one of the tenets that we have at the Not Your Average Online Marketing Podcast and Not Your Average Membership is that we want people to realize you can lead with really valuable content, and people will still buy from you, love you and appreciate you.
So, super quick recap, we want a freebie that's relevant to our core offers, desirable to what people want, digestible and usable in a short period of time, and valuable to our audience. I find that one of the best ways to really get in here is to give you an example of some of our freebies. So one freebie that we ran in December of 2021, we released a 2022 planner for online course creators that crushed it for lead generation. We got over 3,000 new leads in 30 days.
Why did that work so well? Well, it was relevant. Inside of our membership, we were teaching how to plan your 2022 and it lined up with our monthly focus in the membership. We could actively use it to promote our paid product.
Second, it was desirable. Most people in the business want to plan their year. They want to have a solid plan. They want to figure out what's going to work well for them. So we made it super desirable. That's a big reason that it worked so well.
It was digestible. We kept it under 20 pages, so that people would be more likely to use it. We didn't make this big, robust 50, 60, 70, 80 page planner. We kept it short. It was right around 14 pages. We made a video to go with it, to make it feel really easy to use.
It was valuable. I sincerely believe we could have charged 15, 20 bucks. It doesn't need to be worth a million dollars. It just needs to be worth more than what they paid, which is a name and email. I sincerely feel that that video and planner could have sold for even more. So that one worked really well.
I'll give you another example. We had over 1,500 opt-ins for our ultimate guide to Facebook Ads for launching, which was a PDF with complete instructions, what to click, calculators to figure out how to plan for your launch with Facebook Ads. And it worked so well, because it was relevant. We were leading into a Facebook Ads promotion. It was in a direct alignment with what we were going to be promoting.
It was digestible, because while it was a big guide, we broke it up with images, calculators, arrows. We didn't just throw a wall of text at people. We made it interactive and fun. It was super desirable. Everybody wants to grow their email list with Facebook Ads, and everybody wants to launch with Facebook Ads. So it was super desirable, in the sense that people wanted what we were offering.
And finally, it was valuable. This is a tutorial we could have easily shot a video for, packaged up, sold. In fact, we've sold Facebook Ads trainings with our information in the past. And now we're just making our information even more accessible and available, and we made it free. It worked super duper well.
So those are just a couple examples. And this is a process, the process of looking at the four touch points, the relevant, desirable, digestible, valuable. We use this all the time. In fact, we just, like I told you at the beginning of this episode, we just created a free beyond freebies. We launched our ads about 24 hours ago. And our lead cost is already down to $1,80 per lead and dropping. Because we go through this process and we create something that people want.
So when it comes time to start to figure out what you want, the first thing that I do is, before I create a freebie or try to figure out a topic, I figure out how does my audience most likely want to receive their content? Do they like audio files? Do they like workbooks and checklists? Do they like calculators? Do they like printables? Do they like mini courses? Do they like live workshops? I just like to get into the mind of my perfect customer and I ask, what are they available for?
So, perfect example that I love to give is if your target demographic is busy moms with two kids at home, maybe they're even a stay at home mom, you don't want to create a two hour workshop. Because they've got two kids at home, they're busy. A printable or a checklist might be better because it's quick, it's easy. They can use it. They can go through it and it's going to help them get results faster.
If your target demographic is a full-time entrepreneur who's only working 20 hours a week and is always looking to up their game, then a workshop might make more sense. Because they've got the time and capacity for it, or a mini course or a calculator, because they're more advanced in their business. So determining your impact starts with, what does my audience actually want to, and what will my audience actually consume?
There's also a flip side to that coin, which is how much time and impact you want to make. So the way I think about it is there's this hierarchy of impact and time commitment. So if you want a person with low time commitment, you probably want to do a checklist, a workbook or a printable. I find that workbooks and printables have a higher impact, because I can put in more information, but they also have a higher time commitment.
Whereas a checklist is a low time commitment for them, but it also has a lower impact, because you don't get to showcase your knowledge. Calculators are a great way to connect with certain audiences, but it can take a lot of time for them to figure out how to use it and go through it. It can take you a lot of time to build it. And then the highest impacts are workshops, mini courses, trainings. They're high impact, but they also take a lot of time commitment from your audience and from you.
You have to ask some questions like, what can you commit time wise to creating? What would best serve your audience in terms of content consumption? And I always ask the question, what will my audience most likely use? I want to be in a high impact area. So checklists and calculators are great, but workbooks, printables, mini courses are higher impact, but they also have to be in alignment with what I have time for and what my audience has time for.
I want you to just start thinking, what is the highest impact piece of content I can create, that my audience will still digest? And I love this quote by Anne Handley that says, "Even when you are marketing to your entire audience or customer base, you are still simply speaking to a single human at any given time." And that's how I want you to think about this. Who is that perfect customer? Who do you want to be speaking to in a one-on-one fashion that actually would move you towards your goal?
