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A proven method for cannabis brands to build their business-to-business (B2B) email marketing lists is to offer something for free. This type of freebie is referred to as a lead magnet. The goal is to offer a freebie that attracts (like a magnet) the prospects you want to bring into your marketing funnel.
The process is simple. You create something that your target audience would find value in – something they’d be willing to give you their email addresses in order to get it. Next, you promote it through your chosen marketing channels. To access the freebie, prospects have to provide their email addresses and opt into receive email marketing campaigns from you in the future.
For the process to be successful, there are some key things you need to plan in order to create the most effective freebies – those that will attract the right leads. A great lead magnet attracts a targeted audience of relevant prospects – people who would have some interest in the products and services your business offers.
This is extremely important because you don’t want to offer a freebie that attracts a broad audience. If that happens, you’ll end up building an email marketing list of people who won’t engage positively with the email campaigns you send in the future. Negative or poor engagement with your messages will hurt your future email deliverability, which is something you must avoid if you want to have any chance of getting a positive return on your email marketing investment.
Therefore, if you want to offer freebies to build your B2B email marketing list, then you need to have a plan to develop the right freebies for the right audiences.
Choose Your Freebie
The first step to choose the right freebie is to identify your target audience and segment them into niche audiences. The more targeted you can get, the better. With that information, you can consider the problems or pain points the specific audience has as well as how you can help them by providing information that will make things easier or better for them.
For example, a company that sells irrigation solutions to cannabis cultivators might identify overwatering as a problem their target audience has. The information the company can provide to make things better for cultivators could be a free guide on how to identify and fix the most common watering problems.
The goal is to meet B2B prospects where they are in the buyer journey and provide information in a freebie that supports them in reaching their goals.
5 Freebies that Work
Email marketers have been using lead magnets to build lists for a long time because they work. There are a variety of types of freebies and some are more effective at early stages of the buyer journey than later stages.
Let’s take a look at five popular freebies that cannabis businesses have successfully used to build their B2B email marketing lists.
1. Useful Freebies
Useful freebies provide helpful information for the target audience. They could help prospects solve a problem by offering actionable information that will save them time, money, frustration, and so on.
An example is a step-by-step guide that walks the prospect through a specific process. A company that offers a CRM software to cannabis brands could offer a guide that provides step-by-step instructions to create an automated lead scoring workflow. The guide would show how easy it can be for users to qualify and communicate with prospects, which makes it a great choice for prospects in the research stage of the buyer journey.
2. Meaningful Freebies
A meaningful freebie evokes emotions, which is effective because most purchase decisions (if not all purchase decisions) involve some element of emotion. The goal with this freebie is to establish an emotional connection between the prospects and your company.
Client success stories are excellent meaningful freebies because these stories show prospects in the later stages of the buyer journey that they can be successful just like their peers.
3. Educational Freebies
Educational lead magnets teach something of value and interest to the target audience. They’re very effective to build brand awareness, which is why they’re often used to attract prospects at the top of the marketing funnel and early stages of the buyer journey.
An example is an ebook offered by a cannabis packaging company about the rules related to specific types of product packaging.
4. Entertaining Freebies
Entertaining lead magnets entertain the target audience and can be effective for the right cannabis brand. However, proceed with caution because not everyone is entertained by the same things.
Videos, images, and quizzes are often used as entertaining freebies to attract specific target audiences to cannabis brands.
5. Sales-Related Freebies
Sales freebies are used to attract leads in later stages of the buyer journey. For that reason, they’re highly focused on a specific pain point or problem and associate your brand’s product or service as the obvious solution to the problem. The trick is to do this without being overly self-promotional.
Case studies, competitor comparison sheets, and pricing calculators are great examples of sales-related freebies.
Key Takeaways about Freebies to Build Your B2B Email Marketing List
There are many types of freebies that you can use to build your cannabis brand’s B2B email marketing list. Checklists, worksheets, ebooks, cheat sheets, webinars, templates, white papers, and more can be provided for free in exchange for prospects’ email addresses.
The key to success is choosing the right freebie for the right audience. Don’t be afraid to test, and remember, the more targeted you can get in your audience and your freebie content, the better your results will be.
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