There are many ways to entice a prospective customer, but one of the most effective ways is by offering premium content. A premium content offer is an incentive or product that gives your web visitor value in exchange for their personal information, usually in the form of their email address or phone number.
If your offer is intriguing enough it can help more of your ideal customers find you, leading to deeper engagement and more sales. Premium content offers also increase brand awareness and help you to build your reputation in your chosen industry. If done right lead magnets can do so much for your marketing campaign. Below you will find the 3 essentials needed to create a perfect premium content offer that will entice your prospective customers.
Essential 1: Make sure your content offer is targeted towards the right audience
When in the brainstorming phase of your premium content offer, there are two questions that need to be asked to help shape your offer. They are:
- In what stage of the sales funnel are my prospects in?
- What form of premium content offer is most appealing to my prospects?
These questions may seem unrelated, but they are. The stage your prospects are in is a guiding factor in what form your premium content offer takes. At any given point in time, you have multiple prospects in different stages of the sales funnel. The sales funnel can be categorized into 3 different stages; the awareness stage, the consideration stage, and the decision stage.
Awareness Stage
If your website is getting a lot of visitors who have never heard of you, it’s because they are still in the awareness stage. The premium content offer should tell them more about you and what services or products you offer. It should also show them that you’re an expert who understands their problems and knows how to solve them. The ultimate goal is to convert them into leads so that you can work on moving them to the next stage in the sales funnel. The best types of content for this stage are e-books, reports, tool kits, case studies, and quizzes.
Consideration Stage
The next stage in the buying process is the consideration stage. Leads in this phase of the sales funnel are looking for their best option, and maybe shopping around a bit. Premium content offers for this stage should focus exclusively on your ability to solve their biggest problems, which is why videos, whitepapers, and case studies are the most effective types of content for this stage.
Decision Stage
The final stage is the most important stage: the decision stage. At this point in the process, it is clear that the lead is heavily interested in your product or services and has probably invested a fair amount of time in learning about your company. Ideal premium content offers for this stage are free trials or demos, which will encourage them to give your product a closer look.
Essential 2: Make sure that your offer is solving a relevant problem
Your premium content offer should be something that your potential customers want. The most effective way to capture their attention is to either provide a solution to a relevant problem or fulfill a desire that they may have. For example, if you are a pest control company creating a premium content offer centered around pest detection would be a huge draw for your target audience. You are solving a specific problem (how to identify the presence of pests) while still promoting your business and the various ways you can help your audience eliminate pests.
If you have strong social media interactions with your audience don’t be afraid to turn there for inspiration. Sometimes directly asking your audience what problems or desires they have can be the best approach. It is also worth noting that how you speak to your audience is important. If you are dealing with prospects familiar with your industry you can use jargon, or “industry-speak”, but if your audience is new to you and the field, stay away from these types of industry inclusive terms as they could make your reader feel alienated.
Essential 3: Give your readers somewhere to go
The relationship between you and your lead shouldn’t end when they get to the last page of the premium content offer. So how do you ensure that this relationship will evolve into a buyer-seller relationship? By giving your leads somewhere to go. In many ways, your premium content offer should act as a map, leading your prospects closer to your business. From your initial premium content offer your lead may have opted in to receive your emails, which could lead them to your blog, where they sign up for a free consultation. Without a next step, you’ll lose a lot of the momentum you had.
Another way to ensure you don’t lose momentum is to utilize a platform like the one that we use on our website. Not only can you monitor and host all of your premium content offers, but you can track every person that has downloaded the offer. From there you have the ability to create entire campaigns based off of how they interact with your content offer, sending emails at key points and when certain behaviors are triggered to further increase engagement with your company.
To learn more about creating effective and enticing premium content offers, click on the banner below to schedule your free 30-minute consultation with us today.
