Let’s pick up right where we left off last week in Part 2 of this series, when we were talking about how you can experience tremendous success in increasing website leads through the planning, creation, and promotion of offers (aka “freebies” or “premium content” or downloads).
And, if you’ve not already done so, I recommend first reading Part 1 of this series before diving into today’s post.
We’ve heard them from clients.
We’ve heard them from colleagues.
Hell, we used to use them ourselves years ago.
And “them” = arguments and excuses about why creating and adding offers to a company’s website just couldn’t work or possibly be worth doing.
Let’s take a look at the most common arguments and reasons for resistance we hear from clients when we first bring up the strategy of offers.
Actually, no.
Let’s do more than look at them. Let’s knock ’em down, one by one. They’re typically nothing more than excuses born from disguised laziness combined with the (understandable) fear of the unknown and the concern that the strategy might not work.
You’re right; this might not work. Can’t argue against that.
Perhaps your company should consider shelving this option and instead use a marketing technique that’s 100% money-back guaranteed to boost the quality and quantity of online leads.
Just let me know when you find that 100% guaranteed marketing method—I’d be very interested in learning what it is.
And since eating healthy, doing the best you can, and treating others how you’d like to be treated might not give you the exact results you’re looking for either, might as well completely scrap those things too, while we’re at it. (Bonus! We just wiped your calendar clean and you now have plenty of time to do anything you’d like.)
“We don’t want to come off as spammy.”
Ahhh, right. You don’t want to be seen as sleazy.
Or spammy. Or cheesy.
You’ve seen offers on other websites, and some are downright embarrassing, huh? I know, I’ve seen them myself.
Some offers are just downright bad.
So you’re right—offers can indeed come off as spammy or sleazy if they’re done without planning or forethought.
They can especially come off as amateur and spammy when they feel like they were put up for the sole purpose of getting website visitors to hand over their email addresses, instead of for the purpose of offering targeted information that potential customers would find exciting and valuable.
They key thing to remember here is that if you focus an offer’s content on what your prospective customers really, truly, deeply care about or fear, that content is going to be alluring to them. Exciting.
And if done especially well, it’ll be irresistible to them.
In the near future I’ll be sharing an interview I did with national speaker and author Ilise Benun on offers, and we touch upon the pervasive fear of coming off as spammy in more detail as well as why, exactly, this shouldn’t be a serious concern that holds us back.
We don’t have the budget.
Does your company have time? Time to invest in learning how to do this yourself, or time time to save up a budget to hire an expert to handle this?
Or perhaps your company is currently investing in another form of marketing that’s returning “meh” results, and you could temporarily funnel that marketing budget into one that allows you to begin offering an offer on your site? After all, if your other forms of marketing were working perfectly and generating all the leads your company could handle, you wouldn’t be looking into or considering alternative ways of generating more leads. (And remember, the beauty of offers is that once they’ve been created, they work every single day for you, indefinitely, without needing to invest more money into them.)
For those companies with limited budgets, investing in a small amount of expert consulting from someone experienced in planning and creating offers can cost less than hiring someone else to do the leg work while increasing the likelihood of efforts translating into the success they’ve been looking for.
And if you’re currently thinking “We still don’t have the budget to do that…” then your company needs to sit down and give this some good thought, because all viable, successful companies have the ability to save money.
Many exciting opportunities do feel overwhelming when standing at the starting line, don’t they?
Deer in the headlights overwhelming.
I know, I empathize.
New things can be scary: A new exercise routine. Raising one’s first newborn (or so I hear).
Luckily, just as with other formidable challenges, you can break the goal of getting a great offer on your site into small, exceptionally-manageable chunks (notice the word “exceptionally” that I put in front of the word manageable there) and tackle them at an appropriate and comfortable pace: one. at. a. time.
Your company can…
Your company can write an outline of what your website offer might focus on, right?
Your company can obtain objective opinions and ask colleagues or experts to review your outline and provide feedback, right?
One step at a time. Break it all down.
And here’s an invaluable tip (write this on a post-it and stick it in to the bottom of your monitor or the back of your brain, whatever works best for you): Offers can be very short and sweet and simple. Offers can be one page. Offers can be and have been written in less than 2 hours. Your company doesn’t need to feel overwhelmed by this.
It’s good you know your company’s limitations and weaknesses. Unfortunately, this excuse doesn’t have a leg to stand on. If not being a good writer or having a good writer at your company is your main concern, you’ve got lots of options, my friend.
Does your company have a respectable budget allocated to increasing leads?
You can hire one of the many brilliant web copywriters out there is experienced in this work.
Does your company have a limited budget and limited time allocated to increasing leads?
Your company could find a copywriter willing to work out a long term payment plan for you. Or perhaps a freelancer. Or perhaps a solid copywriter straight out of college and ready for a challenge.
Do you have little budget budget and a small bit of extra time allocated to increasing leads?
The appropriate person at your company can invest that time into learning 2 important things:
Yes, it’s true someone is not going to become an amazing writer in a day.
Or a week.
Or even a month.
But if your company is serious about increasing its website’s leads, the web is rich with resources to help the right person at your company get better—resources from templates to customize to online courses to take to video series focused on strengthening online/offer copywriting.
Alternatively, you may wish to consider saving oodles of time by investing in 1 – 2 hours of consulting with a web strategist or online marketing consultant.
At the end of the day, if your company is not willing or able to invest money into marketing strategies proven time and again to have huge impacts for other businesses, your company better be willing to invest time.
The alternative is sitting on your butt and hoping.
And trust me, we’ve watched many a “hoping” business go under during the past decade.
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Today we’ve tackled 5 common excuses people use when they argue as to why offers wouldn’t help their businesses generate more online leads.
We’re not done yet, though!
There are 5 more common excuses we hear, and we’ll be tackling those in the next post. See you next week.