One of the most important aspects of making sales of your online course, info product, training program or even private coaching and consulting is building an engaged list of prospects.
But I talk to too many people who just aren’t doing anything to grow their list and this makes it impossible to start building a strong online business, especially if you want to begin generating passive revenue.
The idea around building a community of engaged prospects is actually pretty simple. You need to have something free that you can give away in exchange for an email address. Get as many of your ideal prospects to see this offer so that they can “opt-in” for your freebie.
Then, as long as you continue to share tips and useful information on a regular basis you will create engagement which will, in turn, lead to terrific clients and customers for months and even years to come.
[bctt tweet=”3 free offers you can create TODAY that will start building a community of engaged prospects.”]There are a lot of different free offers that you can promote ranging from e-books all the way to live webinars, but I want to help you create something that you can offer from your website 24/7 that won’t take weeks (or even days) to create.
Here are 3 quick but effective free offers that you can create in a snap. Remember, you only need ONE to get started building a community of engaged prospects.
I also want you to keep in mind that people are busier now than ever before. Take a look at your own schedule. What people are looking for are quick wins. They want immediate gratification. In fact, the team at Lead Pages (the product that I use to create all of my registration pages) tested several different types of free opt-in offers and found that the simple “resources list” was the highest converting.
Now, different markets will yield slightly different results, but the takeaway is that simple IS better when creating your free offer.
So here they are:
1) The 5-Part List – depending on what you help your clients achieve, you might have tips, resources, tools, mistakes to avoid or steps to take that can get them moving toward their desired result.
This is a very easy, but helpful free offer that you can put together in a single evening.
One of my highest converting free offers EVER is my Info Product Essentials Cheat Sheet. This is simply a list of the techie tools that I use to create info products and online courses.
What are 5 tips, resources, tools, mistakes or steps that you can share that your market would love to learn?
2) Fill-in-the-Blanks Templates – this is a VERY powerful and enticing free offer. In my Profitable Online Courses Program I have several fill-in-the-blanks templates including a Title Template and a Course Outline Template.
Creating templates helps move your clients forward in record time and people LOVE them.
What information do you share with your clients on a regular basis that could be turned into a fill-in-the-blanks template?
The great thing is that these templates can be very short. In fact, mine tend to be a single page.
3) 30-Minute Interview – I LOVE this one. Interviews are very engaging because people can actually hear your voice as they get the information. One of my very first free offers (Fast Track to Charge What You Deserve) was a 30-minute interview with a friend and colleague of mine, Donna Kozik. We got on a free teleconference line and Donna asked questions related to pricing and fee-setting for service providers.
You can even add a transcription and short worksheet to make this a very premium free offer that is quick and easy to create.
Don’t know how to structure your interview? Here’s a quick template 😉
- Intro – have your interviewer (friend) ask you about your business and how you got started. Be sure to talk about who you help, why you help them and what you help them achieve.
- 5-6 great questions – think of questions that you get from clients, friends, colleagues or prospects related to your main topic. If you get stuck with this, here’s a ninja trick. Go to Answers.com and type in your main topic. If you help people lose weight then type in “weight loss” in the search bar. Then just scroll down and you will get pages and pages of questions that REAL people have asked about weight loss. This is also an amazing way to do some market research.
- Call-to-Action – what do you want people to do when they finish listening to the interview? Should they schedule a free consultation with you? Then be sure to let them know exactly how they can do this at the end of your interview. Just have your interviewer ask, “So, what can the people listening right now do next?”
That’s it. Pick ONE of these free offer ideas and get started. I’d love to hear what you’re going to create so be sure to leave a comment below. And if you have a friend who would find this useful, be sure to share!
Cheers,
Tom Buford