Marketing Advice

5 Essential Characteristics of a Lead Magnet

April 19, 2017 by Brent Peterson

A lead magnet goes by many names (see what is an ethical bribe?), but what is most important to know, is that a lead magnet is essential for your business growth.

Your lead magnet inspires people to join your email mailing list when they visit your website or landing page.

Without an email mailing list, you can’t grow your business online.

Why Your Email List Matters

Without an email list, you can’t build relationships with your audience.

Without an email list, you can’t notify your audience of new posts.

Without an email list, you can’t share information with them about your new online course, ebook, project, etc.

Without an email list, you can’t segment your audience based on their interest (ConvertKit is recommended for this aspect – here’s why).

Without an email list, you can’t grow your business online and be profitable.

Without an email list, you can’t give yourself time and money back for what really matters in life.

5 Essential Characteristics of a Lead Magnet

You now know that an email list is critical for your online success.

But without a good lead magnet, you can’t start or build a relevant email list.

Not all lead magnets are created equal.

A professional lead magnet has five essential characteristics.

Rather than outline the case for each of these five lead magnet characteristics in a really long and less memorable post, the essential characteristics are now packaged for your quick reference in a (you guessed it) lead magnet!

Specifically, the lead magnet is a 9-page guide titled The Five Essential Characteristics of a Lead Magnet. Click here for your complimentary copy.

You’ll also receive professional advice once a week to apply to your own lead magnet and to your corresponding web pages and email marketing. There is no spam and you can unsubscribe from the list at any time.

If you choose to stay on the email list, you can also showcase your own lead magnet web address free of charge on the Lead Magnet Examples page here on the Graceful Resources website.

If you need professional assistance with a new lead magnet and the technical integration of web pages, opt-in forms, and email marketing, you will also receive a 25% discount to the strategic Lead Magnet Project.

Receive Your Free Guide

Cheering for your online success – one project step at a time!
Brent

What is an Ethical Bribe? Here’s Another Perspective

April 16, 2017 by Brent Peterson Leave a Comment

An ethical bribe is a fancy term for an opt-in incentive to join an email mailing list.

In other words, it is a lead magnet (here are some lead magnet examples for your reference).

A Form of Business Exchange

A lead magnet or ethical bribe is a form of exchange.

You gain someone’s contact information (e.g. email address) and the other person receives your ethical bribe.

For example, the person who signs up for your mailing list receives the benefits of the ethical bribe (such as a free resource guide) and the additional benefits of the email subscription. Your business, in exchange, receives the person’s contact information (typically an email address) to stay in contact and build a relationship with the person.

A good ethical bribe will:

Attract the right leads to your mailing list and business.
Grow your online business automatically.
Give you time back for your family and friends.

Another Way to Look at an Ethical Bribe

Long before the information age, an ethical bribe had a very common name and that is…

Free samples.

Chances are, if you walk into a local bakery or café, you will still be treated with a delicious sample from the chef.

Why do these small businesses give away food for free?

The reason is obvious.

The free sample demonstrates their expertise in food preparation. If the sample is delectable, you will likely pay for more of it.

You will also feel the need to reciprocate the free offer.

In the digital world, your online ethical bribe is your free sample.

Keep it simple and related to your area of expertise.

Just like a bakery chef shouldn’t offer free wine tastings of someone else’s wine, you shouldn’t design a lead magnet that is unrelated to your line of work.

The gesture may be appreciated by someone, but the connection is lost.

Give your leads a free sample that builds trust in you and has them asking for more from the ethical bribe chef!

Ethical Bribe Example

For your additional reference, click here for an ethical bribe (lead magnet) example that outlines the other four characteristics of an essential lead magnet.

Receive the Free Guide

Cheering for your online success – one project step at a time!
Brent

How to Promote Your Website for Free

March 10, 2017 by Brent Peterson

You’ve got a great message or product to share with the world!

And you should profit from your passion so you can serve more people. You may have a website or landing page already published – awesome if you do, but no worries if you don’t yet.

One you have at least one landing page in place, you are ready to build an email list so you can stay connected to your audience.

(If you need help getting started, there’s an inexpensive Graceful Resources project launching in April titled How to Build an Email List – Even Without a Website)

Why Your Email List Matters

With an email list, you can build relationships with your audience.

With an email list, you can notify your audience of new blog posts.

With an email list, you can announce your offerings to people who already know you.

With an email list, you can segment your audience based on their interest (ConvertKit is recommended for this aspect – here’s why).

With an email list, you can be profitable and expand your great message or product to a global audience.

