[thrive_text_block color="note" headline=""] To create an irresistible lead magnet, you have to know who your perfect customers are. I've created a perfect customer persona template. All you need to do is fill in the blanks and it'll look like you're speaking directly to them 1-on-1. PLUS you get to get the pdf version of this blog post as well so that you can refer to it anytime you like, even when you’re offline. Click here to get both FREE. [/thrive_text_block] This post is especially created for Digital Product Creators who want to create Freemiums / Lead Magnets that your subscribers actually crave for and want to get their hands on. The primary purpose of building leads is to sell them your paid products/services. And to effectively do that, you must first disqualify people who are not interested in your topic/offer. [thrive_text_block color="teal" headline="What You'll Learn"] After you’ve finished reading this post, you’ll understand the straightforward yet often overlooked systematic process of creating a Freemium that your target audience can actually apply to solve their problem… so that they will be magnetically attracted to your paid solutions to solve their other problems. Inevitably, you’re also going to get valuable lead magnet ideas. [/thrive_text_block] Anthony Iannarino gives you 7 reasons why you must disqualify people. I like his quote: If you try to sell to everybody, you lose. Big time. Every time. Why? Because those ideal target audience that you should be attracting ends up not being laser-targeted by you. The ones who should be saying “Wow this offer is indeed for me” ends up saying “I’m not really sure if this is for me”. As the saying goes, when you sell everything to everybody, you end up selling to nobody. When people see your Freemium and they raise their hands, this means they’re interested in your topic. Disqualify everyone else who did not respond to your Freemium. That’s the name of the marketing game. You can’t just go up to a stranger and ask him to buy your digital offer. Doing this would be like going to a business event and approach someone you don’t know and ask him or her to be your business partner. It sounds stupidly obvious and you might chuckle, but a lot of entrepreneurs get this wrong all the time and try to sell their digital products to strangers right at the first contact. Now, if you’re selling a physical offer -- batteries, pens, cups, computers, phones, cars, clothes, food -- you could sell your offer directly because it’s very clear what the customer is getting. Since we're on the topic of disqualifying people, I should remind you again that this post is about creating Freemium / Lead Magnet for...

...Digital Product Creators

If you sell physical products, you wont' be able to apply all the steps described below, though you'll no doubt increase your digital marketing knowledge and perspective. If you want to effectively sell more, you need to be more creative, strategic, and systematic. Freemium is the first stage in the Customer Value Maximization (CVM) process, and it is absolutely required and essential if you want to run a profitable and sustainable business. This is because your conversion rate from website visitors (traffic) to leads (subscribers) directly impacts how many people see your paid offers (Slide, Essence, Profit Booster, Reserve). If this is your first time on this blog, you might not be familiar with that these terms mean. I explain them in detail in this post. Here’s the short version: CVM -- Sales funnels Freemium -- Lead magnet that you give away for free Slide -- Front end product Essence -- One time offer (OTO) 1 or upsell 1 Profit Booster -- One time offer (OTO) 2 or upsell 2 Reserve -- Back end products

Now let’s run some numbers.

Scenario 1

100 visitors land on your lead capture page 25% optin rate = 25 leads 25 people see your Slide sales page 5% buy @ $30 = $37.50 25 people see your Essence sales page 10% buy @ $100 = $250 25 people see your Profit Booster sales page 10% buy @ $500 = $1250 Total revenue = $1537.50 [divider style='centered'] Now let’s double only the conversion and leave everything else (visitors and price) the same.

Scenario 2

100 visitors land on your lead capture page 50% optin rate = 50 leads 50 people see your Slide sales page 10% buy @ $30 = $150 50 people see your Essence sales page 20% buy @ $100 = $1000 50 people see your Profit Booster sales page 20% buy @ $500 = $5000 Total revenue = $6150

Just by doubling (2x) your conversions, you’d get a 4x return on your revenue.

