Ebooks as a Lead Generation Incentive
In our post Using Soft Incentives to Generate Leads, we looked at an example in the online education space where the landing page offered a $1,000 scholarship for the winner of a short essay contest. That they used a short essay format was quite smart, because it meant when landing on the page, people could complete it that instant, thus keeping their momentum. Those familiar with various online lead generation marketing strategies realized that the scholarship served a greater purpose, to funnel users into completing an information request form for an online university. The advertiser, a seasoned player in the online lead generation arena, knew that incentives, especially cash incentives, can degrade lead quality (because users might complete the form thinking it a requirement for entry among other reasons), tries to dissuade entry for the sake of a chance at making money. It won’t stop the hard core sweepstakes seekers but seems more than reasonable.
For me, the soft incentive is one where if executed properly, it is an upsell to an action that you would already take. It’s very different than a direct tradeoff, such as buy this to get this. It’s more of a teaser. The challenge of course is making sure that the person filling out the form understands what is involved. Recently, we came across another fairly common soft incentive, an ebook, but it’s execution might lead to less than qualified leads. The good thing about an eBook from a giveaway perspective is the cost. Outside of production costs, generally low, each incremental copy costs very little; yet, the perceived value can be high especially if on a topic that someone values. (It’s no wonder we see so many work from ebooks pitched as ways to make fast money…reselling the same ebook.) Not all ebook’s are necessarily about working from home. Here is one used in a debt consolidation lead generation campaign.
It’s a very clean and well executed page. It’s a good model for a higher converting page, one done in the more classical sense of a landing page that leads a user to a specific action without giving them many oppotunities to look and navigate to destinations outside the intended path. In other words, there is nothing wrong with this page from a functional standpoint. The issue deals with the message and expectation setting to the user. The headline reads, “Getting OUt of Debt Is Easy” followed by “Our eBook Will Show You How.” Next to the form rests a picture of a book, presumably the ebook on top of which reads, “Fill out the form to a FREE copy of our ebook.” And, under the ebook are some testimonials to the effectiveness of the book. That’s great if this were only about giving away a free ebook. You get the sense that something else might happen by reading the fine print, i.e. “DebtExpertAdvice.com representatives are waiting to take your application. Our expert debt counselors are offering to settle all late accounts to raise cash this month and cover growing defaults. There is no obligation to receive free debt help, so contact us today and have your debt relieved!” (The best part might be the stating that filling out the form is accepting their privacy policy which doesn’t exist on the site.)
Fill it out to get your ebook, and you see this next:
Sure enough, it’s not really an ebook form but a standard lead form with a nice upsell to a credit monitoring offer. Stated quite prominently on the thank you page is their intention to follow-up with you and how “by phone and/or email.” The ebook isn’t an auto download. You have to hunt for the link on the page. (Curious about the ebook? Here it is.) Since this is a debt offer, the callers are used to dealing with a lead that doesn’t want to pick up the phone. So, they might not notice the degredation in quality or be as sensitive to it. Unfortunately, the lack of honesty and transparency to the user ultimately harms all of lead generation because it makes people less trusting and makes those in our industry look less trustworthy.
