When it comes to turning your website into a money maker, do you realise just how powerful handing out a simple report can be? Whether you write it or hire someone else to do the writing, a free report giveaway can do wonders for your online business. Here’s how.

Build Your Email Marketing Database

When someone visits your website, you’ve got a chance to turn them into a prospective customer. That’s usually accomplished via an opt-in form on the home page which asks for a visitor’s name and email address. The more people you can entice to fill out that form, the bigger your database grows. And the bigger your database gets, the more potential you have of selling your company’s products or services via an email blast in the future.

How can you entice someone to fill out your website’s opt-in form? You could offer any number of freebies such as a newsletter subscription, a special offer or a report. Reports are preferable because they are something you create one time but can keep on using over and over again for every subscriber.

More Uses for a Report

Another great feature of a report is that you can re-purpose it in several different ways. Take a look at all these different things you can do with a single report:

Use it as part of your new prospect marketing package (digital or printed)

• Submit it to article directories
• Print it out and use as a giveaway at live events
• Turn it into a blog post – or a series of blog posts
• Use it as the basis for a video script

Tips for Creating a Good Report

Of course, the report you create needs to be on a topic that is relevant to your clientele. So, if you sell how-to books, for instance, you could write a report about the best books to give as gifts or a list of books that few people have heard about but are highly rated. You could branch out into other subjects, too, such as “must have accessories for the book lover” or “books that everyone should read once in their lifetime”. You get the idea.

Take some care in developing a good title. Top ten lists are always good but so are titles that include the words “secret”, “best” or “top ways to…”.

The report doesn’t need to be long, but do be sure that it is useful and valuable. Offering a free report that isn’t informative or well written doesn’t reflect well on your company. Take the time, energy and money to do it right for best results.

Want help with your marketing or SEO? We can help. Contact us or call 1 300 662 990. We’ve got SEO offices in Adelaide and Sydney and offer a variety of SEO and marketing services.

(image: freedigitalphotos.net/ddpavumba)