You did everything by the book. You chatted with your sales team, interviewed your customers and pored over CRM data to identify your top buyer personas. You determined their most crucial pain points and most Herculean goals. You analyzed how your products or services directly impact your prospect’s chief objectives and mapped our potential buyer’s journeys.
You singled out one specific topic you knew would captivate your audience, and set to work writing a piece of content so extraordinary, so intriguing, it made you giddy. This was the content offer that would have your sales team drowning in leads—you were sure of it. Then, the design team took your magnificent eBook copy and brought it to life with graphics that would’ve made Da Vinci cry. In fact, reviewing the finished product, you may have even become a little misty-eyed yourself.
Clapping one another on the back, you and your marketing team launched your magnum opus into the world wide web and waited for the largest burst of traffic your company’s website had ever seen.
And then …
Crickets.
Incredulous, you consulted Google with the phrase that led you to this very blog post: Why isn’t anyone downloading my content offer?
First, it may help to know you’re not alone. Even if the content and design are absolute perfection, many things can sentence an otherwise excellent offer to a dismal conversion rate. Today, we’re going to look at five of the top offenders so you can make the necessary corrections and earn the avalanche of leads you deserve.
You and your team spent loads of time carefully wordsmithing a piece of highly relevant content that’s equal parts informative and entertaining, but when it came to crafting the title your well of creativity had run dry. So you maybe kinda sorta phoned it in—a little. And while you felt the title was good enough, you forgot this little line of copy might just be the most important part of the entire piece. Oops.
A boring title—much like a droll blog headline or a lifeless email subject line—can kill your content before it ever has a chance to reach your audience.
Instead, give your title the attention it deserves. Write a minimum of 10 options and run each through a headline analyzer like this free tool by CoSchedule to determine your best contender. You may even consider doing an A/B test with a small portion of your contact list before you send the resource out to everyone.
It doesn’t matter how brilliant your content offer is if no one knows it exists. Emailing the offer to your entire database is great, but it shouldn’t be your only method of promotion. If you’ve done your persona research, you know where your prospects are spending their time online—so go there. Advertise on Linkedin, Facebook, Instagram or partner with a popular trade publication and send the offer to their list, too.
If there’s a space you know your audience frequents, find a way to be there.
Imagine you invite a friend to visit your new home. But instead of giving them your exact address, you only provide directions to your neighborhood. What do you think would happen? They’d probably drive around the block several times, becoming more and more frustrated with every passing minute. They might send a few annoyed text messages and, unless you respond, they’d eventually leave—and probably never return.
If your landing page is confusing, as in cluttered and difficult to navigate with unclear instructions or a vague description of your offer, you’re going to experience a seriously pathetic conversion rate. Instead, your landing page should be simple, with a brief and gripping description of what prospects will find within your content offer.
Here are a few brilliant landing page examples to inspire you.
If someone asked you to do a 5-minute survey for $10, you’d likely say yes—provided you had the time. But an hourlong survey? You’d better be getting one hell of an Amazon gift card or access to an open bar.
You know your offer is valuable, but don’t overestimate what it’ll mean to your audience. A form with more than 10 required fields can be a major turnoff, especially when prospects know they’re probably also opting themselves in to receive your marketing emails.
A good rule of thumb? If you want to capture leads, never gate anything your audience wouldn’t be willing to pay for.
You’ve identified your buyer personas as the key decision makers—the people within your audience who carry the power of the purse. But are those people willing to download and read a 20-page eBook? The answer could be yes, or it could be no; if you’ve done the research, you already know the answer. But keep in mind you could be aiming too high.
For example, if you’re targeting a busy c-level executive of a large organization, you may need to consider breaking your content down into an easier-to-consume format like an infographic. Or you may need to go back to the drawing board and transform your eBook into a numbers-based whitepaper.
The bottom line is if you can’t picture the persona you’re targeting taking the time to consume your content, you need to re-think the persona or re-think the content format.
When you’ve poured your heart and soul into developing a content offer, seeing less-than-stellar results can feel disheartening. But don’t throw in the towel too quickly. Even if you’re guilty of one or more of the above pitfalls, there’s still time for corrections. (After all, that’s the beauty of the digital marketing—nearly everything can be updated.) After you’ve pinpointed your folly, make the necessary fixes and prepare to finally reap the bounty you expected from the start.
