It’s a common issue that comes up: you can have the sexiest, most beautifully put-together website, yet find that you are not getting subscribers to your email list. The thing is, building a warm, engaged email list can be one of the most crucial parts to having a thriving website so if yours is not growing, it’s time to do something about it! How to get subscribers to your blog is a combination of art and science, but one of the best things you can do is have an enticing ‘party starter’ or opt-in ethical bribe.
Here are our top 3 tips for creating an effective ‘party starter’:
1. Research
Yes – you’re going to need to do a little homework; the question of what to give away on your website is best answered by finding out what your target audience wants. Slapping together what you think they need without actually checking is a great way to waste a whole lot of time without gaining a result…We like to say that you should think about it as though you were hosting a party at your home – will you serve up stale crackers? Or will you go to every effort to serve something good that keeps people hanging around?
The key is to give away something that will be of value to your website visitors, without giving them every single piece of information on that topic – you want them coming back for more!
Here are some suggestions of where you can find this information:
- Your blog – what topics have been getting the most engagement?
- Your competitor’s blog – we’re not saying to plagiarise, but do they have certain blog topics that are getting a lot of comments from which you could develop a giveaway? It could even be based on questions that are asked in the comments…
- Social media – again look for topics with higher engagement.
- Target known pain points in your industry – what would people really like to have (or avoid)?
- Look at the questions people are asking in any industry-related forums.
- Create a survey and ask questions that will guide you with creating your giveaway.
2. Create Your Party Starter
Now that you’ve done your research and found out what people in your market really want to know, it’s time to craft that knowledge into a giveaway. We talked about what format this should take on one of our recent podcasts – if ‘eBook’ just jumped into your head, you may want to think again!
We’ve been through a period where every website out there was offering an eBook as their opt-in giveaway – but how many of these are getting read? How many do you still have sitting unread on your computer? eBooks are less effective these days because people are so bombarded with information and simply don’t have time to read through a book.
What does this mean? If you want an effective opt-in, look at how you can offer information in easily-consumed chunks that are more enticing for your website visitors.
Here are some suggestions of types of opt-ins that have been getting results for us and our clients:
- Free consultations
- Cheat sheets or check-lists
- Audio/video recordings (remember, not too long!)
- Printable downloads such as ‘manifestos’
- Resource lists or ‘rolodexes’
- Free eCourse or workshop – again not too long!
3. Call to Action
It’s a simple thing to have, but often without it people won’t sign up – tell them what you want them to do! Apart from having your opt-in form in place and a call to action with it (you may like to test placement of your opt-in form to see what does the best), you could try placing calls to action in different ‘hot’ parts of your website and linking them to a landing page for your giveaway.
Here are some to try:
- At the bottom of blog posts – people are often looking there for what to do next.
- Look into your analytics and find which pages/posts are getting the most views – put calls to action on those pages.
- In your bio on any guest posts that you do.
We hope you enjoyed this as much as we enjoyed creating it for you.
If you’re as serious about your website and turning it into a money making machine, then you’re probably going to want to have a look at our personalized Website Checklist. It’s a checklist that we have developed over the years to show you the TOP 25 THINGS all successful websites share. The difference is that OUR TEAM of professionals will do the checking for you…. it’s too simple… and for only $7, you would be silly not to have us take a look at YOUR website.