Are Your "Free" E-Books Costing You Money?
Free e-books have become a popular way for internet marketers to capture e-mail addresses.
With research showing that it takes an average of seven connections with a prospect before they make a purchase, capturing e-mail addresses provides a cost effective way to stay in touch with those who are interested in your products and services without spending money on advertising.
Best of all, you don't have to offer any value because they're free, right? WRONG! Think of an e-book as a speech.
When you hear the speaker, you're either impressed and intrigued or you're not.
Sure, being impressed doesn't necessarily mean that you'll buy anything from him, at least not yet.
It does mean that you think he provides enough value that you'd want to listen to him again, subscribe to his newsletter, or follow him on Facebook.
Will he use some of those chances to connect as advertising opportunities? Sure, but if he's running his business effectively, you'll stay in touch anyway because of the value he continues to provide.
It's the same thing with e-books.
Your site has to provide enough information to make them want to provide their e-mail address and get your e-book.
Your e-book has to provide enough value for them to stay on your e-mail list.
Your e-mails have to continue to provide enough value to make them want to stay on your list regardless of how much marketing comes with it.
Here's the key, though: most people who give you their e-mail address are looking for free information.
They're not terribly interested in hearing about your paid products.
They want to learn something 'for nothing'.
The trick is to provide enough value in your e-book that they want to hear more from you and will stay on your e-mail list to do it.
If your e-book doesn't provide value, people will unsubscribe from your list immediately.
Not only that, but you will never be able to sell to those customers again because they don't consider you a valuable enough resource to meet their needs.
Yikes! So what's the solution? You want your e-books to be informative and well written.
You don't have to give away all of your secrets so that nobody ever buys from you, but you do want some helpful, actionable information that at least partially solves your reader's problem.
You want them saying, "Wow, that worked! I wonder what else I can learn from this guy.
" Writing an e-book isn't terribly difficult, but you do want to put some time into it.
If you don't have the time for it, you can always outsource it to someone who writes them professionally.
When you do, though, make sure that the person who'll be writing it either knows enough about your industry to provide high quality content or will research the topic enough to do so.
A half-hearted effort simply isn't good enough when you're making your first impression on your prospects.
With research showing that it takes an average of seven connections with a prospect before they make a purchase, capturing e-mail addresses provides a cost effective way to stay in touch with those who are interested in your products and services without spending money on advertising.
Best of all, you don't have to offer any value because they're free, right? WRONG! Think of an e-book as a speech.
When you hear the speaker, you're either impressed and intrigued or you're not.
Sure, being impressed doesn't necessarily mean that you'll buy anything from him, at least not yet.
It does mean that you think he provides enough value that you'd want to listen to him again, subscribe to his newsletter, or follow him on Facebook.
Will he use some of those chances to connect as advertising opportunities? Sure, but if he's running his business effectively, you'll stay in touch anyway because of the value he continues to provide.
It's the same thing with e-books.
Your site has to provide enough information to make them want to provide their e-mail address and get your e-book.
Your e-book has to provide enough value for them to stay on your e-mail list.
Your e-mails have to continue to provide enough value to make them want to stay on your list regardless of how much marketing comes with it.
Here's the key, though: most people who give you their e-mail address are looking for free information.
They're not terribly interested in hearing about your paid products.
They want to learn something 'for nothing'.
The trick is to provide enough value in your e-book that they want to hear more from you and will stay on your e-mail list to do it.
If your e-book doesn't provide value, people will unsubscribe from your list immediately.
Not only that, but you will never be able to sell to those customers again because they don't consider you a valuable enough resource to meet their needs.
Yikes! So what's the solution? You want your e-books to be informative and well written.
You don't have to give away all of your secrets so that nobody ever buys from you, but you do want some helpful, actionable information that at least partially solves your reader's problem.
You want them saying, "Wow, that worked! I wonder what else I can learn from this guy.
" Writing an e-book isn't terribly difficult, but you do want to put some time into it.
If you don't have the time for it, you can always outsource it to someone who writes them professionally.
When you do, though, make sure that the person who'll be writing it either knows enough about your industry to provide high quality content or will research the topic enough to do so.
A half-hearted effort simply isn't good enough when you're making your first impression on your prospects.
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