For many of us involved in the “advice” business, otherwise known as information product marketing, knowledge products, training, education, etc…it can be challenging to know where to draw the line between free content versus paid content.
Specifically, many of you have asked me, “Do I give away my best stuff and if the answer is yes, what do I then sell?”
Let me make a few points around the topic of what to give away to both draw in traffic and leads as well as convert leads into warmer leads and customers:
- Giving your best advice gives you leverage in the form of mindshare, credibility and likeability which are all critical to closing customers…without these you simply will not attract significant customers
- Every advice content snippet you give away to either generate traffic or convert that traffic into leads as part of your sales funnel must be done strategically, with a very specific purpose in mind. So yes, you can give away 5 tips around a topic if your end objective is to convert a lead into a customer for a training program where you give them another 5 or 10 tips OR where your role will be to help them apply those tips to their business
- Context is what makes advice REALLY valuable. This point is hit home in Gary Vaynerchuck’s latest “Ask Gary Vee” episode (you’ll find it in the first few minutes) – you can give away your best advice because there is still MORE tremendous value in up-selling that advice in context of your customer. So, giving away your best training can be extremely powerful if your back-end business is a private or small group coaching program or consulting program where you charge $1000’s of dollars to tailor a solution to that customer.
Watch Gary’s video, I think you will find his take around what to offer as a “Gateway Drug” in the advice giving business very powerful…
Actually, as a matter of fact, this is exactly what happened across our businesses when we started by offering tips-based ecourses for free, then moved to paid ebooks and then pulled into private membership site and consulting models where we worked closer with our most ambitious customers who were willing to pay huge premiums to work with our advice in the context of their own lives and businesses.
Makes sense?
