All the Reasons Your Freebie's Falling Flat...or downright FAILING!

Online entrepreneurs, at every stage, place a lot of emphasis on growing their email list. It means not launching your paid offers to crickets, brings plenty of opportunities throughout the year to monetize your smaller evergreen offers and opens up plenty of doors to collaboration. There's also the credibility and internal feeling of satisfaction that comes with being able to talk about your healthy list size. 

But what if your list is made up of all the wrong people?

Or worse, no one seems to want to join your list!? 😲

You're not alone if you've gone about your list-building efforts all wrong and if you have, it's not too late to go back to the drawing board and start over. Because what's the point in growing your list with people who aren't going to be interested in your paid offers?

Your First 100 Leads by James Wedmore, is where you'll want to start in creating a freebie that people fall over themselves to sign up for, and I have a few key lessons from that training to get you thinking...

Faux Pas #1: No One Would Pay For It 

A view I strongly share with James is that whatever you're going to give away for free in your business has to be something your biggest, baddest competitor would have charged for it. 

You need to be able to position it as so valuable that people can't believe they're receiving it for free. In my head, I set a minimum of $20, "Is this [freebie] worth $20?" If I can't answer "Yes!" to that, then I start over.

Faux Pas #2: The Freebie Doesn't Create Demand for Your Paid Offer

It's one thing to create an amazing freebie that delivers plenty of value, but it's a huge (& common) faux pas to create a freebie that in no way leads people toward being ready for your paid offer!

If you're going to be selling a course on "Building an Online Course" you wouldn't precede that with a freebie that teaches "Organic LinkedIn Strategy". Chances are your ideal audience does need to know about organic social strategy, but if your freebie doesn't naturally move people into your paid offer, doesn't put them into a state of readiness, doesn't close the "gap" to what they're looking for, then it simply isn't going to convert. 

I think of the process like stepping stones across a pond. 

Faux Pas #3: Cart Before The Horse

This one ties into faux pas #2. One of the reasons your freebie might not be setting up demand for your paid offer is because you don't yet have enough clarity on what your paid offer is going to be?

Putting together an online course or offer can take months and often begins with some very hazy (at best) ideas on the outcome or "transformation" your program will deliver to people. If you're not clear on that, how do you plan to create a freebie that leads people to that? 

I'm sure you've been told a million times, "Start to build your email list" and you might have dived straight into this while you figure out the rest, but trust me, it's better to hold off with the list-building until you're clear on the next "paid" step you'd like people to take (even if you're not yet ready to sell it).

Faux Pas #4: Creating Your Freebie Before Marketing Your Freebie 

Building a freebie can be a time-intensive task, especially if you've decided your freebie works best as something like a 3-Part Video Series. 

Before you waste weeks, or even MONTHS, building out your freebie, ask your audience (on social, over the phone, in the DMs, wherever they live) if it's something they want. IF no one sounds as excited about it as you are, chances are it might need a bit of a rethink. Validation is key!

Faux Pas #5: Choosing Creativity Over Clarity

As creatives, we like to create! Me too, I get it! We like to give things catchy names, and elude to things we think our audience will totally "get", but sometimes our inside jokes and acronyms go WAY over their heads and if they can't glance at your freebie opt-in page, read your killer headline, and know INSTANTLY that they need your thing...you've lost them.

Make it VERY clear what transformation your freebie delivers. Repeat after me "specificity".

Correcting these 5 Freebie Faux Pas will give you a huge head start in creating a freebie that works as intended, but then it's time to turn your attention the Hook, the Headline and the Title. Not to mention getting clear on your Vehicle and Domino Belief.

All these concepts and more are covered in-depth inside James Wedmore's Free 16-Part Series, Your First 100 Leads that you can access here.

And if you'd like some hands-on help with putting the training into action this week, jump on over to the Launchpad Facebook Group (even if you're not a Kajabi user) because we'll be working through the training lessons bit by bit inside the group.