Why are you providing value?
Why are you providing value? 🤔
Whether it's here on IH or Twitter or anywhere else, are you providing value just for the sake of providing value?
What happens after that? Feel good your posts are liked and shared by many?
Then what?
If you don't have a predictable system of capturing your target audience's contact info...
providing value in and of itself won't pay your bills 🥶
Why?
Because you don't have a predictable way of staying in touch to further build relationships, and ultimate close sales.
Using only social media to stay in touch is bad - you're reliant on them giving you reach (getting less by the day) and your account could be closed any day. Same with SEO, if you're too reliant on Google, what happens if you lose your rankings?
Here's what you should do instead of only providing value all the time on social media or community.
Strategically plan your Tofu, MiFu, and BoFu.
🎯 Top of funnel (ToFu)
- First or second time a person is exposed to your content
- Exposure, awareness stage
- Communities, social media, SEO
🎯 Middle of funnel (MiFu)
- Some people from ToFu checks you out further
- They go to your lead capture page or website listed on your profile
- If they like what they see, they opt-in to your list
- You start building relationships so that they know, like and trust you
🎯 Bottom of funnel (BoFu)
- A portion of subscribers will buy your paid offers
- These are your customers who trust you to help them solve their problems
- You continue to further nurture relationships with them, getting them to like and trust you even more
- If you have multiple paid offers, some customers will buy more than one of your products/services
- If you product is recurring-fee based, you’ll get them to stay subscribed as a customer longer
Hi Welly,
I believe we should all try to use each others products on IH. Towards that end how can Uclusion make use of https://birdsend.co?
We have lately been working on strengthening our landing page and blogs. I don't know if they are fully there yet to make a cold email work.
Business wise we are looking for more early customers. However we don't have the subscriber base your landing page talks about.
Hi David
From your landing page and blog, you should have opt-in forms where visitors can enter their email address.
Of course no one is going to give you their email address for no reason, which is why the best way to persuade them is via a lead magnet -- which is something that your target audience finds valuable and that you give away for free. It could be a pdf, spreadsheets, audio, or video.
E.g. 3 simple steps to do agile project management the right way, without endless meetings.
You can take a look at my site to see how I implement this:
https://academy.birdsend.co
Btw, I think 6 months trial is way too long. I'd change it to 1 month trial max.
Thanks very much for the feedback.
I see what you have on your site and your suggestion but I'm such a newbie at this that I'm still confused. If I do "3 simple steps to do agile project management the right way, without endless meetings" then step 1 would be use Uclusion.
I guess I could tell them to try to manually accomplish what Uclusion does for them - for instance Step 1 set up a Kanban board with stages Ready for Approval, Not Ready for Feedback, Ready for Feedback, Verified, Requires Input and Blocked. That's going to be frustrating for them though.
It's a 6 month trial because teams can start very slowly with Uclusion , for instance do a hackathon with us. We thought about trying to detect when they have turned the corner to full usage but it was difficult so we split the difference by figuring if they are still active after 6 months they must be beyond free.
6 months is a tough sell. Your product is only $6/m, which is very affordable and not enterprise-level pricing. I'm not sure if you can put food on the table offering such a long trial. Have you tried 1 month and see how conversion from trial to paid compares?
You don't want to tell people step 1 is to use your product. They'll get turned off and build a wall of resistance towards you.
[I guess I could tell them to try to manually accomplish what Uclusion does for them - for instance Step 1 set up a Kanban board with stages Ready for Approval, Not Ready for Feedback, Ready for Feedback, Verified, Requires Input and Blocked. That's going to be frustrating for them though.] --> the more frustrating the better, which means if they use your solution, they can eliminate all these frustrations. But in your freebie, you want to be as neutral as possible and mention your product as the solution ONLY AFTER you've given them value -- in this case showing them the different "frustrating tasks" they have to do.
If you want to learn more about email marketing, you can take my 7-day email mistakes challlenge:
https://academy.birdsend.co/email-marketing-mistakes-challenge-blog/
Food on the table is not the goal here. Just building up a user base. I have been using Slack for years without giving them a dime; they do okay.
Do you have an example of anyone else using this technique of giving out manual steps in exchange for an email? I've seen some vendors give out reports they commissioned but that's not the same.
Slack is a billion dollar company and they have an "unlimited" budget. Unless you also have millions in funding, then your case and their case is not the same.
You don't have to tell people who haven't opted in yet that they're going to need to do "manual steps". You just need to tell them the end result of what your lead magnet will help them achieve.
Below is an example lead magnet from one of our users:
Maybe I could fix both your objections at once - give us your email and we will subscribe you to our blog and give you a promo code that extends your free trial of Uclusion from one month to six.
https://pambarnhill.com is giving away some of her lesson plans for free - that makes sense but is not the same as an app provider attempting this.
The idea is the same - give away something valuable in exchange for their email address.
E.g. I run a SaaS business too. I run a 7-day email challenge where I basically give away email mkt tips (something valuable).