Blogging is an important tool for marketers trying to close a sale, but sometimes you have to give something away to get a bigger reward. In fact, from a sales perspective, you’re not really giving anything away. Instead, you’re hinting at the benefits clients can obtain from working with you more directly.
Give your blog a boost and lure clients by trying some of these basic giveaways. Most bloggers and businesses have an assortment of low stakes tools and tips on hand – put them to work for you.
A Profitable Post
At the simplest level, your blog is a kind of giveaway. You’re giving away valuable knowledge and insights to your readers in the form of your content. Particularly if you’re creating checklists, and cheat sheets, link roundups, and how-to guides, you’re providing material tools to your readers. That’s why people monetize their blogs in the first place – to recoup the value of that work.
Certain fields benefit more than others from information-heavy posts and, in fact, specialties like law and medicine rely on this kind of content. On legal blogs, for example, lawyers typically provide legal information rather than advice, for which they could be held responsible. However, the goal of these posts is ultimately to encourage those who need more detailed assistance to purchase services.
Dominate With Downloads
Another popular online freebie employed by bloggers is the downloadable. Whether you’re a mommy blog featuring downloadable crafts or a food blogger offering recipes to your readers, these are often the most popular elements of a site. But by limiting the number of available freebies, while offering especially high-value ones, you increase the likelihood that readers will purchase your paid files. WordPress and other blogging tools even offer special plugins for downloadable resources to make this easier.
Discounts Drive Sales
As with blog posts, many people don’t consider offering a discount to be the same as a giveaway, but to users, they’re equal, even though customers only get giveaways if they purchase something. Big retailers use this trick all the time with new and established customers alike, and you’ve probably made a purchase because you were motivated by a free bonus. Don’t underestimate the power of this tactic for your business.
Trade In Data
From a business owner’s perspective, customer data is power – and surveys provide demographic insights, can help determine marketing trends, help you make you meet customers’ needs more effectively, increasing profits. With that in mind, why not make a trade for that information. Customers will sometimes fill out a short survey for free, but once you start asking too many questions, they’ll promptly bail. A better approach is to offer them a freebie, from a file to a discount or a low-cost product, can get them to the end. And that data is worth more than whatever you trade in return.
Businesses have primarily stopped thinking in terms of trades, at least since the era of bartering ended, but in reality, the practice hasn’t ended. As professionals, we make trades every day. From knowledge and files to actual products, offering a benefit is the best way to secure a client. It’s just a small matter of reframing how you think about your blog as a sales tool.