[thrive_text_block color="purple" headline="Set Up Sales Funnels Quickly"] By the way, did you know that with Zaxaa, you can easily and quickly set up sales funnels like this and even more complicated ones? [/thrive_text_block]

Click here to checkout Zaxaa

[thrive_text_block color="note" headline="Here's a myth worth dispelling"] Your Freemium (lead magnet) does not have to lengthy or huge or complex. It just needs to solve 1 specific problem with 1 specific solution with 1 specific segment of your market. [/thrive_text_block] [bctt tweet="Your lead magnet need not be lengthy or huge. It just needs to solve 1 specific problem with 1 specific segment of your market"] If your Freemium can do it in 2 pdf pages, or 5 minutes of audio or video, then there’s nothing wrong with that as long as it’s delivering value and helping solve the problem as promised. In fact, everyone is so busy these days that people will appreciate that you’re skipping the filler and fluff and just get straight to the point.

How To Create Your Irresistible Freemium / Lead Magnet

Step 1 - Determine WHO Is Your Perfect Customer

Everyone has a finite amount of time. As small entrepreneurs, we also have a finite amount of money. The 80/20 Pareto principle states: [pullquote align="normal" cite="] The Pareto principle (also known as the 80–20 rule, the law of the vital few, and the principle of factor sparsity) states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. [/pullquote] Taking this into the customer context, not every customer is equal. A small percentage will spend much, much more money with you than others. In his book “80/20 Sales and Marketing”, Perry Marshall expanded on this topic to say that there is another 80/20 in every 80/20… and another… and another… and another… and so on. (by the way -- since you’re into sales and marketing, I recommend you get the book if you haven’t already. You’ll think of everything in terms of 80/20 and maximize your prioritization efforts) So you have 20% of customers contributing to 80% of your revenue. Then you’d have another 20% of the 20% contributing 80% of the 80% of your revenue. This means you have: 4% of your customers contributing 64% of your revenue. 0.8% of your customers contributing 51% of your revenue, etc. [bctt tweet="0.8% of your customers contribute to 51% of your revenue. Do you know which are the 0.8%?"] This translates to: you should determine WHO your PERFECT customers are. These are the types of customers who would spend huge amounts of money with you, compared to the average customer. This is not to say that you should ignore those who are not your perfect customers. This is to say that because our time and budget is limited, we should focus our efforts on those that would give us the biggest bang for our buck -- our Perfect Customers.

[thrive_text_block color="note" headline=""] We aim straight for the gold. Silver and bronze can come later. [/thrive_text_block]

The perfect customers for Zaxaa are digital product creators who sell information products or software who can afford and are willing to pay at least $100/month for the services we provide. This means beginners who can’t afford to pay our fees are not our perfect customers… even though there are beginners who are smart enough to realize that in order to run a profitable business, business expenses are inevitable, and these beginners set aside a portion of their income (from their current job) to pay for our services. Does it mean that we totally ignore beginners? No. It simply means that we prioritize our efforts on intermediate and more advanced entrepreneurs who have the budget to use our services. A good way to determine your perfect customer is to create a perfect customer/buyer persona. According to founder and creator of the concept of buyer personas -- Tony Zambito -- a buyer persona, taken directly from his site, is: [pullquote align="normal"] Buyer personas are research-based archetypal (modeled) representations of who buyers are, what they are trying to accomplish, what goals drive their behavior, how they think, how they buy, and why they make buying decisions. (Today, I now include where they buy as well as when buyers decide to buy.) [/pullquote] This means you should know things about your perfect customers, like their:

• Occupation: what they do, their position, how much they earn
• Gender
• Age
• Education
• Hobbies: what they like to do
• Goals / Aspirations: what they would like to achieve or get
• Problems: the problems they face
• Buying habits: where do they buy and when

Based on the above demographics, you then determine how you can best help your perfect customers. [thrive_text_block color="note" headline="*** BONUS ***"] Click here to get the Perfect Customer Persona template along with examples [/thrive_text_block]

Step 2 - WHERE Do Your Perfect Customers Hang out?

