If you want to grow your email list at more than a snail’s pace, you can’t rely on having just one generic lead magnet that you’ve plastered all over your site. Instead, you need to create content upgrades—lead magnets that are specific to each blog post on your blog. In Part 1 of my series on how to rapidly grow your email list with content upgrades, I talked about the 6 benefits of adding content upgrades to your blog. In this post, I’m sharing 6 content upgrade tips to help you rock this content marketing strategy and grow that list!
Get more subscribers on your email list by creating easy-to-consume and actionable content upgrades.
Download my cheat sheet on how to create a fillable PDF checklist for free.
1. Make them specific to your blog posts
Content upgrades convert better than global, generic lead magnets because they’re specific to the content your blog visitors are already reading about. That’s why this content upgrade tip is all about resisting the temptation to create one ebook, how-to guide, or template and adding it to every blog post. This approach will save you time, but it won’t get you the results you’re looking for. Instead, create content upgrades that are specific to the content of your blog posts.
For example, for my blog post on how to write a services page that converts, my content upgrade is a services page copy template and full example.
But for my blog post on how to write an effective call to action, my content upgrade is a cheat sheet on the 8 best places to insert a call to action on a website or blog.
Note that creating content upgrades that are specific to your blog posts doesn’t necessarily mean creating a unique content upgrade for each post. If you don’t have the time or resources to create a new upgrade for each post, you can reuse upgrades on related posts.
Related: 6 reasons why your blog needs content upgrades + free idea list
2. Make them actionable
To crush this content upgrade tip, make sure the upgrades you create are actionable. After all, the goal of a content upgrade is to help your subscriber implement the information you provided in a blog post. That’s why no matter what type of upgrade you create, you want it to be actionable. It’s the reason why checklists, templates, and cheat sheets convert so well.
3. Keep them short
If there’s one content upgrade tip I can give you, it’s this: don’t overthink them. You don’t have to create a 300-page ebook to give your visitors value and entice them to sign up for your email list. In fact, you probably don’t want to create a 300-page ebook because it wouldn’t be actionable and no one would read it. Make your content upgrades easy to consume and use by keeping them short and sweet.
4. Write a solid call to action
You can create an awesome content upgrade. But if you don’t promote it effectively, no one will sign up for it. That’s why you want to follow this content upgrade tip by writing a magnetic call to action for each of your upgrades.
For example, in my post on how to write a welcome email series, I could have used this as the call-to-action for my content upgrade: “Download the email template.”
What’s the problem with this call to action? It doesn’t identify the problem the upgrade addresses, state how the upgrade addresses this problem, and specify the value offered in the upgrade.
Here’s the actual call to action I used:
Related: How to write a strong call to action for your website + free cheat sheet
5. Place your call to action in more than one place
You may be used to placing calls to action only at the bottom of a blog post or website page. But if you’re doing this, you’re probably missing out on lots of conversions.
Remember that not everyone keeps reading a blog post until they get to the end. That’s why you want to follow this content upgrade tip by including at least two calls to action—one embedded in your blog post and another at the end. After all, Brain Dean found that posts with a call to action in two places converted 315% better than posts with a call to action only at the bottom of the post did.
See how posts on the Inpression Editing blog contain at least one call to action within the post:
And one at the end:
Note that if you have a particularly long blog post, you can embed additional calls to action in your blog post to maximize conversions.
6. Make sure your calls to action stand out
When you’ve spent a lot of time creating a good content upgrade, the list thing you want is for it to get lost in your blog post. That’s why this content upgrade tip is all about making sure that the calls to action for your content upgrades stand out.
Make text in your calls to action more salient by bolding it or using a different font type or font size than what you use in the rest of your post. It’s also helpful to use buttons and images that stand out.
The images in Tip 5 illustrate how I use these techniques in my blog posts.
Use these content upgrade tips to grow your email list
Adding content upgrades to your blog posts can help you grow your email list at a much faster rate than you can if you use generic lead magnets or no opt-in incentives at all. But you can’t create just any upgrades. You need to make sure they’re useful, valuable, and easy to find in your posts. That’s why I recommend using the content upgrade tips in this post to make sure your upgrades stand out and give you the conversion rates you’ve been looking for.
Get more subscribers on your email list by creating easy-to-consume and actionable content upgrades.
Download my cheat sheet on how to create a fillable PDF checklist for free.
