How to Create Freebies and Explode Your List
As business owners, building an email list is a non-negotiable, must be doing all the time, part of our life. We check on our subscriber count daily. We spend time crafting the perfect email that will connect with our readers and we’re constantly thinking of ways to grow it. Why? Because it’s an incredible way to build relationships with potential clients and customers, it allows you to get your story out there, and it’s one of the best ways to connect with people off of social media.
Building your list can feel like a slow journey, especially when you’re just starting. That’s when you’re really paying attention, maybe too closely. Yesterday you had 42 subscribers and now you have 39 subscribers. Why did they unsubscribe? Maybe you should spend two hours analyzing this major event… #sarcasm
Seriously though, let’s focus on growth. How can you grow something that you know is super important for free while making sure the people who said yes to something free, could possible say yes to investing in you in the future? The answer is easy. Creating freebies.
I’ve signed on thousands of subscribers by really focusing on two things: Creating valuable content and channeling generosity in everything I do. have over 50 freebies floating around the internet and they all work together to build my list every single day. For free.
The reason why freebies are so powerful is they build up the know, like, and trust factor quickly. If you do them right. In fact, you can get my entire process for free by clicking here!
The hardest part of this entire process is just getting started, right? You sit at your desk with your hands poised on top of the keyboard, waiting for inspiration, and then you get sidetracked and check Facebook. Or head to the kitchen to get another cup of coffee…
For me, all I need is a really good title and I’m ready to go. But, the trick here is making the title so good that your audience cannot say no to it. How do you do that? Glad you asked! Let’s say you’re a health coach and you’re working on some new content to build your list. You want to focus on a clean eating checklist, but your’e not sure what to call it. You know the title is important, but everything you come up with sounds, blah.
It sounds blah, because you’re using your words. Your words (clean eating checklist) are NOT going to grab their attention. Your audience is 5-10 steps behind you. They’re working on getting to where you already are. They’re not concerned with eating clean. They just want to ____ fill in the blank (my guess is, lose weight.)
If we tap into the minds of our dream clients we’re going to find their strongest desire. It may sounds so simple to you and you feel tempted to avoid using their words, but I promise you, that’s what’s going to grab their attention. You have to meet them where they are. Otherwise, you’re going to go right over their heads. Let’s look at some solid examples.
One of my favorite places to get inspiration for titles and content is looking in Pinterest. I’m a very visual person and I love to see what draws my attention the most just by simply typing out a couple of keywords. For this example below, I started typing out “lose weight" and you can see that Pinterest populated the top 5 keyword phrases that are most used on their platform. That right there tells me, loud and clear, exactly what people are searching for.
I would absolutely be using the keyword phrase “lose weight quick” in my title and/or tagline because this is obviously what clients want. They don’t know that they have to eat clean and do all the things…all they care about right now is losing weight quickly. That’s it.
Another example for finding their exact words is by going to a site called Answer The Public. It’s very visual as well and I love how they display keyword results. When I typed in “lose weight,” I had a ton of results appear. You literally have content ideas for years…
The reason why I use these strategies is because I always want to be speaking their language. Not mine. If we don’t meet people where they are then we’re not going to come off as helpful. A connection can’t be built if we’re not providing value and what’s the first thing that people see when we present them with an opportunity to sign up for a freebie? The title. The title is what’s going to drive them home. It’s so incredibly important, I can’t stress it enough.
Like I said, once I have my title I feel unstoppable. I can easily create my bullet points and then choose how I want to present the freebie. Some examples would be:
checklist
roadmap
templates
swipe files
graphics
photos
workbook
printable
how-to guide
Think about your audience and what they would say yes to. It doesn’t have to be 25 pages long. It just needs to be helpful. I like to have a standard of creating freebies so good that people will print them out because they’re that helpful. A good freebie is something people will reflect back to over and over again. It’s a resource for people who are on a journey getting to where you are.
It’s also important to have the right tools to do this, especially if you do it every month like me. These are the tools I’m loving right now that totally make my life easier:
Canva - for making the actual freebie and for all social media images
LeadPages - for creating my landing pages as well as my thank you pages. You can also use your website or email service provider if they offer a landing page option
Active Campaign - my favorite email service provider. I also recommend MailerLite if you're just starting out
Later - I use the free version of this app to plan my instagram posts.
Tailwind - we use tailwind to plan out our Pinterest posts, but you can also do it manually through Pinterest. If you're not taking advantage of group boards and tribes, you're totally missing out!
Asana - I use this for everything in my business. If you don't have a project management system, I highly recommend you check them out. I use the free version and this is where I will schedule my monthly task to create my freebie
I think having a free content strategy is important and has been a huge focus in my business and it should be yours too. A lot of people ask me if they need to put something out every day, every week, every month etc. And I just tell them to be consistent. That’s all. Pick an amount of time that works best for you and your business and see how it goes. For me, I’ve found that creating something new every month works pretty well. And as you can see, I have great methods of finding inspiration so I never fear of running out of ideas.
I hope you’re feeling inspired to create some freebies for your audience and I’d love to hear how much your list starts growing once you try out my method!
