How to create special offers (offers) that will increase user engagement?

Today I want to offer you a translation of the article by Lee W. Frederiksen, Managing Partner of Hinge. Hinge specializes in branding and marketing of professional services. Go!

After a huge amount of hard work, you managed to offer the right content to your target audience. Congratulations! But I will not shake your hand for too long, because this is far from the end of the story.

What happens after a visitor reads your blog post or watches a video?

Perhaps they will remember your company ... or maybe not. It all depends on how competently you use the offers that would attract your users and - the next step - meet their needs, making you more competent, because you offer really relevant content or service.



These offers must be non-self-promoting or vice versa training content. Instead, they should be created in such a way as to indicate to visitors the resources that can be really useful for them: solutions that will help your potential customers cope with the problems they face in their business.

1. Always suggest the next step.

Offers should be decisive, attractive and as visible as possible: for example, on a sidebar in a blog post, you can offer an ebook on the same topic, using the cover of this book as a pop-up window.

Make sure your offers are related to the content that users have just viewed. It is very important that your relationship with the user is strengthened naturally, and that readers receive exactly the information that they need from you.

For those users who are still at the very beginning of your sales funnel and are not yet ready for purchase, this means that they change their email address to a free, beautifully designed e-book. As soon as you have their email, you can continue to make relevant, targeted offers to increase the engagement rate of users (for civilized methods of obtaining customer contact information, see the article “3 life hacks for receiving customer contacts” ).

You can see this strategy in action in the content marketing model below:



Offers, which are part of the content, show visitors the way they should go up the stairs - from accessible content (for example, blog posts) to creating strong relationships with your company .

Thus, for those users who have downloaded your ebook, you can send an email inviting you to participate in a webinar on the same topic, but touching it more deeply or looking at it from a different angle. Then you can invite webinar attendees to attend a free consultation on current aspects of their business. As soon as users are ready to make a purchase, congratulations, you were able to attract their attention.

2. Make your offers short and concise.



In content offers, you need to strike a balance between clarity and brevity, making what you offer as clear as possible so as not to lose the attention of your target audience.

Thus, if you offer an ebook in the sidebar in one of your posts, do not just say: "Get more information about this topic." Instead, your offer may contain the following information: “Download our ebook completely free: the name of the book.”

Try to be as informative as possible and at the same time express your thoughts as briefly as possible - users will most likely not read more than one short sentence.

Also remember that your content offers should have a pronounced focus. You may think that you need to offer different levels of content in the case of a blog post, webinar or ebook, respectively, for an audience located at different levels of the sales funnel, but this is a mistake!

Use only one offer at a certain time and for specific content: if there is more, you will weaken the effect, confuse users and complicate their path to a faster and more efficient process of interacting with users. A competent strategy for creating offers is one that is both useful and understandable to your audience.

3. Pay attention to the context of your content.

Think of your offers as part of a larger content strategy, taking into account the target audience for each segment and type of content. Offers included in the content of readers who are just getting to know you should require much less effort and commitment than offers for users who have long been cooperating with you, have long read your newsletter, etc.

When you create and offer your users more content, it is very important to get to know your target audience more closely - what are their interests and how much your content matches them. Keep in mind that “analysis and improvement” is the final stage of the content model. Apply a data management model to your content to eliminate issues with finding topics that are important to your target audience - and this is the best way to reliably reach them.



This can be achieved through the careful and consistent use of web and email analytics, having mastered several lessons that will help you improve content marketing:

• You may find that some topics are better suited for users who are at a more distant or near stage of your sales funnel. Often, the interests and needs of potential customers differ depending on what stage they are in the sales cycle.

• Some topics may be relevant over a longer period than others. These “evergreen” themes will be a valuable tool for you, and often they will surprise you. Monitor web analytics and get information about what your target audience really needs; meeting her needs is a key step.

• Carrying out A / B testing related to offers allows you to find out which design elements, text, types of content and other parameters can attract as many users as possible. We suggest that you familiarize yourself with several types of testing, just remember to make sure that you test only one element at a time.

• How do visitors access your content? Web and email analytics will show, for example, what percentage of your audience uses mobile devices to read your content. This may prompt you to create more optimized content for mobile devices and think about how to create offers that will be more effective for those who use mobile devices.

What is the moral of this story? The better you understand your readers and how they interact with your content, the more efficiently you will be able to offer them those offers that will make users more responsive and involved, promote them along the content ladder in order to build trust and establish a long-term relationship with the target audience .

Once you have implemented your strategy for creating offers, make sure that they contain the same level of thinking and creative attention as your content. If you succeed, you can prepare the way for a content strategy that will attract more potential customers - and help them become more qualified users.