How to Promote Your Website for Free

There are multiple common strategies to promote your website (and email list) for free such as:

Publish and optimize blog posts to generate organic SEO traffic
Share your web content on social media
Add a link to your website or landing page in your email signature
Talk about your web page in person at events
Include your website in your professional profile on LinkedIn

Here is one more professional uncommon option that is available to you today:

Promote your website for free on this website (specifically, on the Graceful Resources Lead Magnet Examples page)

There’s just one catch…

Ok, there are two (but they’re both helpful to you):

You need a lead magnet (if you need help creating a lead magnet, the upcoming Graceful Resources project will cover that step too).
You need to be a Graceful Resources email subscriber (it’s completely free).

When you become an email subscriber, you will now experience three benefits:

FREE weekly project lessons learned to apply to your current or future landing pages, website, and email marketing.
Announcements about deadlines for affordable professional projects to help you build a strong email list and online business.
FREE professional publicity for your website on the Graceful Resources Lead Magnet Examples Page.

Your Passion Matters

You have a special gift to share with the world, and you should profit from your passion so you can serve more people.

If you have ever wondered how to promote your website for free, you now have another professional option through Graceful Resources:

Graceful Resources Lead Magnet Examples Page

Cheering for you!
Brent

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3 Bad Words to Avoid in Copywriting

March 1, 2017 by Brent Peterson

The previous blog post about the upcoming guided project was a copywriting mea culpa.

Stated humbly another way, it was a content selfie. You deserved better.

It contained three bad words to avoid in online copywriting, both in web content and email forms.

The project announcement has now been adjusted but you can probably spot the three bad copywriting words between these original and revised paragraphs:

Original Paragraph

In alignment with my three goals to guide you strategically, keep you moving forward every week, and save you time and money, I am now preparing a new interactive do-it-yourself guided project for those who want to build an email list even without a website.

This project is for professionals like you and me who what to get things done now.

Revised Paragraph

In alignment with the three goals of Graceful Resources to guide you strategically, keep you moving forward every week, and save you time and money, a new guided do-it-yourself project is being launched to help you build an email list even without a website.

The project is going to be a meaningful experience for you as an entrepreneur to start building an email list of people who are genuinely interested in what you have to say or offer.

3 Bad Words to Avoid in Copywriting

As you probably guessed, the three bad words to avoid in copywriting are:

Me
My(self)
I

Full Disclosure: There were originally 27 instances of these three words in the post How to Build an Email List Even Without a Website. Ouch!

Hat tip to copywriter Carrie Glenn who shared the dangers of me, myself, and I.

So as you share your passion with others, be mindful of these three words.

They are the copywriting equivalent of a selfie.

Me, myself, and I focus the content on the writer (not good).

You, yourself, and yours shift the content focus to the audience (good).

Plural Words to Avoid in Copywriting

Accordingly, avoid the plural selfie versions as well:

Us
Our(selves)
We

They are just as damaging but thankfully easy to correct too.

If you decide to join in the upcoming guided project (click here to stay connected to announcements), you’ll be able to share drafts of your content with the Graceful Resources team and with other project participants.

Copywriting selfies will be caught! 🙂

Hope this blog post helps,
Brent

What is Exit Intent? And 3 Benefits of Exit Intent Opt-In Pop-Ups

February 18, 2017 by Brent Peterson

Exit Intent is one of those new online marketing terms like Autoresponders (which was defined in this earlier post). It refers to a popular online lead generation strategy that you would recognize in use (but perhaps not by name) as you surf the web.

As a professional project manager specializing in web design and online lead generation strategies for clients, I try to stay up to date on all the latest marketing lingo so that I can explain concepts in easy to understand terms.

Admittedly, I test out my understanding and explanation on my family first. If the eyes roll, I keep working on it!

Once the concept is ready for introduction to a client, we determine if it makes sense strategically to implement it as part of the project schedule.

What is Exit Intent?

Technically speaking, Exit Intent is the name for the “exiting” mouse movement of a website visitor that triggers a pop-up message on the screen.

Stated another way, as your cursor moves to leave the active browser tab, a message pops ups to grab your attention before you leave.

You can manually trigger an exit intent pop up on this site via this link and you should see the following message:

Is Exit Intent kind of annoying for site visitors? Well, yes.

Is Exit Intent kind of effective? Well, yes.

3 Benefits of Exit Intent Opt-In Pop-Ups

1. Exit Intent Pop-Ups are Less Intrusive than Time-Based Pop-Ups

You are probably very familiar with time-based pop-ups on the center of website screens.

Some appear the moment you arrive on a website before you have a chance to read anything. Others appear after a set number of seconds or as you scroll down the page a set percentage.

I don’t know about you, but I find time-based pop-ups very disruptive and I am quick to exit them out (and not opt-in to the form).

