{"id":929,"date":"2019-04-03T13:54:28","date_gmt":"2019-04-03T17:54:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lee-cornell.com\/blog\/?p=929"},"modified":"2019-04-03T16:21:06","modified_gmt":"2019-04-03T20:21:06","slug":"guess-what-i-did-at-3am-last-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lee-cornell.com\/blog\/guess-what-i-did-at-3am-last-night\/","title":{"rendered":"Guess What I Did at 3am Last Night?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last night I was having trouble sleeping, so I opened my iPad to kill some time. I was looking at my emails and a subject line caught my eye. It said “The 14 Worst Breakfast Foods.” That sounded interesting to me as I am kind of into health, supplements and associated information. Plus, who wouldn’t want to know what this list was, since most of us eat breakfast.<\/p>\n

So I clicked on the link and was taken to a sales page. The offer was for a free download of a report:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I’ve used free reports to build my lists for years. I wanted to see what was in this document, so I provided my email address and got the report.<\/p>\n

What I found unique about the information was not only did the report list the 14 worst breakfast foods (which are things 95% of us eat for breakfast), but there were alternatives for each “bad” food listed, which added extreme value to this free offering.<\/p>\n

Then\u00a0 I waited for an upsell email. It came, but I was surprised that it was another free report on how amazing bananas were as a food and the nutrients they provide. Another really high value report.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As part of this sales page, they had a free trial of a protein powder that you could get by just paying $3.95 shipping. I did not take them up on that offer as I knew that would end up taking me to the “real” product they were selling – probably an auto ship of their protein powder.<\/p>\n

So, here’s the bottom line. This was a fantastic example of a company offering not just one, ho-hum free report (we’ve all seen those), but two killer free pieces of information that I would have paid money for.<\/p>\n

That’s how you build your list\u00a0 – FAST!. Offer free content that way over delivers. In this case, I received two fantastic downloads and the opportunity to try their protein powder for free as well. If I already wasn’t using a powder I’ve been happy with for years, I probably would have tried theirs.<\/p>\n

What are you offering your potential customers for free to gain their trust to do business with you?<\/p>\n

Something of real value, or some generic “whatever” just to get them on your list? If your free piece sucks, they are not going to buy your main product.<\/p>\n

Do what these folks did and you’ll build a huge list of people who want to hear from you.<\/p>\n

And stop eating box cereal, pre-packaged oatmeal, english muffins, wheat toast and orange juice for breakfast…just sayin’.<\/p>\n

P.S. Then I watched a movie on Netflix until I got tired…8-)<\/p>\n

Please like and share, and opt-in to my blog so you will be notified when I post something new.<\/p>\n

I’d also love to hear from you, so leave a comment.<\/p>\n

Thanks.<\/p>\n

Lee<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last night I was having trouble sleeping, so I opened my iPad to kill some time. I was looking at my emails and a subject line caught my eye. It said “The 14 Worst Breakfast Foods.” That sounded interesting to me as I am kind of into health, supplements and associated information. Plus, who wouldn’t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":932,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[15,10,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-copy-writing","category-marketing"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lee-cornell.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/bed-bedroom-bedsheet-1554188-1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5EOVe-eZ","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lee-cornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lee-cornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lee-cornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lee-cornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lee-cornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=929"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/lee-cornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":937,"href":"https:\/\/lee-cornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929\/revisions\/937"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lee-cornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lee-cornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lee-cornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lee-cornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}