Content upgrades (aka lead magnets) are a popular topic right now. You may have heard of them, you may have tried them — or you may not know what I’m talking about.
So let’s start with a simple definition.
A content upgrade is extra content that you add to your blog posts (or podcast or video pages). This free bonus content adds value and is relevant to that specific post. In order to download it, the reader must provide their email address.
For example:
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- A printable SEO checklist on a blog post about the top 10 SEO mistakes
- An office-organization tip sheet on a post about organizing your office
- A step-by-step guide on a post about moving your email to the cloud
This is different than your site-wide opt-in bribe. Content upgrades are relevant to the specific posts they’re placed on.
These content upgrades aren’t just great lead magnets. They don’t just help businesses build their email lists (because readers must provide their email in order to download the content upgrade). They…
- Provide HUGE value to the audience
- Make the experience more interactive
- Build trust between business and target customer
Boosting Your Value as a Business
Let’s face it. Site-wide opt-in bribes have lost some of their shine. Audiences are so used to seeing them on every business website — they’ve become ubiquitous. And predictable.
Content upgrades are post specific. In other words, without the context of the post on which they’re found, they might not make as much sense. But this doesn’t mean their value is limited.
Rather, the value is so much higher to the readers of that post.
So the best way to implement content upgrades quickly, with the most impact, is to add them to posts that are already performing really well.
Pull up your latest website analytics report. What posts consistently get the most traffic? Those are the posts that you should add a content upgrade to.
Those popular posts are already hitting a nerve with your audience. They’re already attracting eyeballs. Add a content upgrade to the post and turn those eyeballs into email subscribers.
If you need more technical detail about how to create content upgrades, add them to your posts and integrate them with your email marketing system, check out this article from Crazy Egg.
Making the Relationship Interactive
If you’re one of my regular readers, you know I’m a big fan of blogs. They’re so versatile and cost-effective.
But once your blog reader is done reading — they’re gone. They’re on to the next blog or the next task.
Content upgrades encourage positive interactivity with your blog posts in two distinct ways. First, they urge the reader to click and download something more from you. Second, content upgrades persuade the reader to say yes to you.
That second one is an especially big deal if you know anything about the psychology of sales. Getting a potential customer to say yes to you — even about something small, even about something that has nothing to do with buying from you — triggers the “commitment and consistency” principle in the human brain. Once someone says yes to you, they have committed to that yes, and they tend to stay consistent with it. Which means getting them to say yes to a bigger request — like a sales consultation or a free trial — is much easier.
For more information about compliance triggers, check out Robert Cialdini’s book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.
Building That All-Important Trust
Content upgrades also help build trust between your company and your customers.
When your audience downloads helpful, useful, entertaining or informative content from you — for free — and get a lot of value out of it, they are more inclined to believe that your paid products/services will provide even more value.
Trust is one of the most important things to consider as you’re building relationships with your customers. Customers don’t buy from people they don’t trust. This goes for consumers and business customers alike.
So build trust purposefully and strategically. And never break that trust by being inconsistent, promising things you can’t deliver, or inundating their inbox with irrelevant, salesy or too-frequent emails.
Back to You
You can see why content upgrades are so much more than lead magnets. They’re relationship builders.
Now tell me: Have you tried adding content upgrades to your blog posts?
Need ideas for compelling content upgrades? Look no further.
I created this guide just for you.
Author: Jessica Mehring
Jessica is the founder and director of Denver/Boulder-based Horizon Peak Consulting. She has been an editor and copywriter specializing in Web content and business writing since 2000. Her career path gave her a front-row seat to the online-marketing boom, and she is passionate about sharing this knowledge and experience with small… View full profile ›
