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 professional service branding and marketing. Go!

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



These offers must be non-self-advertising or, on the contrary, training content. Instead, they should be created in such a way as to point visitors to resources that may prove to be truly useful for them: solutions that will help your potential customers cope with their current business problems.

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 in a natural way, 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 to buy, 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 proposals to increase the user engagement ratio (you can read about civilized methods for obtaining customer contact information in the article “3 life hacking messages for getting customer contacts” ).

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



Offers that are part of the content indicate to visitors the way in which they should climb the steps - from accessible content (for example, blog posts) to creating strong relationships with your company.

Thus, to those users who downloaded your ebook, you can send an email inviting them to participate in the webinar on the same topic, but having touched it more deeply or looking at it from a different angle. Then you can invite webinar participants to visit a free consultation on current aspects of their business. As soon as users are ready to make a purchase, congratulations, you could get their attention.

2. Make your offers short and concise.



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

Thus, if you offer an ebook on 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 for free: the title of the book.”

Try to be as meaningful 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 you need to offer different levels of content in the case of a blog post, webinar, or ebook, respectively, for an audience at different levels of the sales funnel, but this is a mistake!

Use only one offer at a certain time and for certain content: if there is more, you will weaken the effect, confuse users and complicate their way to a faster and more efficient process of interaction 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 based on the target audience for each segment and type of content. Offers included in the content of readers who are just getting acquainted with you should require much less effort and commitment than offers for users who have been cooperating with you for a long time, 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 closer - what their interests are 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 content to fix problems with finding topics that are important to your target audience — and this is the best way to get through to them.



This can be achieved through careful and consistent use of web and email analytics, having learned a few lessons to help you improve content marketing:

• You may find that some topics are better suited for users who are at a far 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 for a longer period than others. These “evergreen” topics will be a valuable tool for you, and often they will amaze you. Monitor web analytics and get information about what your target audience really needs; meeting her needs is a key stage.

• Conducting A / B testing related to offers allows you to find out which design elements, text, content types and other parameters make it possible to attract as many users as possible. We offer to get acquainted with several types of testing, just do not forget to make sure that you are testing 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 encourage 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 effectively you will be able to offer them offers that will make users more responsive and involved, move them up the content ladder to build trust and build long-term relationships with the target audience. .

Once you have implemented your offer creation strategy, make sure that they contain the same level of thinking and creative attention as your content. If you succeed in this, you can set the stage for a content strategy that will attract more potential customers — and help them become more qualified users.