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By: Dawn Gray
Online, we have all come to respect the power of "FREE". You
know it is much harder to convince someone to buy your
products and services than it is to convince them to accept
your free gift. A report is a "free gift" that will help you
rake in names and addresses, qualify the names and addresses
as belonging to people interested in your products and
services, and even SELL your product!
Rake in the Names!
People who spend any amount of time online are being buried
in email newsletters. They receive too many "volume #243"s
and "issue #652"s to read them all. Even if you offer
quality content and manage to get thousands of subscribers,
most of them will likely never read a single issue. They may
even forget they subscribed before they receive your first
issue!
Free reports cut through the clutter by offering valuable
content readers only have to commit to reading once. It can
be sent IMMEDIATELY by autoresponder, so the people who
request it will see it in their "in" box while they still
remember to look for it.
Ideally, your free report will offer information of
immediate use to your prospective clients. They will be so
excited about this information, that they will be willing to
give you far more information about themselves than they
would for an email newsletter. Then they will ALL read it.
Qualify Your Prospects
Your free report MUST be on a topic of interest to your
potential clients and only your potential clients. This
assures that the names you have collected by offering your
free report are potential clients and not just any Joe off
the street.
If you offered a free beanie baby, lots of people would take
you up on it, but only a few would really be interested in
your products and services. If you are a tax preparer,
you'll have better luck with "10 Incentive Stock Option
Mistakes That Can Cost You $200,000 Or More!".
SELL Your Product!
This is the most important part of a free report. It must
contain information valuable to your prospective clients,
but it must also contain a pitch for your products and
services. It must explain why your readers can not afford to
pass up the opportunity you are giving them.
Some people will call you right after they read your free
report (if it is compelling enough). It is still important
to follow up. Repeat your offer. Remind them of the
deadline. Send them at least two follow-up letters or email
messages.
NEVER delete a name unless someone asks you to. Even after
your follow-up sequence has ended, continue to send your
prospects new offers for your products and services.
For more information on how to effectively follow up with
your prospects, visit
http://www.busymarketing.com/followup.shtml
AUTOMATE!
This is the best part of offering a free report. It can be
completely automated. Using a follow up autoresponder, like
http://www.getresponse.com and those reviewed on my website
at http://www.busymarketing.com/aweber.shtml , you can have
your free report AND follow up messages sent whenever
someone fills out the form on your website or sends an email
to your autoresponder.
You won't have to write a new article, and you can continue
to use the same free report and follow up letters as long as
they remain accurate and effective. All you have to do is
promote it. I offer plenty of ideas on how to do that at
http://www.busymarketing.com/marketing.shtml and add more
through this newsletter almost every day!
About the Author
Dawn Gray can drive more traffic to your website. For other
articles on website promotion, visit her website at
http://www.busymarketing.com or send a blank email to
mailto:subscribe@busymarketing.com to subscribe to her free
email newsletter and get a FREE Search Engine Tips Screensaver.
Busy Marketing
dawn@busymarketing.com
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