As a heart-led horse-first professional, you deserve a website that converts traffic into clients 24/7. If it's not, it's doing you a huge disservice. Thus far, we’ve mainly focused on the steps required to get your website dialed in. Once your website is in tip-top shape, how does it actually get you more clients? How does your website prove your value?

The number one way to do that is via email address capture. How does your website capture email addresses? The most direct way is by offering and proving the value that you provide in your business - as a service provider, as a trainer, as a saddle fitter, etc. In essence, you give something of value to a prospective client in exchange for their email address.

You may already be familiar with this practice in the form of a freebie. Offering a freebie is an established and time-tested method of lead generation and email capture. While you might think, “That doesn't work anymore. I sign up for these fancy sites and it's just clickbait. I never even opened the freebie, so it doesn't work.” We’re here to tell you, that is a complete and utter fallacy. More likely, whatever freebie you encountered did not actually convey any value. We will admit that the business model has changed, however. In the old days, you could send a PDF and essentially say, “Here are 5 things to do. Good luck. Come work with me.” In today’s business climate, that’s no longer working. 

What format should your freebie take? (A) It should be something that’s easy for you to produce (B) It should capture the attention of an audience whose focus is getting shorter and shorter. 

The most important thing is that it delivers a specific outcome that your ideal client wants to achieve.

At this stage in the process, it’s important to clarify between what your potential clients NEEDS and what they WANT. As the expert, you want to dig deep and offer them what they need in order to achieve what they want. However, FIRST, you have to deliver on something they want in order to prove to them that you can really help them achieve their goals. In essence, they say, “Oh, this person helped me get over one specific problem. Now, I see the next issue that I have. And look! They have a solution for that as well.”

Your freebie can take many forms in its delivery. You can deliver a single video or a series of videos over time, or you could deliver audio files. These can be things that you very easily capture as you're doing your daily work. As a format, video is particularly useful for relationship building. Since some people connect via written word and some people prefer to see you, this allows them to do both/either depending on the occasion.

As horse professionals, time is our most precious commodity. By creating a video, you can produce your freebie and deliver multiple, bite-sized pieces of content from that. You get your original source material for your freebie. Additionally, you can transcribe the text of what you’ve said in it and from that produce a PDF, a Word document, social media content and more to drive traffic to your website and to the freebie itself.

The importance of delivering information in bite-sized pieces cannot be overstated. You have so much knowledge and expertise to give, but delivering it all at once overwhelms your audience. For example, we could tell you all about the process of building a website from start to finish in a three hour workshop, but it's too much information. Your eyes would glaze over and you’d be unable to process it all in that time frame. It would be like drinking through a fire hose.

Your freebie should deliver on something that logically connects to the service you provide. Say your business specializes in, for example, trailer loading. You teach the client from home how to load their horse in a way where they at least don’t object at all and at most, start to love it. This is actually a pretty complex process. The freebie solution needs to link to the actual content you deliver. What could a freebie be that would precede a course you have or clinic you teach on trailer loading? Maybe you discuss ‘making sure your trailer is as horse-friendly as possible so your horse doesn’t object to getting on it’. Maybe your freebie is about ‘how to desensitize a touchy horse to being confined in smaller spaces’. But it’s not the full-solution. The higher-level, harder-learning options remain in your paid offer. As questions arise throughout the freebie, you can address them saying “With this course, with this training program, with this clinic, etc - we address how to prevent XYZ as you work towards your goals with your horse.”

The landing page on your website collects people’s names and emails in order to get the freebie. The freebie is then delivered via email with a thank you page. After that, you can follow up with nurturing emails reminding the clients about the freebie offer, creating brand recognition, and utilizing the bite-sized chunks of content from your original document and any testimonials you want to include. ​​Eventually, you build a deeper connection between them, their horse and you. They really get to feel like you are the person that has the best value for them - that you are an expert that can truly help them achieve what they're trying to accomplish. 

Lastly, freebies are not just for those who deliver online courses. We teach to the lifetime value of a client. Think of it like dating. A freebie is like grabbing coffee. The only goal for the freebie is to lead to a second date, not to sell something directly. It’s just “Hi, now you know my name.” NOT “Hi, Do you want to marry me?” It’s just one of the lily pads that deepen the relationship. Down the line, we end up with the sale.

For more information on how to transform your horse business with a website makeover and get clients galloping to meet you at the gate, download our Free Extreme Website Makeover Guide now! With our Extreme Website Makeover Guide freebie offer, we can help you maximize your website as a lead generation tool. You can find a link to our website anywhere you see HorseBizAutomated information AND you can book a call with us to start the conversation.

Look at us! We give you a freebie invitation. We also give you an invitation to meet with us, which in itself is another freebie. You get to know us more. We can answer questions, help you overcome objections, and help you see the truth. If all works really well, then maybe we get to go for that second date 😉