Have you ever been on a company’s website and seen them advertise a free downloadable product if you submit your email address? Giving away free products or content upgrades may have seemed like a questionable business practice at first. But if it’s done right, offering your audience that little taste of your brand can reap huge results.

 

By offering your audience a sample of your expertise, they begin to see you and your company as an industry leader and a go-to source for information. So even if they don’t buy your product or service right now, if they appreciated your content it’s more likely they’ll come back when they do need your services. Basically, you’re investing in your future sales pipeline.

We’ve compiled the following list of content examples to get you started:

Cheat Sheets

Cheat sheets are a great way of quickly sharing information on a particular topic. Create a cheat sheet of industry or product knowledge for your clients: software shortcuts, industry terminology, troubleshooting steps, and so on.

How To Guides

Walking your prospective clients through a process or teaching them how to do something is a great way to showcase your expertise. Create a guide that shows them how to best use your product. Or how to do something that is complementary to your product. If you sell music downloads, teach your clients how to set up playlists on their devices.

Planners

Help your clients get organized and make the most of something. Create fillable pages that will help them plan an event, get more productive, or put a system in place.

Workbooks

Does your audience need to achieve something? Create a workbook that will help them do it. It could be a homework assignment from a course you sell or an exercise to help them choose which product will be best for them.

eBooks

Have you already created a blog full of content? Compile posts on similar subjects and create mini books for your clients.

Resource Lists

Create downloadable lists of tools and resources you believe would be valuable to your clients or others new to your industry.

Templates and Swipe Files

Have you created a database full of template emails, sales scripts, process checklists, and company policies? Compile them into a zip file and give them away to help your audience run their businesses.

Mini Courses

Can you help your audience do something that’s a little too complex for a How-To Guide? Set up a mini course via email automation for them. Using your email system, you can send them a daily email with a short video and/or assignment that will help them through the process.

Printables

Do you have content that your audience could use offline? Turn it into a document they can download and print, this could be PDF versions of recipes, printable quotes and images, postcards, and greeting cards.

Transcripts

Do you already create webinars, Youtube videos, or podcasts? Help your audience out by creating downloadable transcripts to help them gain the most value from your content.

Checklists

Checklists make a great addition to blog posts that contain many steps. After your client has read an in depth post about a process or strategy, give them a printable checklist they can take with them to help keep them on track.

Reports

Are you an industry expert? By producing reports on industry trends, standards, and regulations to set yourself apart from other experts in the same industry. Don’t forget to keep the reports up to date and offer to email updates to subscribed readers.

Challenges

If you are a coach or help your readers improve themselves or their businesses, consider setting up a challenge to help motivate them. Offer them a set of objectives and regular check ins to achieve those objectives. This is also a good opportunity to promote a Facebook group so challenge members can support each other.

Product Teasers

Letting your audience get a taste for your upcoming product can help drive sales. Consider releasing a chapter of your upcoming books, a mini sample of a product, or a trial of a service. This is also a good way to generate testimonials and reviews.

Slide Decks

If you’re going to hold a course or webinar, it can help your audience retain the information if you give them a copy of the slides so they may follow along during the presentation and review later on.

 

The content you produce can be added to your company blog posts,  newsletters, landing pages, sales funnels, and social media posts. Some of the larger items, like ebooks and reports, can be used as an in-person networking tool by offering to email the content as part of your sales pitch.  

 

Do you have any other content upgrades you create? Share your ideas below!