Do you want more email signups? If yes, (and most of us do) creating your own printable to offer as a lead magnet is an excellent way to get more email signups from your website.
To design your own printable, ask yourself:
What does my ideal client need help with accomplishing or solving? Would your client appreciate and use something they could print that would help them achieve a goal or work through a problem?
The great thing about printables is they can be informative, but it can also be a worksheet that helps your client focus and proactively think through an issue. Worksheets provide structure. The structure provides focus. Structure and focus coupled with your advice and worksheet allow your reader to make progress on an issue they’ve been struggling to get through.
For you to create that irresistible free download, let’s do some brainstorming:
Nuts-n-bolts 1st – Glamour 2nd
We’ll list out some questions to help with your framework first, and then we’ll go back and make it visually appealing, and make sure it has quotes and inspiration from you (because it’s you we want them working with, so that’s key!)
Nut-n-bolts Brainstorming
What questions or issues do you hear from your potential client’s the most? We want to build your free printable to serve your specific audience and their needs so those questions and issues are important. Those questions will be the heart of your printable (and use the term “free printable” too! I’ve seen people react to that very well, myself included!) It seems to strike a chord and make people feel all tingly and take action, which is what we want!
Next, try to anticipate a typical response from them. This next part of your printable can be multiple choice or fill in the blank.
Multiple choice – give them options you suspect they’ll choose, or get the jump on healthier options by inserting ideas that will help them more than what they typically would choose. Use checkboxes to assist them with their choices. That way, the options are clear and organized to your reader.
Fill in the blank options will let them write in their own choice if the multiple choice didn’t give them an option they wanted. Be sure to use lines and a notes area, and give them plenty of room to write.
Help from an old blog post:
Something else that may help you create a printable as a lead magnet is to review one of your older blog posts, especially if it was a blog post that was very popular and resonated with your ideal client. Take those words and turn it into a visual (your printable). If your blog was walking your reader through an issue, then it can likely be turned into a worksheet that will help your reader (and they’ll love you for it).
Making it work with a new blog post:
If you’re creating a new printable specifically for a new blog post, a great CTA (call to action) would be to offer a worksheet that helps them with what your blog post subject is. If they’re not already on your email list, you just might get a new signup from your blog post! In anticipation of them signing up, have a follow-up email series that asks them how it’s going along the way, then have a well-timed offer from you, at the end of the series, to help them in the area of need your blog post covered.
Glamour 2nd – Now that we have some ideas in place, let’s make it look great!
Once you have the questions, blanks, notes area, and checkboxes in place, be sure to add colors that match your website, add your logo, your website name, and since it’s an original from you, put a copyright it in the footer. You can do the “pretty” part as simple or elaborate as you want. For worksheets, your logo and colors done in a professional style are really all that’s needed. If you get too extravagant on the decorating, you might run out of the space people need to write their notes in. So, it would look great, but not be as functional as it could be. We want to strike a Balance between the two (you knew I had to work the word “Balance” in there somewhere, right?) 😉 You can, however, add your colors to the lines of the boxes without taking up valuable space and losing out on the functionality.
Be sure to add your favorite quote(s) that will speak to the heart of your reader. This can be done as a simple pull quote off to the side or just included between sections. Your favorite, positive quotes and affirmations will serve as a part of the “know, like, trust” factor that will put you in their favor when it’s time for them to hire that new coach. After all, worksheets are helpful but most of us need someone like you to get us to that next step in our progress. At some point, real people need real people. So be sure to sprinkle the real you in your printable.
You can create your free printable in MS Word, MS Publisher, and even in Excel, or you can get really fancy and use Adobe InDesign. But the Microsoft products you may already have so that’s much more affordable, and there’s less of a learning curve involved so you’ll get done faster.
One last note, and it’s important: only use open-source fonts, fonts that allow for commercial use, or fonts you have purchased that you have commercial rights to use. That way, you’ll stay in line with licensing rules! Always check the license rules for all of your fonts and graphics!
So there you have it, a printable that gets email signups, an email series to help build your relationship with them, and the possibility of a new client. All because of a free printable!
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