Offers are critical for the engagement process and the fuel for lead generation.
It’s a simple transactional activity: your offer acts as a carrot dangling in front of site visitors to tempt them into exchanging their contact information to receive valuable content offers. This can take relationships to another level and potentially push prospects to move onto another lifecycle phase in your CRM.
This exchange gives visitors free access to meaningful and relevant content that helps them and gives you a new business lead. Offers can be created for every lifecycle phase from industry white papers and blog newsletters for subscribers and new leads, to free trials or audits for sales qualified or to close as customers. All offers should be stored and accessed at ease at any time from the CMS’s file storage platform.
To build a strong content strategy it’s essential to experiment with different kind of offers, this way you can observe which ones resonate with your audience and convert the most leads. Of course, it’s important to do more of what works, but you shouldn’t get too comfortable – keep your audience alert and intrigued by introducing offers around new topics and formats that are ground-breaking, but relevant.
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In this blog post, we identify 15 offer ideas that you can put behind a landing page to help you collect new leads.
Here’s what we’ll cover:
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White papers
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Events
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Templates
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SlideShare Presentations
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Podcasts
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Original data and research
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Guides
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Email subscriptions
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Email series
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Checklists
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Contests
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Demos
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Trails
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Courses
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Ebooks
As white papers are key for generating leads, we will start with this…
1. White papers
60% of individuals claim that white papers are a valuable way to generate new leads. That’s because high-quality white papers can grab the attention of your audience, gain their trust, build credibility and gradually move leads through the funnel.
In order to inform and persuade readers using evidence, white papers are very detailed, show a high level of expertise, are extremely well researched and are backed up by a lot of data. Due to their authoritative, detailed and informative nature, they receive many downloads.
White papers are not only key for generating leads, they also boost your company’s brand image, increase your website’s SEO and increase consumer trust in your organisation.
2. Events
Although the pandemic has made events very much a thing of the past at the moment, this can be a crucial and enjoyable way of generating leads.
Whatever your event, whether it’s a meet-and-greet at a local eatery, or a conference in a major city or even a networking gathering, you’ll ask attendees for their information so you can send or email their tickets ahead of time.
By collecting registration data, you can direct your visitor to a thank you page where your site can be navigated. Also, you can follow up with attendees to let them know about similar occasions, let them connect with people they met at the event, allow them to download content they may have come across there. You can even add calls-to-action in follow-up communications that invite users to follow you on social media or subscribe to other types of content.
3. Templates
Templates are great offers as they’re incredibly helpful tools. They provide guidance, inspiration, and a backbone for content, as well as saving companies time and energy creating a plan. Templates often take various forms such as calendars, worksheets and additional outlines.
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4. SlideShare Presentations
SlideShare presentations can drive great traffic, so it’s no surprise that some marketers choose to share them without hiding behind a form. However, that doesn’t mean that you can’t offer a download of your SlideShare in exchange for some contact information. An efficient and effective SlideShare can be a low-effort way to convert readers into leads.
5. Podcasts
Podcasts are a cost-effective way of generating leads. They can help you to build an audience, establish your brand as a source of expertise and show off your company’s personality by creating a voice for your brand. Serving as an accessible entry point for potential prospects to begin to engage with your brand, podcasts create ease in converting listeners into leads and leads into customers.
Asking your podcast listeners to subscribe to updates is key for lead generation. By offering a ‘latest news’ subscription, you can keep your audience up to date on associated information such as industry trends or previews of future episodes.
6. Original Data & Research
Original data and research have become extremely valuable as many fields become more data-intensive. 9 out of 10 companies who produce original data and research have found success in building authority and trust with the audience.
Advice, tips, news, trends and how-tos have all been done before, whereas original research and data is fresh, increases brand awareness and allows your business to stand out and differentiate from competitors. Not only does offering readers original data and research increase lead generation, but this can create 162% more impressions and a 37% higher click-through rate.
Although curating data is expected to take a long time, collecting original data and research can be simple and also low-cost. For example, surveys can be conducted among subscribers, leads, customers and industry professionals and then results can be shared in the form of a downloadable report, study or infographic.
7. Guides (Ultimate - Simple)
Tons of guides exist across various industries, and new ones pop up frequently. These guides come in all shapes and sizes, for example, “ultimate guides” are long, in-depth, and usually include exhaustive explanations and step-by-step instructions. On the other hand, “simple guides” are shorter and much more concise. Other guides include tactical guides, pocket guides, introductory guides and advanced guides - the list goes on.
The common denominator is that they’re all tutorials of some sort, with many including step-by-step instructions to help your prospects with a problem. Guides are helpful in the consideration stage of the buyer's journey.
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8. Email Subscriptions
Consistent business blogging is a cost-effective way to drive traffic to your site, build brand awareness, attract more customers and can become a major source for lead generation. But you may find yourself asking the question how can you convert blog readers into leads?
It’s simple, turn them into dedicated subscribers by asking for their email address in exchange for sending them new blog posts daily, weekly or even monthly. Over 48% of marketers believe this is an effective strategy for lead generation.
9. Email Series
Every company can benefit from sending email series to achieve business goals. Using an email series is the process of sending prospects or customers emails at different stages in the sales funnel. Differing from an email subscription, email series are a multi-part series of emails sent to individuals with a finite number of emails sent.
This offer can move individuals through a journey of not having ever heard of your company, to becoming a customer and (hopefully) an enthusiastic brand advocate. Email series can deepen the trust and relationships with your subscribers over time through the content you share.
10. Checklists
Checklists are an easy offer to create and one that you can place behind a landing page, which readers can then download to their desktops. Offering checklists to prospects can be very valuable to them as these can dramatically reduce errors, ensure consistency and help to organise tasks more efficiently.
Bonus points are up for grabs if you offer the checklist in a printable format so that people can physically tick-off each item on the list as and when they complete it. This great feeling of achievement is something that people will attribute back to your business.
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11. Contests
With a conversion rate of almost 34%, contests shouldn't be underestimated! They can teach your business a great deal about your audience whilst engaging them, growing your reach, driving traffic to your website and generating leads.
Contests can be as simple or as complicated as you’d like, and can be run on your website or any social media platform, including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
12. Demos
Demos are great for driving sales forwards by educating prospects and generating leads. By integrating demos into your strategy, customers can easily gain access to product or service information and features and benefits.
You should make it easy for visitors to schedule a demo with your team, and place demo calls-to-action on key pages of your website, including your home page. Doing this on pages of your website that explain the different benefits and features of your product or service can also be very effective.
13. Trials
Offering trials of your product or service can be a win-win for both your company and potential customers. This is a great way to get prospects to try out your product or service, before officially committing.
A trial greatly increases your base of potential customers as if there’s no risk, no obligation, and no credit card required there’s no reason not to take your product for a spin – the only thing the prospect needs to do is fill out a form.
14. Courses
Your audience may find great value in filling in a form in exchange for a video course or tutorial. You have the option of either holding the course live or posting a pre-recorded video. Either way, you should ask participants to fill out a form that includes their email address in exchange for the course, so that you can stay in contact.
15. Ebooks
Many website visitors are willing to trade their contact information to access valuable pieces of content, and that’s where ebooks’ potential to become excellent lead magnets comes in.
These lead generation gems help to demonstrate company knowledge and credibility, educate readers and engage them enough to start a relationship with your company. They can also be crucial to persuading potential prospects to register on a mailing list.
Ebooks allow you to show who your company are and what you’re about, more than any other piece of content. In other words, through ebook design, you can express your visual language in every element.
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