2. Exit Intent Pop-Ups are an Online Elevator Pitch

When you use an exit-intent pop-up, you are automating your elevator pitch so that site visitors know what you are about before they leave.

Is there a chance someone is not interested in your content or business? Absolutely.

But if you are able to solve a problem someone is experiencing, you’ll want to catch the site visitor before they leave. Often, your value proposition is a lot clearer in an exit intent message than on a random web page.

3. Exit Intent Pop-Ups are Somewhat Effective

You won’t realize great opt-in rates on an exit intent pop-up because well… people are trying to leave.

Will get some leads on your email list that you would have otherwise missed? Absolutely.

And that lead could become a customer for years to come.

Exit Intent pop-ups are often worth the brief interruption.

My Software Tool for Exit Intent

I use OptinMonster for exit intent (and all my pop-up variations – including the footer bar) on this website. I highly recommend this cloud-based software and you can discover my lessons learned with OptinMonster in this online review.

Once someone opts-in to your campaign via OptinMonster, the software is smart enough to not generate a pop-up again for that user!

I plan to incorporate OptinMonster setup, design, and integration in at least one of my upcoming guided do-it-yourself projects using Teamwork software from Ireland.

You can catch announcements about these interactive project offerings via my email mailing list (click here to not miss out).

Exit Intent is worth adding to your toolkit and testing as a lead generation tool.

Hope this blog post helps.

I’m here to help you succeed, one project step at a time.

Brent

Special Bonus: All subscribers to my mailing list can add their own lead magnet web addresses at any time to my upcoming lead magnet examples listing here on the Graceful Resources website. So free publicity for their respective websites!

3 Email Marketing Tips When Things Go Wrong

February 11, 2017 by Brent Peterson

What often holds me back from sending out emails to my interest list is that I’m afraid my emails aren’t good enough. I forget that when you are in genuine and sharing stories (like I did last week in this post), it’s really going to be ok.

But I do agonize over what to say and I get paralyzed by my own analysis.

Can you relate?

The reality is that we are are completely overthinking things. It’s just an email folks.

Yes, some people will be deeply disturbed by our messages and unsubscribe from our lists because they are in an “unsubscribe kind of mood“.

I get that and I’ve been there. Then I often realize I unsubscribed from someone with a high level of integrity and honesty.

So I go back and opt back in, and save my “unsubscribe moments” for email marketers who seem to try to sell us something with every automated message that was scripted years ago.

The reality is good people like you and me sometimes send email messages with errors in them.

We are humans after all.

And we are using email marketing software that was well… designed by humans.

So it’s been known to do weird things too even when we test out the message before sending it out.

The key is to know how to response gracefully when errors do occur.

3 Email Marketing Tips When Things Go Wrong

1. Be Timely

When you send out an email that has an error in it like a broken link, be timely with your response. If you notice it (or someone on your list tells you), craft a follow-up message as soon as you can.

My client Martina Wing is a passionate manta ray advocate in Hawaii. She is in the process of migrating her email list from AWeber to ConvertKit with my project help.

We are using a really cool marine life coloring book lead magnet as an incentive for her existing list to “opt back in” (you’ll discover more about Martina’s journey in upcoming posts).

The other day, the wrong version of a message was sent to over 2000 people.

Within an hour, Martina crafted a follow-up message with the graceful introduction:

Oops! Accidents happen. Please accept my apology. Here is the correct message for your response…

2. Be Authentic

When errors occur (or plans change), take ownership. Don’t blame someone or the email server for something simple that goes wrong.

Let the miscommunication be an opportunity to show authenticity and humor.

My client Darcy Eikenberg offers career coaching services and products through her business Red Cape Revolution. She is offering a free video training series this month to help professionals make their make career decision of 2017 (you can check it out here).

When she realized the early bird savings she promised on her upcoming course was communicated for the wrong week, she took ownership of it and then offered to increase the savings!

3. Be Careful

When you discover an error in your email message to your list, you’ll also want to be careful with the follow up message.

What I mean is don’t be in such a rush to send out another broadcast that you forget to send yourself a copy of the new message first and test the links.

I will confess, as a Certified PMP, I am really particular about testing when it comes to software. I put it on schedules for my own projects and for client projects using Teamwork software from Ireland.

That being said, testing is still required even if it is not in your project plan.

If you send a follow-up message with the same or another error, your window for being timely and authentic has closed.

Don’t send a third message.

Otherwise, members of your list will then be in a truly “unsubscribe kind of mood“!

Hope this blog post helps,
Brent

If you’d like to stay connected to my work with clients and the transformation they are experiencing, simply click here to sign up for my email list. You’ll receive professional advice and examples every week.