Now that you know who your perfect customers are, it’s time to go and find them. The best place to start is to go to places they already hang out and engage with them there. It’s already crowded with the kind of people you’d want to sell to. Enter the world of communities. Offline, you can go to seminars, events, trade shows/exhibitions, meetups, etc. Online, communities can be found via forums and Facebook groups. But not just any forum or group in your niche. The forums and groups must already have active users who are actively participating. It’s no use participating and trying to engage in a dead forum where there is little to no discussions. It takes the same amount of time and effort in giving value to other members in a dead or busy forum. You might as well spend your time wisely and participate in places where there are already a lot of users and discussions going on. BUT you can’t simply jump in and blatantly sell your offers. You’ll get kicked out of the group in no time… especially in popular communities where there are a lot of active discussions. The moderators are ready to pounce on you the moment you promote. To find forums, simply go to Google and type in: [keyword] forum E.g. Golf niche -- type in “golf forum” (if you’re in a sub-niche like golf swing [a pretty popular topic], most likely there is a sub-forum for that, and it’d be better to participate in the sub-forum instead of the general golf forum) Pay attention to how popular the sub-forum is by looking at the number of topics and replies, and when the latest post was. To find Facebook groups, login to your Facebook account and type in keywords related to golf and then selecting “Groups”: The rule is always to help others first and contribute value before you sell anything. This goes not only for forum or group posting, but for everything you do in life, be it personal or business. Remember the classic quote by the late Zig Ziglar: [pullquote align="left"] You can have everything in life you want if you will just help enough people get what they want [/pullquote] [thrive_text_block color="note" headline="Here’s a good rule of thumb when participating in communities"]

1. Help other members first by answering their questions if you know the answer (it’s pointless to answer something that you don’t know the answer to -- you’ll damage your reputation as a result).
2. Help other members 4 times before promoting (4:1 ratio) -- help them 4 times, promote 1 time.
3. Make sure to read the forum/group rules regarding promoting your own link. If they don’t allow, then don’t.
4. Ensure the link you promote is relevant to the conversation and can really help members solve their problems.

[/thrive_text_block]

Step 3 - WHAT Are The problems They’re Trying To Solve?

If you’ve done Step 2 correctly, this step should be easy for you. The more members you help, the better you understand them. You’ll discover what their pain points and problems are. You’ll empathize with them more by reading their comments and participating in the discussion and asking them more questions, as you help more members. The more urgent the problem, the better for you as the solution provider. Urgent means they want to solve the problem NOW, not later. Note down the problems they’re trying to solve in a Word document or notepad or using an old-fashioned piece of paper.

Step 4 - Flesh Out The Reverse CVM / Sales Funnel

Now that you know the various problems your target audience are facing, create your Customer Value Maximization (CVM) / sales funnel in reverse. Start with the end in mind. As I’ve mentioned in this post, your audience have multiple problems they want to solve. Do NOT solve all their problems all at once in a single offer -- be it a paid or free offer. You want to strategically think about “the whole enchilada” of products/services you want to sell. You should always have different products/services that solve different specific problems that increase in value and price. Let’s revisit Customer Value Maximization (CVM). I like to swim, so let's use that for this example. Suppose you’re a swimming coach. You’d want to work your CVM backwards, like this:

1. What is the highest value / most expensive offer you want to sell?
2. What is the 2nd most expensive offer?
3. What is the 3rd most expensive offer?
4. etc until you reach your Freemium / lead magnet

Your reverse CVM could look like this:

• Most expensive / Profit Booster / OTO 2 -- Video is cool, but if you want to learn how to swim better and faster, you can come to XYZ swimming pool and let me directly coach you. Nothing beats having a personal coach giving you direct feedback.
• 2nd most expensive / Essence / OTO 1 -- Do you also want to master the fastest swimming style in the world -- freestyle? If yes, I show you how in this training series.

