Your newsletter may be the best form of lead magnet creation. It’s certainly the simplest. At least on the front end.
Here’s what I mean.
This is the final part of a rather lengthy 9-part series I’ve written on the topic of “Lead Magnet Creation”. If you’d like to read the entire series, I’d suggest you start with the first one by simply clicking this “Lead Magnet Creation” link. From there, you can move your way up my blog roll to this final one.
I’ve done this series because my clients endure such hand-wringing and, frankly… whining… about what to do about building a list of followers.
So I’ve given you many ways to do that throughout this series of articles.
But they all point to this final article about making your Newsletter your lead magnet.
I saved this for last because, obviously, all of the previous 8 lead magnet creation methods are just stepping stones to get to this one. If you create a free video tutorial, or offer a free teleseminar… the ultimate goal is to get people onto your email list.
The only reason you want to build that list is so you can email your subscribers your “Newsletter”.
So while the Newsletter is implicit in each of the other 8 lead magnet creation methods, it can also be offered directly, without jumping through the hoops of creating an ebook or webinar or any sort of free “product” at all.
Here’s How You Do It
When people visit your blog, ask them to subscribe to your Newsletter to get more of whatever sort of content you are sharing on your blog.
That’s it!
Just ask them to opt in to receive your free Newsletter. If they like the content you’ve been sharing on your blog, and if they’d like to get more of it delivered to their inbox, or if they’d simply like to be notified of your next blog post… they may be happy to opt in.
You don’t need to offer a free ebook or training course or anything else in this case. So it cuts down the burden of producing some sort of a “product” to ethically bribe folks to get on your list.
It sounds simple and it is.
Can A Newsletter Compete With A Free Product?
The simple answer is yes.
And here’s why.
When people are reading your blog, they’ll be exposed to all sorts of different content, topics, images, videos and the like. Whatever they are viewing is something of interest to them, or they wouldn’t be viewing it.
Every time you offer a piece of content, you can add a link to remind them to opt in. Simply say things like “If you’d like to get more great content like this” or “If you’d like updates on this topic”… then you offer them a link to click. When they click the link, they get a simple squeeze page where they can opt in to your Newsletter.
There are several advantages to this approach versus a “free product”.
1. Often, a free product is reviewed and then the subscriber no longer opens your emails.
2. Often, when the free product arrives in their inbox, many subscribers forget what it is, suspect it is spam, or have already lost interest in the topic. So they never even open the link to your free product, and far too frequently, they never even open your email giving them the link to it.
3. When someone opts in to a Newsletter, their intention is to get a scheduled emails from you. So they anticipate your emails, and have told you that they want to open them. They don’t see a Newsletter as a “one-time” product that they will consume and then move on. They see it as a regular source of information to keep their eye out for.
The Newsletter Challenge
No matter how you get your visitor to subscribe to your Newsletter, whether through a free product offer or simply an opt in to receive your Newsletter, the challenge to you does not stop here.
This is only the beginning.
The next step in the process is what I call the “second conversion”.
The “first conversion” is to convert your readers/visitors into subscribers.
The “second conversion” is to convert your subscribers into clients/customers.
In my next article (or maybe I’ll do it as a series of posts again)… I’ll walk you through the process of obtaining the second conversion. That’s the ultimate challenge to operating a profitable blog or website.
What sort of creative means have you used to entice your blog visitors to opt in to your Newsletter?
I’d be interested in hearing some of your opt in stories as well as your general thoughts on this topic. Please share them in the comment section below.
And, of course, I’d love it if you would take a moment to share this post on your social sites. Thanks!