Offer Series, Part 1 of 6: *This* Is How We Keep Our Clients’ Leads (and Our Own!) Rolling In…
Welcome to a multi-part blog post series focused on a specific technique we implement for our clients—and use on our own site—to increase online leads.
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We’ve made this tactic for our clients’ websites.
We’ve made this tactic work for our own website.
This tactic has been proven to work in hundreds, if not thousands, of documented industry case studies.
And we’re going to share this little gem of a strategy with you here today, then dive into more details in our upcoming blog post series.
This tactic really works
Take a look at the chart below.
It showcases the trend of incoming leads we started experiencing through our own website one month after we began using this technique. (The chart starts the month after we began implementing and tracking. The green indicates leads that came in through organic traffic. Blue indicates leads that came in through referrals.)
This is exactly the type trend you can achieve for your own company when you implement the tactic we’re going to share with you today.
Enough introduction to the topic! Just tell me how I can increase my online leads!
Okay, will do.
Oh wait.
One last item I need to bring up: We’re not talking about social media strategy here. We’re also not talking about blogging. (In fact, we’ve already shared how an effective business blog can have a massive (actually, tripling) impact on website.)
So, if you’ve been holding your breath while reading this and the voice in your head has been chanting “Please don’t say blogging or social media, please don’t say blogging or social media, please don’t say blogging or social media…” you’ll be delighted to hear we’re not talking about blogging or social media in this series. (Do keep in mind though that both blogging and social media have incredible traffic-generating potential, and if you don’t get a reasonable amount of traffic to your site, the tactic we’re talking about in this series won’t be able to work for you.)
Here’s the tactic
Here’s the proven tactic we’ll be focusing on in this series:
You can immediately begin boosting the quantity and quality of your website’s leads by providing site visitors with free, highly targeted offers.
What? Offers?
Yes, offers.
Sometimes offers are called freebies.
Sometimes they’re called premium content.
Perhaps you’ve seen them promoted on websites as free reports.
Or Ebooks.
Or free downloads.
Or trials.
Call them what you will. W0hen done right, they can work magic for you.
It works like this…
On your website, you provide a free offer of exquisite value to your best potential customers.
In order to access that offer, those potential customers must provide you with their email addresses (and you can collect other info from them, if you’d like).
The site visitors who willingly exchange their emails for your valuable content are, typically, very interested in that content. They’re likely interested in what you have to say and do, and are potentially interested in how you might be able to help them.
Over time your website collects a list of qualified leads you can reach out to, follow up with, provide with additional valuable content, stay in touch with over time, and notify about sales, specials, or new services.
That Cracker Jack toy
Remember how excited you were about the toy at the bottom of the Cracker Jack box?
Or the toy in your Happy Meal box?
That’s the power of offers in action. Offers lure you—the target customer—right on in, which is why some people call offers “lead bait”.
Real examples
What does a successful offer look like?
A perfect example of a best-in-class, exceptionally thorough, wildly popular, oh-so-very well done offer would be Unbounce.com’s 58-page Ultimate Guide to Landing Page Optimization. (Now don’t start worrying or giving up on me here, folks—your offers don’t need to be as exceptionally designed, researched, or extensive as Unbounce’s. It’s just usually helpful to see what a model example looks like.)
Today’s tip, in a nutshell
A careful strategy of creating, tracking, and promoting offers is one of the most important and powerful strategies we use to help ourselves and our clients experience substantial boosts in online leads and sales.
Think this is fluff?
Are you rolling your eyes?
Skeptical?
Brain overflowing with reasons why offers won’t work for you?
Good.
We’ve got a couple of blog posts coming up written just for you.
Stay tuned for post #2 in our series next week. And don’t forget to keep your mind open; your company may just end up experiencing the influx of online leads you’ve been dreaming of.