[+ free download: the OPT-IN ideas swipe file – 60 great opt-in example for every niche ]
As I was scrolling my Twitter feed today, I saw this hilarious post that featured potential reasons why you are probably single:
“Last time I went in for a checkup my doctor asked me what birth control I was using and I answered:
– My personality.
She laughed so gotdamn hard she had to put her clipboard down.”
It made me think: this is just like in the online business space, where your “opt-in personality” can scare away your audience. Whether your lead-magnet truly sucks (it’s you), or they just don’t immediately see the value it brings on the table (it’s them), it doesn’t matter. If you don’t change something quickly, you are doomed to be alone forever.
This is tragic because no email subscribers = no business.
And no business = your freedom dreams crushed.
The good news is I can help you change all this is as little as one day. Yes, you heard me right. I will share with you the exact steps to take if you want to copy my results:
- An opt-in that, when promoted in one FB group, gives you 365 comments in 1 day
- An opt-in that once published on your website gives you a 60% conversion rate
- An opt-in that, once you are running ads, is so attractive that it gives you leads for a few cents.
All of these without being a “guru,” a native English speaker or having hundreds of happy clients that are dying to write fabulous testimonials for me.
Wanna know how? Let’s dive in.
1. Find out your USP
First things first, you must be clear about your USP. This stands for Unique Selling Proposition and it means you must know what your service/product is and who is it for.
If you know this already, that’s great. If not, let me help you quickly solve this. Fill in the blanks below and here is your USP.
“I help [insert your target audience] with [insert their general problem you can solve] by [insert your solution]”
Like in my own example:
I help TIME STARVED ONLINE ENTREPRENEURS with their LAUNCHING STRUGGLES by TEACHING THEM SMART CONTENT MARKETING STRATEGIES THAT WORK.
2. Choose your ideal client (and my counterintuitive advice on why you should NOT brainstorm around the ideal client avatar)
Once you are crystal clear about your USP, let’s get to the famous “ideal client avatar” step.
Except: I DON’T BELIEVE IN A CLIENT AVATAR. This avatar might work great for SF movies, but that’s about it.
This is what most people recommend: brainstorm the shit out of your ideal client avatar. When I was just starting out, I did the same. And guess what? It gave me months of procrastination, of not moving on with my business because I was so unsure what I brainstormed was the real thing.
And it was not about the easy questions like “are they a man or a woman?”. Oh, no. There were questions like: “What keeps them awake at night?” that got me stuck. I could have kept fantasizing for hours and then ending up wondering if I got this right at all.
Maybe it was my previous career as a finance and management consultant; maybe it was my experience with writing hundreds of business plans for small and big companies, maybe it was all those times I helped businesses identify the profit leaking sources and take measures to close them quickly. One thing is for sure: not one of those business experiences relied on going onward with an idea without testing it first to make sure it works.
So, please excuse me if I don’t trust those highly priced business coaches who sell this like this is the natural thing to do. Because IT IS NOT.
So I did things a little bit differently. I went to a Facebook group filled with people who were in my general audience (women who wanted a freedom business). I chose one person I knew and whom I WOULD HAVE DONE ANYTHING to have the opportunity to work with. In fact, when I tried to put a face to my “ideal” client avatar, that was the person that immediately came to my mind.
I reached out to her (we previously talked about our business struggles) and I told her about a new product idea I was working on. I asked her if she would hop on a call with me for 20 minutes to answer a few questions I had. She agreed.
3. Do your research to figure out what they want
Earlier on in my business process, when I was validating my product idea, I went to Udemy and searched for courses on my general topic (content marketing) that had at least 100 good testimonials.
I also performed a basic search on BuzzSumo for smaller topics within my general topic that had lots of shares (more than 10k shares in the last 12 months).
From doing this two things (which only took 30-40 minutes), I ended up with more than 30 different ideas I knew I could use for my opt-in. But I had no idea which of them would be the most attractive to my ideal clients. This was exactly what I was going to find out during my call with my ideal client (which was real, not some avatar).
Before the call, I prepared a list of questions. These questions helped me not only easily finding out what the most relevant struggles were (bye-bye brainstorming forever!), but also making her open up and going deep with her answers.
What I mean is that I didn’t get generic answers like “I would like to have more guest blogging opportunities but don’t know where to start”, but things like “Every time I want to open my laptop to research potential websites to write for, my research anxiety kicks in. After 5 minutes of staring at the Google page I feel like my brain freezes and then I begin doubting my entire business building abilities. Am I ever going to do this when I can’t even come up with one darn website that would be great for my brand?”.
See the difference?
4. Choose one thing and narrow it down
Your paid solution (the product or service you want to sell) is something that will help your clients solving their problem. We know that.
But how do you come up with the perfect opt-in idea that makes your subscriber scream “Give me more of that!” and then immediately taking out the credit card and purchase your product?
Things are pretty straightforward; you just have to answer the following three questions:
Does this solve a small part of my customer’s problem (like the first steps they need to take towards solving their problem)?
Is very easy to consume and implement?
Is this so good that other people I know charge money for it? Don’t be afraid to do this. The internet is very crowded today and, if you are only starting out, the only chance to stand out is to give away for free something extremely valuable. And then having a strategy in place to rip off the benefits of doing this, of course (more details will follow in my next emails).
Now, if you want to see some great examples of lead magnets that tick all the boxes above, I have put together for you a free download you can immediately access: the Opt-in swipe file with 60 lead magnet ideas for every niche. Fill in your info in the box below and enjoy it.
5. Free or low-cost tools you need to put together a highly converting opt-in offer
Once you found your winning opt-in idea, you can easily put it together, by using free (or almost free) tools like:
- Graphic design tools
I have tried a lot of free and paid tools and the only ones that worked for me are Stencil and Canva. Both of them come with a FREE version.
- Shooting videos and video editing software: your laptop/smartphone camera and free software like Screencast (for Windows) or iMovie (for Apple products).
- An email management system like MailChimp (which has a free version) or ConvertKit for delivering a free mini-courses as your optin.
- For quizzes: take a look at Typeform (www.typeform.com) which has a free version or the quizz builder from Thrive Themes. I’ve heard very good things about both, but I never used them personally.
Also, bear in mind that even free stuff (like your new opt-in) should have a sales page (which in this case is the opt-in page). Even if you don’t sell something for money, your visitors still need to decide to give you or not their email, based on what they see on the opt-in page. A few tips here:
– make the opt-in benefits clear: tell them what they will get AND how this will help them with their problem.
– make it easy for them to sign up: considering leaving out the “first name” box, even if you love personalized emails. The recent studies show that this can dramatically increase your opt-in rate. Also, don’t write a lot of copy here: a one-paragraph description of the opt-in and three bold benefits are more than enough.
Let’s see a few good examples:
6. Conclusion
As Marie Forleo, one of my mentors, says: everything is FIGURATEABLE! If you are stuck with your opt in idea, or the opt in you currently have doesn’t convert well, there is hope. You can change everything in as little as two days.
What does this mean? Let me show you.
Let’s say that you have a monthly traffic of 1000 people and your current opt in converts at 5%. This means you add 50 new subscribers every month.
Now let’s say you revamp your opt in offer and increase your conversion rate to 60%. This means you will add 600 new subscribers every month only from this change.
How would your business change if you could pull this out?
I put together for you an OPT-IN ideas swipe file with 60 great examples of lead magnets that you can use for immediate inspiration.
Download it for free here: