My Favorite Way to Generate Leads Online
April 3, 2024
Category: Education
my favorite way to generate leads online
who doesn’t love free stuff!?
Okay, okay so I don’t have a degree in marketing from some fancy shmancy college butttt I do have a business that started as a side hustle and grew into a six-figure company with employees in just a few short years so I like to think I know a thing or two here.
Today I’m talking about lead generation. If you’re like me (a savvy business owner sans marketing degree) you might be thinking what the heck is lead generation!? Well, let me tell you. It’s the process of creating interest or inquiries into your products or services and it’s VERY important — especially if you’re building your business!
Now that we’ve covered the basics, I want to share my favorite lead generation tool with you — FREEBIES. Why do I looooove freebies!? For starters, they don’t take up a ton of space on your website and they’re typically easy to create! Secondly, they have the power to generate significant interest and engagement around a product launch. Anndddd the best part? A good freebie can help do your marketing for you if your audience finds it useful they’re likely to share it with other people, effectively amplifying your brand and content!
Like anything, there are a few key dos and don’ts to creating freebies. Here’s what I’ve learned over the years.
How to Create Your Freebie
Solve a problem — Your freebie should focus on a problem common to your target audience and offer them a solution! What questions is your audience continuing to ask you about? Create a freebie that answers one of those! For example, a lot of my followers on Instagram struggle with what to use as a cover for their reels so I created a cover template to share as a freebie. It’s providing them value and a solution to one of their social media woes while helping me collect names and email addresses so I can market more Instagram products down the road!
Keep it simple — Think a checklist, a quick tutorial, a 5-page guide. Create something valuable, simple, and easy to understand.
Make it available instantly — Make sure your audience can access your freebie immediately. You don’t want to keep them waiting on you and create a negative experience! I 20/10 recommend Flodesk forms + workflows to make sure people get that instant access.
keep it relevant — If you want people to buy an Instagram template from you don’t give them a freebie on creating project timelines.
Make sure it’s high quality — Don’t just throw random content together because you’re giving it away for free. Instead, create something that provides value to your target audience. If you give your audience a garbage freebie they’re going to assume that what you have to offer is also garbage. If you give them something high-quality, they’re going to seek more from you and know that what you’re selling is WORTH IT. You want to build TRUST with them and a quick way to lose that trust is by giving them something that doesn’t do what you promised.
Another crucial part of using freebies is making sure you’re not giving away toooo much or too often. You want to keep giving people reasons to buy from you. If you keep giving all of your goods away they’ll already have what you’re trying to sell. For example, consider giving insight into one module or topic within your course instead of giving the entire thing away for free.
6 Proven Lead-generating freebie ideas + examples
quizzes
I LOVE a quiz and so do SO many other people! While they’re typically entertaining and funny they also generally result in a lot of engagement. A quiz can give you insights into what your audience is looking for so you have invaluable information regarding what kind of content you can create for them or what types of products to offer. A good quiz will answer a question or provide a solution to the quiz taker.
For example, I have a quiz on my site that helps users find their brand design style. It asks users what their interests are so they can narrow down the best fit for their personal design style before investing in branding or opting to buy one of my brand kits. Another reason to consider quizzes, they’ve been shown to work better than other free content or resources. As a lead tool, you can gate the answers so quiz takers have to sign up for emails before they see their results.
Not sure where to start!? We like Interact! It was suuuuper easy to use and even had a template we could work off and customize.
Masterclass / webinar
One of my favorite lead gen freebies is definitely a masterclass or webinar — especially if you’re a course creator! Masterclasses or webinars are a great way to provide better insight into what you’re offering or a topic that’s covered within your course. It can drum up excitement for the course as a whole while providing your audience with a snippet of value. To make the most of this freebie as a lead gen tool, have people sign up for your mailing list to deliver the class/webinar to them.
PDFs
Alright, this one might seem like a tonnnn of work but I promise there are ways to make this simple and streamlined. PDFs are a great way to introduce your biz to first-time visitors and show that you’re an authority on the subject matter. When creating a PDF freebie, you want to make sure it’s not overwhelming and super lengthy — remember, keep it simple. Your offering also needs to be about a topic that applies to your business and that your audience actually has an interest in. If you’re creating a PDF just for the sake of having a freebie and not taking time to consider what people want to read then there’s no point and you’re wasting your time (harsh but true).
Streamline the whole process by making content you’ve already created work harder for you. Pull from a few popular blog posts about the same topic and compile them into a singular resource or transcribe a webinar or podcast you’ve already done. For example, I have a list of content ideas for designers that align with my course (The Brighten Blueprint!). This popular freebie doesn’t have to be daunting as heck!
checklists
A short, single-page checklist can provide your target audience with a ton of value and keep them hungry for more! Like an e-book, checklists don’t have to be super complicated. You can use content you’ve already created for your blog and pull it into a summarized, actionable list. It’s as easy as that!
An example we love is Karrie Locher’s nursing cart checklist. She’s providing her audience with valuable, easy-to-digest content and positioning herself as an expert on the topic! Once a user sees the value they were able to get from her free download, it’s easy to see how they end up as a student in one of her courses.
Templates
Another one of my absolute favorite freebies to use is a template! This gives your audience a true look at what they can expect from your offering. While free templates might not work for every business, they’re a great way to get a sample of your product or offering in front of your audience and leave them hungry for more! A few examples could be a designer creating an email template or a copywriter sharing a template that helps users workshop some taglines. Here’s a look at a template freebie I created earlier this year to serve my audience better and get them hyped for some new Instagram templates I’m launching later!
Early Bird Discount
Last but not least, the good ol’ early bird discount. Offering a discount is a great way to encourage your audience to get you on your waiting list or make a purchase before the price goes up. It’s a no-brainer if you’re able to offer one! I love using an early bird discount as a way to reward people who are already pumped about a specific product launch. It also helps collect email addresses and turn leads into customers. It’s no secret that people love getting things early and saving money — use that to your advantage!
get impactful website design help
Are you ready to take the leap and have an interactive and engaging website that helps build your brand presence online!? Are you ready to create those amazing lead-gen freebies and put them in action? Reach out! We’d love to help you with our website design services.
Plus, check out all of our branding and website design services to see if there’s something else you might want to add to your website design package — think website copywriting, an email template, and more!
