When you’re starting to build your email subscriber list, you need an effective lead magnet: enter the FREEBIE. A freebie is something that makes you look good, drives traffic to your business, and invites people into your world for more. Freebies grow your email list.
Your freebie must attract your ideal customer in a way that they opt-in to give you their email address.
You’re giving away something for free to help you sell something later. Your freebie needs to be so valuable that your ideal client would gladly *pay* to have it.
How to choose the right freebie for your ideal customer
When you create your freebie, you always need to keep your ideal customer in mind! You want your ideal customer to say, “Yes! I want that!”
Ask yourself:
- What problems do my ideal customers have?
- What solutions do I provide?
- How much time do they have to process what I give them?
- What do I give my clients now that they use?
Generate a list of ideas for your freebie.
Don’t worry, I’m here to help you! Here are 10 freebie ideas you can use a lead magnet to grow your email subscriber list.
- A cheat sheet or checklist. These are highly specific to your niche and give your ideal client action items to do right now that make a big difference in their business. Examples include:
- Website content checklist
- Choosing the best resume style to land your dream job
- X-steps to effective onboarding checklist
- Crafting the perfect Instagram post
- Short course. A short course is delivered to their email over 5 to 7 days and includes mini lessons on a particular topic. Short course can be a bit more time consuming to dream up, but are highly effective, especially if you’re planning to sell digital courses later. A short course will give your ideal customers a chance to see what you’re all about and your teaching style. If they like your short course, they’re much more likely to buy your digital course.
- Challenge. I like the “Challenge” and have taken several. A challenge typically requires you to do something each day. My favorite challenges have been those hosted in a Facebook group. Two weeks ago, I participated in a challenge that required me to connect with another challenge participant. It was awesome! I got to learn about a new niche in freelance writing AND I met two really great people!
- eBook. For all the authors out there, write away! eBooks are a great way to provide value. An eBook or guide is usually 20+ pages. But before investing the time to write 20 pages, make sure your audience wants to read 20 pages. If they do, eBooks give you a ton of space to really dive deep into your topic and that is where the nuggets are to keep your clients coming back.
- Prompts. These can be anything including writing prompts, content prompts, social media prompts. I’ll even include daily gratitude prompts (my personal favorite). Prompts are especially great if your business is in marketing, journaling, or writing of almost any kind.
- Recipes. If you’re a nutrition or wellness coach, nutritionist, dietitian, or chef, recipes make a great lead magnet for building your subscriber list. The more you can niche your recipes the better. For example, your recipes can be green smoothing recipes, 1-person 5-min dinner recipes, or desserts under 150 calories. Include a new recipe delivered to their inbox once a week.
- Toolkit. If you have a collection of great stuff that’s helped your clients solve problems, bundle that together to create a toolkit. Toolkits are checklists, worksheets, videos, eBooks, and other collateral all in one. Toolkits solve a range of problems for your ideal customers. They’re very effective. I recommend a targeted toolkit. For example, a social media marketer might create a toolkit titled: How to slay the social media dragon: A toolkit to give you back your time. In this example toolkit, you’ll provide social media templates, a checklist for a social audit, and a how-to guide for crafting headlines in 2 minutes or less.
- Workbook. I always think of a workbook as the *perfect* idea for a financial planner. But they work for a variety of businesses – so don’t pass up this option if you’re not a financial planner. A workbook helps your client complete a particular exercise to figure something out. Using a financial planner as an example, the workbook might show the client how they can save 10% of their money each month by figuring out where their money goes each month.
- Templates. Let’s face it, no one like creating something from scratch every single time. Offer valuable plug-and-go templates for things like social media posts, blogs, or something more industry-specific. Templates can also be used to design things, like Key Performance Indicators or SWOT analysis.
- Quizzes. OK, I saved the holy grail for last! LOVE quizzes. Here’s why. They collect your ideal customer’s email after they’ve invested time to take your quiz. The success rate of getting the email is over 80% according to Amy Porterfield’s quiz guru, Chanti. Curious? Interact offers a free-forever quiz creation tool. (The free option does not allow lead generation but it does give you a lot of time to learn how to create a quiz. Their basic plan is $17/mo with a 14-day trial.) Chanti warns that it takes six weeks to three months to create a quiz. The time is worth it but for your second or third freebie, not necessarily your first!
It’s better to do something than nothing: Create a freebie to grow your list!
I’m a researcher. My undergraduate degree is in conservation biology. I summarize clinical trials for the American Botanical Society. The number one thing that has held me back more in my career is doing too much research. (Confessions of a serial researcher!) I know that sounds crazy but let me explain. We get ahead by doing not thinking about doing.
You might be saying, “But Samaara I want it to be perfect.” It’s not going to be and that’s OK. If you wait for *perfect* you’ll wait a really long time to get anything out. In business it is about progress not perfection.
Choose two and go (freebies that is!)
I recommend choosing two types of freebies: a short form and long form. Create the short form first and get it out there. For most freebies any word processing program can create the text. I like Canva to spice up the graphics. Canva has a great free option that can do anything you’ll need it to for your freebie. Once you’ve got two freebies out there, try your hand at a quiz.
You’ll want to track which freebies are getting you results. Change it up seasonally. Go back to the content created in your freebies to keep it current.
Be specific and targeted when marketing your freebies. For example, if you’re writing a blog about using your time efficiently and you have a great template related to time management, include a link in that blog. You already have their attention with your amazing blog – now get their email!
Happy creating! Your reward in creating a freebie as your lead magnet is the huge email subscriber list you’ll build.
