Freebie. Lead Magnet. List Builder.

Whatever you call it, if you’ve been in the online service provider industry for more than 15 minutes, you’ve heard of it. And probably been told that you “need one” or else your business will go up in flames.

Or, on the flip side of the conversation, you might be scrambling for ways to build your email list organically because you saw an “authority” on the internet talking about how “FREEBIES ARE DEAD.”

All drama aside, creating a free resource for your potential clients and audience members can be a great way to grow your email list, engage your audience, and showcase the value of your work without requiring a financial investment from people. The “try before you buy” model has worked for hundreds of thousands of creatives in the past, and will continue to work for years to come. As with everything in business, it’s your responsibility to decide if creating a free resource is the right move for you and your business specifically. If you like it, use it. If you don’t, leave it in the dust.

There is no “one size fits all” approach for ANYTHING in business, let alone a “guaranteed” way to grow your business with a freebie.

But the part about “freebies” that everyone overlooks in the greater conversation is how to create an actually good one. It’s not enough to have something free to download on your website that doesn’t hold any actual value to your audience. You have to create something worth downloading so that you can make the best possible first impression to the people that matter–your future customers, clients, and loyal fans.

Creating a Valuable Free Resource

The most important aspect of a high-performance free resource is its value. If you’re looking at a “freebie” as simply a way to get more people on your email list, then you’re looking at it wrong. It’s not about what a freebie can do for you, but rather what a freebie can give back to your audience. In order to avoid creating yet another piece of digital clutter that will sit collecting dust in someone’s inbox, make sure that it’s something that your audience actually needs and will use. If you create something and are left wondering if you should sell it or leave it as a free resource, then you’ve created something worth taking up precious inbox space.

There’s not one specific, foolproof way to ensure that your freebie will be a smash hit with your people. But if you’re willing to put in the work and do the research, making a free resource that your potential clients and audience members find valuable isn’t all that difficult.

The key is market research. You need to listen to your clients, apply feedback, look for what people are asking for, learn to pay attention to your market and your audience’s shifting needs. Keep up with the times and stay one step ahead. 

Give the people what they’re asking for, not what you “assume” they need.

Another great way to go about this is narrowing in on one step of your specific process or product that people tend to love. If you’re an operations manager with a killer client portal or organization process, there’s your freebie. Look at your signature service or process at large, find the points that people are super impressed with, and zoom into that to create a resource around it. That’s a great way to showcase your individual strengths alongside your free resources, making people feel more excited to work with you specifically in the future.

10 Ideas for Your Next Free Resource

After you’ve landed on what your freebie is going to include, you still have to decide on the best delivery method for it. We recommend getting as creative as possible with the delivery, as long as it remains easy to access and utilize for your audience. 

The way that you deliver your freebie is just as important (if not more important) than the content of your freebie. How you decide to deliver it depends on the content itself, the way that your audience best receives and processes information, and what you do and offer. When deciding on a container for your freebie content, think about which method will best highlight your specific skills and unique talents, support your audience, and make the most sense for the intended outcome of your lead magnet.

Still strapped for ideas? Here are 10 ways to consider building and delivering your next freebie.

Video Training

Call us biased, but we think that video trainings are the bomb dot com. Not only are they a great way to get your audience active and involved in the resource that you’ve created (AKA a resource that WON’T go to die in the inbox graveyard), but if you’re an educator or course creator, this is the BEST way to showcase your education style to your audience without requiring a buy-in from them.

Take a part of your signature process or service that often confuses people, an area of your industry that you wish more people knew about, or a topic that you love surprising your audience with your knowledge on, and make a mini masterclass surrounding it! You don’t need any fancy recording equipment, microphones, or editing skills (even though it never hurts to show off your creativity in different ways). Instead, make a few slides on Canva, record a Loom video, or just record yourself sitting at your desk with your webcam. 

Checklist

The freebie market is absolutely DROWNING in checklists, so if you’re taking this route take some extra time to make sure that it’s truly valuable. That said, never underestimate the power of a great checklist. Especially if it’s more informative or educational about something that you do especially well in your own business. Here are a few more specific ideas:

• Website copy or SEO audit checklist
• Content creation process checklist
• SOP checklist
• Pinterest post creation checklist
• Daily nutrition checklist
• Pre-wedding prep checklist

Remember to get specific around your checklist topic, bonus points if it helps soothe anxieties about something that your audience often feels like they’re “missing” or “getting wrong.”

