Utilizing Freebies for Maximum Lead Generation

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I’ll never forget the first freebie I ever created and put out onto the internet: a free guide to help you grow your Instagram following. I wrote all the copy in a Word doc and even hired a graphic design student to make it pretty. I tossed it out to my audience and within hours I had a few hundred new subscribers on my email list. It was an exhilarating feeling seeing people jump onto my list in exchange for the free value I was offering. After that, I was hooked. Over the years I’ve made over 75 different freebies to help me grow my email list and in the process, I’ve learned what makes a freebie generate leads successfully.

Effective Freebies Deserve a Fresh Update

Building out a corner of the internet for our businesses means we’re creating within an ever-changing landscape with rules that are constantly shifting. We have to adapt and update regularly, otherwise our work can quickly look outdated and irrelevant, and sometimes overnight! So, like every other aspect of running an online business, the lead-generating freebies that are working for you have to play the same game.

Freebies have the opportunity to pave a pathway for lifelong customers. No matter the type, they’re working overtime to bring new faces into your ecosystem and, ultimately, guide subscribers to your paid offers. Even just one irresistible freebie can convert a curious lurker into someone who follows you through every iteration of your business.

A common mistake people make is that they create a free offer and then they set it and forget about it. For us, reworking and refreshing our top-performing, lead-generating freebies is a consistent practice. They’re on autopilot, sprawled out across the internet, linked up in blog posts, and bubbling up on Pinterest to target new customers and serve people for free. That means we need to schedule regular check-ins to see which ones are performing well and how we can keep them fresh and effective! So, what does that entail?

How to Use Freebies to Optimize Your Lead Generation

1. Examine Your Top-Performing Freebies

Before you start the editing process, take a look at your numbers so you can set yourself up to use your time effectively. I always recommend having at least two freebies running so you can see what your audience favors and what they are excited to exchange their email address for.

Take inventory. What freebies are getting the most action? Which ones are effectively generating subscribers for you? Which are truly generating leads and achieving their goals? Start there.

It might feel counterintuitive at first, especially if you’re a problem solver because your underperforming freebies will pull at your attention. There’s absolutely a time to evaluate their underperformance, but giving your time to your best free offers first means they can stay out there and work hard on your behalf while you update the rest. In time, you might not even need your less effective freebies if your top-performing ones are really driving results for you!

My business had a few obvious outliers performing best from my full lineup of freebies! From a free 5-day email list-building challenge to the “Ultimate Pinterest Guide” to our “How to Start a Podcast from Scratch” free download, we quickly saw which opt-ins were moving the needle the most and put our focus and attention on those first.

Depending on how many lead-generating offers you have, pick your top few. You don’t want this to be an overwhelming project, especially if you know you might get stuck in a loop of editing, designing, or rewriting. The focus here is improvement, not perfection.

2. Optimize Your Freebies

What does the process of “optimizing” a freebie mean? When it’s time to dive into the editing process, we start by running through a series of questions to create our task list. This helps modify our optimization process for each individual offer because some might need more work than others.

Does the freebie still align with our brand and messaging style?

A focus for my brand is that all my offers truly feel like they’re coming from me because they are! The way I used to speak to my audience 4-5 years ago isn’t exactly how I write or show up today, so I like to make sure the voice of the verbiage feels right. We do a read-through of the freebie from beginning to end making sure nothing feels too fluffy. We also flag where we need to update the design.

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