You have heard the term: content upgrades (also called opt-ins, freebies, lead magnets, etc). Many of you are familiar with what they are, but perhaps you’re unsure of why you need a content upgrade for your business, whether you’re on or offline.
It’s crucial that you have a free offering for your business because many times people want to experience you at no cost to them before buying into your product or service. I mean how many of you love free samples? That’s essentially what you are doing when you offer a content upgrade.
Where can a content upgrade be located at?
If you’re online, then you can offer your content upgrade on your blog post, social media, Pinterest, newsletter, and website. You need to have your free content upgrade everywhere because the more eyes that can see it, the more opportunity you’ll have at gaining a person’s email.
How can one get your content upgrade?
They will need to give their email address in order to get your content upgrade. It’s simple and easy. I also ask for their first name and email address. I like creating personalized messages when I send out my weekly newsletter.
Gimme My Free Content Calendar!
So why do I need a content upgrade? Here are your reasons:
Build your email list.
Yes, your email list is where it is at! Your email list can help you determine if you want to put in the time to create a product or not. Your email list is the testing grounds on your messaging, your niche and what you’ll offer. It’s the place where you can build know, like and trust. When you have a bigger list, you can influence more people and the more people you influence, the more they are likely to buy from you.
Test a product idea out.
Like I said, your content upgrade can be the very thing that you need to test out a product you have in mind for or not. If you want to offer an online course, why not create a free challenge with your paid courses content inside it (generalized version of course) as your content upgrade and see how many people opt into it?
If not enough people opt into your free challenge, you have two options: tweak your messaging or it wasn’t what your audience wanted.
This is where your email list can help you in determining what you’re going to offer. Say you decided to have a free challenge to test out a paid product idea but it bombed. You can reach back out to your email list and ask why they didn’t opt into it to gain clarity on what was missing. Then re-offer it with your subscriber’s suggestions.
Help you with consistency.
A content upgrade is what will help you gain a bigger email list and when you have an email list, you need to be more consistent. If you’re bad at consistency, then consider this practice! When you begin to grow your email list, you are in charge with building know, like and trust and that comes with consistency and bringing value to your list. If you are lackluster about it, you won’t grow as you want and people won’t see you as the thought leader you desire to be.
List of content upgrades you can create:
Assessments
Audio downloads
Backgrounds (pictures or visuals)
Checklists
Clipart
Discount codes
eBooks
eCourses (free or paid)
Free chapter from your book
Free stock photos (if you’re a photographer)
Graphics/Infographics
Guide
Handouts
How-to
Membership sites
Planners/Calendars
Printables (PDFs)
Reports
Survey (with free prize at the end)
Trial offer
Tutorials
Video series
Webinars
Worksheets
There you have it! What kind of content upgrade will you be creating for your audience? Let me on my Facebook Page!
