Providing your prospects or customers with information products is a great way to provide extra value or to provide an incentive for them to make a purchase or to register for your ezine or newsletter. And if you write a report or article and provide it as a free download from your web site, you have no printing or delivery costs and you can drive traffic to your site. If you don't like discounting your products or services, but are looking for another incentive to get customers to buy or opt-in to your mailing list, offering free information as a special bonus is a great alternative.
Do you have a new product or service, or a special package or pricing that you'd like to promote? Put
link for your free report on page of your site that promotes that product or service. You can also market in reverse. Include web page link you want to promote in signature on your free report. Send prospects or customers to your web site for more information on report topic.
Or position your product or service as a great solution to a problem your report addresses. Just be sure your report includes plenty of good content. You don't want your prospects or customers to be upset when they take time to download and read your report, only to find out it is merely an ad for your services. Provide good information. Address your customers concerns. Provide tips or solutions that will help them with their business, their relationships, their health and fitness, or whatever aspect of their life your product or service addresses.
Think about expertise and experience that you have that your customers could learn from. What knowledge do you have about your industry that might be helpful? What types of questions do you hear from customers and prospects most often? Answer them in a free report. What do they have trouble with?
Help them with it through a how-to article. If you work in a business-to-business field, can you provide a checklist of what to look for (or look out for) when comparing products or service providers in your category?
Be creative. Write about what you know. And, what you know will help your customers.
10 Ideas For Creating A Special Report
Special Reports can cover any number of topics. Following are 10 ideas you may want to consider.
1) How-To Articles. These could be how-to-buy, or how-to-do something related to your product or service.
2) Special Reports. Write an article on a topic related to your business that you know a lot about.
3) Customer or Industry Survey Results. Conduct an informal customer survey and publish results, or report on results of an industry survey.
