You’ve got the perfect solution to your customer’s problem – but how can he/she be sure? How can you help them to understand? How can you convince them to download more information to find out?
The answer, says Idan Eldar, Inbound Marketing Expert at Como (formerly Conduit), lies in hooking your customers in by offering up “the perfect bribe.” But, how would you go about bribing your customers into downloading your offering in exchange for registering for the download via their email address?
At May 2015’s HUG Tel Aviv event, Eldar gave a presentation on Choosing the Perfect Content Marketing Bribe. In his discussion, Eldar likened the content marketing bribery process to bribing a child into eating their Brussels sprouts.
“Let’s talk about Brussels sprouts,” he starts, “they’re full of vitamins and good for your growth. But the thing is, most kids won’t “just” eat them. So how do we get kids to eat their Brussels sprouts?”
Getting Your Customers to Eat Their Brussels Sprouts
While he’s introducing the topic of bribery, Eldar might as well be asking, ‘What’s the best bribe to get a customer to leave their email in your system?’
Eldar continued by answering his Brussels sprouts question – but really, both questions – by suggesting, “We bribe them with some extra ingredients they LOVE”.
“Your blog is a Brussels sprout. People may taste it once, and it could be amazingly good, but it needs something extra for them to subscribe and give you their emails.”
How, then, do you know when you’re offering the right bribe? What types of dessert must you offer to get your customers to bite – into your Brussels sprouts?
Email-Worthy Content Marketing Bribes
To start, ask yourself whether or not your bribe is “email-worthy”. Would you leave behind your email address just to read a blog post? How about to view an infographic? Probably not. These are examples of bribes that are not email-worthy.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t forms of bribe offerings that aren’t more enticing. That is to say, there are certain deliverables that make for email-worthy bribes. Some of the offerings that may be enough to bribe your audience into leaving their email addresses include eBooks, webinars, tools, and templates.
When it comes to tools and templates, HUG attendees know that HubSpot provides these for you. For this reason, Eldar – and all of us at Penguin Strategies – are big fans of HubSpot. The tools and templates they offer are easy to customize on your own to get your offers out there.
With HubSpot, the question isn’t about how much time or money you’ll need to invest, but how to formulate an email-worthy bribe.
The G.A.T.E. Approach to Content Marketing Offers
As Eldar professed, “Creating an email-worthy bribe is your key to success”.
To find this success, Eldar endorses HubSpot’s best practices for creating the perfect bribe. Doing so means opening the “G.A.T.E.” for new leads.
When it comes to providing offers, HubSpot has developed the G.A.T.E. approach. The G.A.T.E. acronym breaks down as follows:
- G – Goal
- A – Audience
- T – Topic
- E – E-Book Scope (or whatever piece of collateral you’re producing)
The letters of the G.A.T.E. acronym essentially ask you to define each component of your offering before presenting the offer. While eBooks can essentially be interchanged with any “email-worthy” piece of marketing collateral, the question of the collateral’s scope refers to whether or not you can realistically complete the project in a reasonable amount of time.
eBook scope boils down to two items: Resources / Timeline. Essentially, how much money over how long of a period will it take you to research and produce your eBook, design, or video? Use this as a basis for preparing an actionable “bribe schedule”, otherwise known as a marketing plan.
Crafting A Successful Content Marketing Bribe
The formula for crafting a successful content marketing bribe, says Eldar, is as follows:
(Persona’s Pain Point x Consumption Habits)
+
(Your Product’s Value x Buyer’s Journey Stage)
It may seem confusing, but it’s really not. All you have to do to get started is to begin asking yourself the same basic questions you’ve already briefly considered.
First, what would you like to achieve with your bribe? What is your goal? If it’s to gain more website traffic, then add plenty of hyperlinks back to your blog. Are you angling for an increase in sales for a specific product or service? Add in a tempting Call-to-Action (CTA) with a killer promotional opportunity, such as a “first month free” campaign.
If you’re looking increase your online presence on social media networks then be sure to add large social icons your readers won’t be able to miss. This will also encourage them to share your content as well. Whatever your goal may be, Eldar points out, “The answer can dramatically alter the content of your bribe.”
Knowing Your (Content Marketing) Audience
The most important consideration for your bribe offering is the audience that will be receiving it. When determining your customer persona, define who you will target based on their age, profession, goals, pain points (what hurts them in achieving their own goals), and position within what HubSpot has coined as the “Buyer’s Journey.”
The Buyer’s Journey is made up of three phases: the Awareness Stage, the Consideration Stage, and the Decision Stage. At the Awareness Stage, suggested offerings include free whitepapers, free guides and tip sheets, free eBooks, free checklists, free videos, or a free kit combining two or more of the bunch. At the Consideration Stage, some email-worthy offerings may include free webinars, case studies, free samples product spec sheets, or catalogs. By the time your customer has entered the critical Decision Stage of the Buyer’s Journey, bribes should have progressed to free trials, free demos, free consultations, coupons, and estimates or sales quotes.
Through the G.A.T.E. approach and HubSpot’s best practices, Como has been very successful when utilizing the concept of content marketing bribes. Como presented an offering, How a Mobile App Keeps Customers Coming Back to Your Business: 5 Proven Secrets to make them fall in love, asking for an email address in exchange for their free eBook. The campaign was a resounding success.
“In one month, this bribe QUADRUPLED the number of inbound leads we received,” reported Eldar.
Como was able to get their audience to eat their Brussels sprouts by understanding what the audience wanted. To make the most out of your next content marketing bribe, ask yourself, “What would my audience find most valuable?
by The Penguin Team on June 02, 2015
As a leading B2B digital marketing agency, We help B2B Technology Companies, enterprise software, and hardware companies increase brand awareness, reach more qualified leads and close more customers. Penguin Strategies is a Diamond Partner of HubSpot.