• 3rd most expensive / Slide / Front End -- Video series that teach you how to swim breaststroke
• Freemium / Lead Magnet -- Free video shows beginners how to learn the basics of swimming correctly and effectively, including breathing and treading water

In this example, your offers increase in value and price as you go deeper into your CVM -- which also means that the number of people taking up your offer decreases as you go deeper. This is to be expected. As mentioned earlier, there will always be a small segment of your customers who are willing to and can afford to spend much, much more than others. These are your Perfect Customers. [thrive_text_block color="note" headline=""] Remember, 0.8% of your customers contribute to 51% of your revenue. [/thrive_text_block] Of course, the more expensive your product is, the more value you must deliver. Now that you know EXACTLY the entire product line you’ll be offering, you can create your Freemium -- always keeping in mind the goal of the Freemium is to create a slippery slide path towards your Slide so that a maximum number of leads become customers. And from Slide -> slippery slide towards your Essence -> slippery slide towards your Profit Booster, etc. Slippery slide means the connection between one offer and the next is tightly related, so that you achieve high conversions at each stage. As you can see, fleshing out your CVM / Sales Funnel backwards like this allows you to make better judgments as to what kind of product/service to offer at each of the CVM stage. Most people create their CVM in order from Freemium to Profit Booster, which is wrong. No wonder they don’t tend to sell many of their offers. [bctt tweet="Most entrepreneurs create their sales funnels in order from lowest to highest priced. WRONG"] Because if you create your Freemium first, it might not be closely related to your Slide. Then you create your Slide, which might not be closely related to your Essence, etc. The fastest way to set up CVM / sales funnels to sell your digital products is via Zaxaa. [thrive_text_block color="teal" headline="Here's A Tip"] If you run out of ideas on what content to cover for your Freemium, create your Slide first and take the first chapter out and make it the Freemium. We call this splintering off your paid products. [/thrive_text_block] Books in Amazon always employ this technique with their “Look inside” feature: By doing the 4 steps above, you’ll no doubt get a bunch of irresistible lead magnet ideas.

Types Of Freemium / Lead Magnet

Now that you know what content you’re going to cover in your Freemium, the next step is to actually create it. There a number of different types of Freemium you could offer:

1. Report / white paper / ebook / case study
2. Podcast / audio mp3
3. Video
4. Cheatsheet
5. Infographic
6. Checklist
7. Resource list
8. Templates
9. Discount (good for physical products)
10. Free trial (software)
11. Survey
12. Content upgrade

[divider style='centered']

Report, Audio, Video

These 3 are very popular and pretty obvious. You deliver your Freemium in the form of a report or audio or video, solving 1 of your target audience problems. Reports, case studies, ebooks, and white papers as well as #4 through #7 are typically and easiest delivered in the form of a pdf. Write your content in Microsoft Word or Pages (Mac) or Google Docs (online). Then convert them to pdf. Here’s how you do that in Google Docs: For audio, you can use your built-in recording software on your computer or you can use a free application called Audacity. For screen recording and video editing software, I personally have used both Camtasia and Screenflow (Mac) and found both of them to be good. I’m not sure if there are any built-in software that comes with PC or Mac that allows you to record your screen. If there are, please let me know in the comments so that others can benefit as well. Thanks! [divider style='centered']

Cheatsheet

This is basically a quick condensed version (summary) of how to do or achieve something. If you have a detailed blog post covering “7 steps to increase your memory retention by 42% in 5 days”, your cheatsheet could offer a condensed version of the most important points to take away. [divider style='centered']

Infographic

This is a piece of (usually) visually appealing graphic that contains important points about your topic. Be sure to provide the high resolution version of the graphic as well so that your leads can print them out if they want. If you’re not a designer, you want to enlist the help of a good one. You can go to Fivver and hire one or use your favorite designer. This is what I’ve done for my CVM infographic: [divider style='centered']

Checklist

This is a checklist of the steps required to achieve a desired result. In the “7 steps to increase your memory retention by 42% in 5 days” example, you could create a checklist that people can glance over it quickly to make sure the important steps are not missed. This is also what I’ve done to entice visitors to optin to get my checklist for more leads and sales… specifically for digital product creators: [divider style='centered']

