Generating qualified leads for your business using bait piece reports

As more and more businesses focus on lead generation marketing over traditional brand or image marketing, a great way to generate qualified leads for your business is to have a free bait piece report. But before we get into what they are and how you can use them, let me explain for those who don’t know, what a bait piece report is.

A bait piece report is a free report you offer to people that contains information or tips that are of use to your target audience. You can use them to capture qualified leads, as a call to action on your website, on a print ad and even in your generic company brochure. Remember direct everything in print back to your website.

Some of the advantages of offering a free bait piece report are:

• You help position yourself as the ‘go-to’ people in your industry or profession and build credibility

• By offering free tips or information in your free report you start building the relationship and trust between you and your prospect

• A large percentage of people who download your free report will be qualified prospects. Why? Well, the majority of people won’t download your free report if the tips or information is not of interest to them, will they? They’ll download it because it is of use or of interest to them.

• This also means a percentage of the people who download your free report will become clients. Yes, your competitors may also download it, but based on my experiences in marketing and writing sales copy that percentage is very small and besides you don’t want to follow the herd in your industry, you want to lead the herd.

Okay so here’s a few quick examples of businesses who can use free bait piece reports to capture qualified leads

• Motor Mechanics – 11 Things You Should Know Before You Choose A Motor Mechanic!

• Copywriters – The Difference Between Writing Web Copy And Print Copy.

• Telecommunications – How To Get A Phone System That Works And Grows With Your Business.

• Real Estate – 9 Guaranteed Tips To Help You The Price You Want When Selling Your Home

• Home Insulation – 12 Tips To Saving Up To $400 a Year On Electricity & Heating

• Graphic design – 17 Things To Consider Before Creating Your Business Logo

• Mortage & Finance – How To Slash $14,000 Off Your Mortage in The 12 Months Guaranteed!

And the list goes on. As you can tell, you can use a free bait piece report to capture qualified leads for nearly any business.

A few of the do’s and don’t’s when writing and offering your free bait piece report!

The Do’s

• Keep it simple – Write your report in the language and words that your target audience uses and understands. If you’re a software development company and your audience is software programmers, talk in their language. If you’re a motor mechanic, keep it in wording your customers and prospects understand

• Make sure your website can capture the name, email, phone and address of the people who download your report

• Supply your free report in PDF format with the automatic download so the second they complete their details, they receive their report

• Ensure you have all your contact details with your website address are on each page of your report, so they have your details in front of them at all times

• The content and tips or information you use should be yours and yours only

• Use auto-responder emails saying thanks for downloading my free report

The Don’ts

• Don’t make your free report 40 pages long unless you have to. The idea is to give people some free information to educate them slightly. People are time-poor and will sort of feel of cheated if they download your free report and you give them 40 pages to read or print. The general rule of thumb that I like to stick to when I write them for clients is to keep your free report between 1 – 4  pages long. What to put in it? I generally stick with the report name, the business contact details and disclaimer on the cover sheet, a small introduction on next page, then small chunks of copy using a series of bullet points and subheads to capture the scan readers eye. Then I’ll include a subtle call to action at the end of the report.

• Sell. Give them information or tips that are of value and use bullet points for the scan readers to educate them rather than sell to them. 

• Forget about the people who’ve downloaded your free report. They downloaded your report for a reason so keep them in your marketing funnel with your e-zine newsletters and other marketing strategies to keep your business in their mind and to keep building the relationship. They may not be ready to buy now, but by building on the relationship with marketing you grow your database, the trust and the relationship

So there you have it, just a few a the proven ways you can use bait piece free reports to capture qualified leads, gain more exposure and differentiate yourself from your competition if you want to in 2010.

Join The Discussion!

What’d you think? I’d love to hear your feedback so feel free to ask me a question, advice on a marketing challenge you may have or share your feedback. Have a great day, your friend in lead generation copywriting, Eddie!

More about Eddie here