7 Kick Booty Trust Builders

By SaRita Custis

Chief Business Growth Strategist

Are you ready to pull out your hair trying to figure out what to give away in order to get someone to opt in to your mailing list?

If so, you're in the right place – let's take care of that right now.

First, let's be perfectly clear. You don't HAVE to give away a gift in order to get someone to sign up. You can simply use curiosity and get them to opt in to find out what the big secret is. But that's a topic for another day.

Giving a gift to start building relationships in your market is a simple matter of tapping into the minds of your prospects to find out what they want RIGHT NOW.

Your gift – I like to call it a Trust Builder – should be short and to the point. A brief article, a resources sheet, a 3-5 minute video – short! In fact, it should provide one solution to one problem.

Let me say that again. Provide one solution to one problem.

You might be wondering why I call them trust builders when everyone else calls them lead magnets.

The answer is simple: I believe words have power. You know how there are words and phrases that you like or detest. It's the same for me.

There are 3 terms used frequently in the internet marketing and home-based business industries, and over the years I've slowly turned away from all 3.

Freebie – from my point of view, a freebie is something you can just grab. If I ask you to opt-in to get it, true you don't give me money, but we still have a value exchange because I give you something of value and you give me something of value.

Ethical bribe – to my mind, a bribe is something you give to someone in an effort to get them to do something wrong. I don't believe signing up for my email list is wrong, so I don't bribe anyone.

Lead magnet – a magnet is something that attracts. The products and services that I give away don't attract my prospects – my ADS attract them. My copy attracts them. The result I'm going to deliver is the magnet, not the thing they're going to download.

I use the term Trust Builder because anything you give away in exchange for an email address should clearly demonstrate your expertise by genuinely helping the person, and as a result, start establishing trust – or building even more trust if they already have some experience with you.

So how do you go about creating these little gems?

Put a little bit of time into reading what your prospects are talking about online. Visit forums, blogs, and social media sites and simply pay attention to the problems that crop up over and over again.

One of the easiest ways to get direct input from your prospective customers is to visit Amazon.com and look at the reviews of your competitors' products. Look for phrases like “But I wish it had included…” or “But I still don't know how to…” or even “I wish someone would just show me how to…”

Statements like these will give you ideas for providing specific solutions for individual problems. Pick one, especially if it comes up a lot, and create a product that answers the question, solves the problem, or otherwise satisfies the need.

Then give it away, but keep paying attention to the conversation so you know what you can offer in the future.

If you need ideas, here are our “7 Kick-Booty Trust Builders To Establish Authority And Grow Your List”.

Resources List

You’re the expert, right? Your audience wants to know what secrets you have hidden away in your vault.

Short Video

Solve a single problem quickly and demonstrate your expertise (or as one well-known marketer says, show them you can help them by actually helping them!

Short Report

People are protective of their time. Let them know the answer is inside and it’s only going to take a few minutes to get it!

Free Trial

When your product is so good your customers fall in love, let your prospects see it for themselves.

Mind Map

Let them see, at a glance, the parts and pieces of a process or idea and how they all fit together.

Checklist

Provide a resource they can go to again and again to GET STUFF DONE!

Webinar

Share some of your best training to genuinely help your prospects and forge a personal connection with your audience. This is by far our favorite lead magnet because the results are unmatched by anything else.

We've put this into an infographic for you so you can download it and keep it handy for easy reference. Right click on the image to save it to your computer:

For now, decide what you can give away in exchange for your prospect's email address, and take action now!

The purpose of this information is to educate and guide. Neither the publisher nor the author warrant that the information contained within this article is free of omissions or errors and is fully complete. Furthermore, neither the publisher nor the author shall have responsibility or liability to any entity or person as a result of any damage or loss alleged to be caused or caused indirectly or directly by this information.