Written by Bob McClain, Web Copywriting Expert
Freebies are a great way to get people on your side. It also helps create a feeling of indebtedness to the person you gave the freebie to. Are you using freebies as one of your copywriting secrets?
How to use freebies…
There are a number of ways to use freebies to get business from your website. I have a 38 page downloadable Online Marketing Primer on my website. I offer it free to download with no request for contact information.
People are accustomed to seeing companies insist on some kind of contact info in exchange for their “free” report. Many times, it’s a page long form we’re supposed to fill out. I don’t know about you but that doesn’t feel free to me. I don’t like giving out my contact information for something I don’t even know for certain I want.
Do your freebie right…
If you want to do your free report or whitepaper this way, make sure you let them read or download a few pages of the report so they can see the true value of it. (Of course, you better make sure the report is everything you claim it will be.) Otherwise, I’ve seen these attempts by firms be a total failure because people aren’t going to give out their info for a mediocre or salesy report. Or for a report they haven’t even seen a sample of.
How I do freebies…
Like I said, my free report really is free. And I offer it prominently on my most popular pages. The report really is a primer I wrote on Online Marketing to help clients understand what works and what doesn’t work. I also have links in the report to specific articles on my site and also to specific blog posts on my site.
In other words, if they read the report, they will probably have spent hours visiting my site and reading blog posts and articles in addition to my little report. By this time, they will be totally familiar with me, totally comfortable with me, and when they see my contact information in the report, they’ll know they want to work with me because I’m obviously an expert.
Use this little website copywriting secret to build your business. Assuming you have lots of content on your website. If you don’t have lots of content, it’s time to get cracking!
Bob – Good idea to offer freebies such as “e-books” on your web site without requesting that people provide their contact information! What is the best way to develop an e-book and promote it on your site?
Great question, Barb. Come to think of it, I offer two free ebooks on my website. The 38 page primer on Online Marketing which is an instant download and a free ebook I sell for $9.99 in exchange for signing up for my newsletter.
There are a lot of easy ways to create an ebook. I cover one way in an article I wrote on interviewing experts. http://wordsmithbob.com/articles/Easily-Create-Content-For-Your-Website-or-eNewsletter.html.
You can interview experts in your own company, experts in your field that you contact, or you could even have someone interview you as the expert. (This is a great one for people who are more comfortable speaking than writing.)
And the pre-planned questions prompt you for information and help keep you organized. Just record the interview with a digital recorder and then get it transcribed.
Another great way (and this is one I use all the time to create new ebooks), is to take a bunch of my recent blog posts and articles and edit them into new ebooks.
Repurposing existing content is a great way to get more bang for your buck. You simply put it in an ebook format in a Word document, and then use Adobe Acrobat or one of the cheaper programs to convert it into an ebook.
Then put a notice on the Home page of your website that you have a new free ebook available for download. and don’t forget to blog about it and announce it in your newsletter and blog.