So once you've figured out what format you want to use, then you can ask what major problems does my audience face that I can solve? I like to just think about three to five major issues that people come to me with. If you've been in business for a while, ask yourself what is the recurring theme for my audience? If you're not, that's okay, here's a simple way to think about this, lead with a problem. So if you're not sure what to create a freebie on, use a problem that you know people in your space are having and solve it. Solve that problem.
Let's just continue with the Instagram example, if they're saying, "I need more followers," say, "I'll help you get more followers on Instagram." Mirror back to them what they're saying. The second thing is have an outcome. When you're thinking about your topic or problem that you're solving, what is the clear outcome that your audience wants to have? So for example, the outcome of this freebie that we created, or this episode is that if you finish this process and you go download the workbook and you fill in everything that I'm talking about, you'll have the idea for your freebie.
And finally, remember that nothing is permanent. We create and test new freebies all the time in our business. It is safe for you to create, test and refine your freebies.
We talked about this a little bit earlier, but if you want a stellar freebie, then you have to solve a specific problem. And so if you were doing, let's continue with this Instagram example, you wouldn't just say, "Oh, my topic is getting more followers on Instagram a free guide." You want to get really specific with your topic. So something like get your next 1,000 followers blueprint would be a really strong way to promote your offer.
So just think about what is that specific problem? What is that specific outcome I can create? And how do I position that as a freebie? Now, if you want to grab my freebie workbook, which outlines everything that we're covering here today, you can go to heartsoulhustle.com/freebie. Again, it's heartsoulhustle.com/freebie, F-R-E-E-B-I-E. We'll have that freebie workbook waiting for you.
Because if you want to download that, you can check out, we actually have, one of our tricks for creating really, really, really stellar content and stellar workbooks is to use Creative Market. So Creative Market is a marketplace where you can go and actually download Canva templates. Now they have a ton of other stuff, graphics, things like that. And it's a really great place to just go download a Canva template of a workbook, change it to your brand colors, change it to your brand fonts. I can whip up a pretty freebie if I know my content, really quickly, few hours for a really robust workbook that looks beautiful.
So what I recommend now is if you've got your freebie type, like I'm going to do a workbook, and you have a clear problem and you have the clear outcome you're creating, now you go and build your freebie. So choose that freebie type, a problem and a topic, and then go create it.
I just want to run through real quick, the checklist that I do once I've created the freebie. I'm going to set up a landing page with my CRM to start. I recommend ConvertKit because you can build landing pages right in ConvertKit to start. I personally use lead pages, but if you're like, "I don't want to take on a lot of expenses right now," ConvertKit starts at 29 bucks a month and you can build the landing pages there.
Two, you want to set up a welcome email when people opt in to your landing page, that they get the freebie they asked for. So make sure that you three, link the freebie PDF or other file type to the welcome email, and then test your process. Make sure that when you opt in, they actually get the freebie and then promote your freebie organically. And if you want to, after that, you can start running Facebook Ads to promote and grow your list daily, without needing to promote constantly on social media.
So let's just run through all the steps that I do for a perfect freebie. Step one, I choose the format. I always first ask what type of content would my audience want to consume? Mini courses, webinars, workbooks, printables. What do they want? Once I've figured out the best format, then I identify a problem. I figure out the key issues my audience has, and I identify one that I can solve with the type of format that I've chosen.
Step three, create and design. I use Canva for my workbooks and Creative Market like we talked about. If you're making a video, you could use Loom, you could use screenflow, you could use Camtasia if you're making a video opt-in, but the goal is to create a really great freebie.
Step four is to set up and integrate. And because it's a podcast, I can't go through a tech tutorial, but it's an important step that we talk about that you need to connect your freebie to your end landing page, to your CRM. And you need to test that when people opt in for your freebie, they actually get their content. And step five is promote and grow. So take your new landing page, promote it organically and start to grow your email list.
Now, this is my process for creating a freebie. Like I said, we turn this into a complete workbook that you can get over at heartsoulhustle.com/freebie. We've got a complete opt-in that you can grab. It's a complete workbook of what we covered today, so you have a printable, fillable, enjoyable version of what we covered.
I want to leave you with this thought, which is, a good freebie gets good people at a good rate for a great and healthy list. So even if you're like, "I just want to grow my list, I can worry about a freebie once I figure out exactly what they want," just start. Remember, you can create that freebie, change it later, refine it later.
I really want you to get in this habit of saying, "I'm going to experiment with my business." Do I know that every freebie I'm going to create works great? No. I've had launches where the messaging doesn't resonate with people. I've had freebies that fall flat. I've had courses that fall flat. But the key is that I keep going, I keep experimenting and I keep playing.
Now, if you enjoyed this episode and you want to get the complete show notes and transcript, you can head over to heartsoulhustle.com/NYAP019. Again, it's heartsoulhustle.com/NYAP019 for Not Your Average Podcast episode 19. We'll have the show there. We'll have some quick notes. We'll have our complete transcripts. All the links that I mentioned today will be waiting for you there.
I hope you got mad value today. Get out there, make your freebie. And until next time, stay not so average.