Resource List

This is a list of the tools and resources required to do something. Since you’re a digital product creator, I could offer you a resource list of the tools and services I use and recommend in my business. This would save you tremendous amount of time trying to search and review the different tools needed to run an online business. Hosting company -- I use and recommend ABC Email autoresponder company -- I use and recommend DEF. Link tracking and conversions -- I use and recommend GHI. Etc. [divider style='centered']

Templates

If you could provide a “fill in the blank” kind of template that’s relevant to your topic, people are going to want to get a hold of it. E.g. You target people who often do presentations who are looking for professional Powerpoint templates. If your Freemium is a nice Powerpoint template giveaway they can simply “plug and play”, do you think these people want to get it? All they need to do is then change out the logo and the text on the template. [divider style='centered']

Discount

This works well for physical products, but not so well for digital products, unless you or your brand is already well-known. Because if you’re not already popular, and you say to people “Enter your email and get a 50% discount on my amazing course on how to boost your memory” -- not many will be interested, even though you’re targeting the right audience. This is because you don’t have any credibility yet. [divider style='centered']

Free Trial

This works well if you’re selling software or applications. People can easily sign up for a free trial account and test drive your system first. If they like it, they’ll become your customers. If they don’t, they simply don’t upgrade. We offer a free Zaxaa account where people can sign up for free: [divider style='centered']

Survey

This is made hugely popular by Ryan Levesque’s Survey Funnel principle. Basically when visitors land on your landing page, you ask them a few questions related to their topic of interest. At the end of the survey, people are asked to provide their email on the promise that their customized answers are sent to their email inbox. Based on their answers, they get funneled or splintered to different segments of your list and start getting email follow ups based on which segments they’re on. This makes the emails they get very targeted and specific to their condition and situation, which in turn leads to high engagement and sales conversions. This is also a recommended book about speaking directly to your prospects and customers, as if you’re there face-to-face “diagnosing” their problems and offering them solutions based on their unique situation. [divider style='centered']

Content Upgrade

This is basically providing something that’s very relevant to the content the visitor is viewing, and “that something” can only be gotten by opting in / subscribing. If you’re just a blog reader and haven’t opted in/subscribed, you can’t have access to it. In this post, I talk about the importance of Customer Value Maximization. My content upgrade offers people a high resolution (print-ready) CVM infographic plus more examples, so that they can gain a better understanding. You can also see Content Upgrade in action in this very post -- see Step 1 above -- where I offer customer persona template and examples. I put Content Upgrade last in the list because not everyone has a blog, especially when starting out. I encourage you to start a blog soon though, as it’s one of the best ways to build your credibility and establish yourself as an authority in your marketplace.

How To Apply This To Your Business

As you can see, Freemium is one of the most important stages in your CVM. It’s where you first come into contact with your leads and potential customers. Do not overcomplicate things by trying to achieve perfection. Because you can never truly achieve perfection. It doesn’t exist. It’s always a never-ending cycle of constant improvement, based on user feedback. Over time, as you gain more subscribers and leads, ask them for feedback on your Freemium. What can be done to improve it? Did your Freemium manage to solve the problem it promises in the first place? What do you like and not like about it? From the real, live feedback you get, improve your Freemium so that it becomes better. I’ve already shown you the 4 steps you need to do, and the different types of Freemium you can deliver. You have more than enough information for your lead magnet ideas. Now, go create your Freemium / Lead Magnet and build a list of qualified leads. After your Freemium is created, the next step is to create a high converting lead capture page.

Your Turn

Tell me in a comment below the niche/sub-niche you’re in and let me know how you plan on creating your Freemium. Feel free to also ask anything you want. I read each and every comment personally. If you find this post useful, I’m sure others will as well. Can I ask a favor and ask you to share it with your friends by clicking one of the share buttons below? Thank you in advance! [thrive_text_block color="note" headline=""] To create an irresistible lead magnet, you have to know who your perfect customers are. I've created a perfect customer persona template. All you need to do is fill in the blanks and it'll look like you're speaking directly to them 1-on-1. PLUS you get to get the pdf version of this blog post as well so that you can refer to it anytime you like, even when you’re offline. Click here to get both FREE. [/thrive_text_block]