Building Products for Your Ideal Clients: Four Simple Ideas

Once you start to build an email list, you will be starting to build relationships with people who will want to work with you. The more information you provide for them, the faster that trust will grow. The key is to provide good content, and to provide it regularly so that they will always be in touch with you. So here are a few ideas to get you started at developing content for them. Freebie Report This is your 'foot in the door' - the content rich report that you can provide to people when they give you their email address. This gets them on your mailing list, and get them tuning in to your regular newsletter, or whatever it is you send out. Your free report can be anything that will be of value to your ideal client or prospect. It can be a step by step procedure, a list of tips, a checklist, or some research information. By knowing what it is that your ideal client will respond to, you determine the topic. It's set up as a one-time download in exchange for their email address. Free Ecourse Another way to provide free information is to drip it over the course of a few days - something like 5 days or 7 days is very popular. So you will get their email address, and send them one piece immediately. Then you will set up your autoresponder/email system to send out one more piece each day until the course has finished. This is another quick way to build the know factor a little more quickly, since it's not just a one time download. There is a statistic in marketing that says clients need an average of 7 'touches' before they buy from you, so if you do the ecourse route, you have a few of those covered right away. Newsletter A newsletter is a very important tool to keep in touch with your list. It's a regular thing you send out so people look forward to it. Depending on the format you choose to use for a template, you share personal details and recommendations as well as great articles (like this one!) that will help them gain insight into your expertise. Newsletters should go out at least monthly, but preferably weekly. Once you get into the hang of writing regularly, it gets very easy to do this weekly. And then you can take your articles and publish them to article sites or your blog, to build up your own reputation as an expert in your field. Win-win! Free or Paid Ebook Once you start to build content through blog posts, social media, newsletters or articles, you can easily put some information together into an ebook that you can charge for (or if you have a lot of content, you can always give this one away too, as a means of continuing to grow your list). When you have people on your list that really connect with you, it's a great way to get people to show their commitment to your expertise by providing a low-cost ebook for them to purchase. The content should obviously be still very good, but also since it's a paid product, you will want to be sure that you price it accordingly so the client will see the value. Again, the topic can be whatever you think your potential client would pay for - and in many cases, it is something they will purchase to learn more about, and then decide to get support to actually do it. Some business owners just need 'to know what they don't know.' (like me!) Starting to develop easy products like the ones above is simple: as they say, every journey begins with a single step. So, start thinking about what your ideal client wants to know about. Pull together some ideas for topics and then start to make notes, and go from there. One great tip is to start with '5 Ways' or '3 Tips' or 'Top 10 Ideas' in your title and brainstorm. Once you have a few ideas, you will start to see a pattern of what will come easily to you and you can get writing. The information is all in your head - you just need to get it down on paper in various forms so that your ideal client can pick it up, and benefit from your knowledge!