Online businesses create free reports and give them away. These reports, as I mentioned, are free. Cost Nothing. Zilch. Nada. While it make seem that you are “giving away the farm,” there is a good reason to provide good, quality information. Aside from pre-selling your products and affiliated offers, the other purpose of your free report should be to build your in-house mailing list.
Think of it this way…if you cannot pre-sell (or even sell), the products or services featured in your free report, at least you can develop a list of potential clients. In short, if you cannot convert the reader into a ready buyer, you should then attempt to convert him or her into your subscriber. The product you are offering may not be ideal for them at that point in time, but they may be interested in something else you have.
Following that line of thinking, you can still follow up with your reader on future offers and have a chance at converting him or her into your customer. Hopefully you are treating him/her right, building a relationship, and this one-time customer may evolve into a customer for life!
One way you can provide value for the lifetime of the relationship is by offering a free lifetime grade anytime you update your report. When you update the report (or offer another report that compliments the original one), you can send it out to the folks that received the first one.
One of the success factors in marketing of your free report is quality. No one wants recycled junk. You need to focus on quality information that people find useful. If your readers find your information worth sharing, and you encourage them to do so by giving them the right to give your report away for free, you will be able to have your name, status and links within the report passed around without any effort on your part – simply because others are willing to do so for you!
And after all… Isn’t that what you want?
Hmmmm…so where do we go to find these free reports? Thanks, Barbara
Where do you find them? One way is to create them yourself! You can sit down and write one based on your knowledge, experience, and expertise.
Another way is to create it via PLR – Public Label Rights. Depending on your niche, it might be tough to find PLR, but if you search, you can probably find something you can use.