Template

It goes without saying that we love a template. Free, paid, DIY, done-with-you… Cool Copy Club L-O-V-E-S and endorses the use of high-quality templates across every single area of your business. A lot of service providers think that templates are pretty much limited to copy and design, but there are so many ways to creatively build templates for yourself and your audience. Chances are, you probably have a template sitting in your back pocket right now that you could easily turn into a high-value freebie…

• Client portal template
• Caption writing template
• SOP template
• Canned email templates
• Niche design template (link-in-bio, footer, menu, etc.)

Ebook

Have more to say than you can reasonably fit into a 15 minute free training? Write an eBook! If you have a robust training, idea, or belief that you teach in your business that you want your audience to understand before they commit to working with you, an eBook is the perfect option.

Calendar or Schedule

Content calendars perform for a reason. People are always looking for ways to simplify their lives, and having something pre-scheduled or planned for them is a great way to do this. If you’re not a social media manager or content creator, you might feel like a calendar freebie isn’t the right fit for you. But there are tons of ways to adapt a calendar resource to your own business model…

• Launch calendar
• Email marketing calendar
• Yearly sales calendar
• Business operations audit calendar

You can also combine a calendar with a checklist-style freebie for a super valuable double-whammy.

Process Snippet

If you have a super particular, interesting, or unique creation process that your audience is frequently asking about, share some of it with them! This is a great option if you’ve coined your own methods for something specific in your business, or if you have the backend of yours (or your clients’) business running like a well-oiled machine. Find a specific part of the process that you want to share, and share the step-by-step of it with your audience as a free resource!

Product or Service “Sampler” Pack

The Cool Copy Club freebie falls into this category, and it works particularly well because it gives the people who download it a taste of everything that we have to offer. They can see if they align with our template style, and decide if our resources are something that they would actually use in their business at the moment. We take a “more is more” approach to, well, everything. Freebie included. So our Template Sampler Pack includes caption templates, a landing page template, and email templates. A true smorgasbord of what we have to offer! If you want to see for yourself, scroll all the way to the bottom of this page to download it!

Free Trial

This is the most common lead magnet that you’ll see outside of the online service provider industry. It’s so common, in fact, that you probably haven’t even thought of it as a freebie! We’re used to seeing 7 or 14-day free trials for things like software, apps, and subscriptions. But, for the right service provider, there are tons of creative ways to implement a free trial period as your own free resource! If you run a membership, have a resource vault, or do a unique group program, giving people a free trial period to join and test it out is a really easy way to share value and build your audience.

Quiz

Quizzes as freebies have come in and out of popularity over the past few years. It used to feel like everyone and their mother had a multi-step funneled quiz that would tell you what archetype or style you were. Some of them were useful, some were not. Quizzes, almost more than anything else, need to be USEFUL. Because they ask your audience to put in more work and introspection than your average freebie. They’re also quite labor intensive on the part of the service provider, because you have to thoughtfully map out every single element of your quiz to be informative and make sense.

But the right quiz, for the right person, can be one of the most valuable lead magnets available. If you’re giving your audience precious information and resources your quiz can bring hundreds of thousands of leads into your business every single week.

Private Podcast

Private podcasts are definitely the hot freebie of the moment. We like the idea of a private podcast, although we personally have no experience with creating and running one. When done right, private podcasts can be a great way to keep your audience engaged week after week. But therein lies the problem–it needs to be helpful and engaging enough to keep people coming back week after week. If you have an active and engaged audience that you’ve already successfully funneled somewhere like a broadcast channel, close friends story, email list, or free community, chances are you would be very successful with a private podcast for your next launch or simply as an ongoing freebie.

No matter which freebie model you land on, value is key. It won’t matter if you have the best freebie in the entire world if it’s not an incredibly useful tool for your audience.

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By the way, we’re Cool Copy Club, a conversion copywriting resource for cool creatives who want to learn how to make $$$$$$ with their words. If you loved reading this post, we’ve got more where this came from!

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