As you learn more about lead generation funnels, you will begin to see more and more of a theme of providing value up front. This especially holds true when you are building a book funnel.
It is important in business to always give people more value than they are paying for. This is how you create raving fans and are able to charge premium prices.
In this article we will be going over the Free + Shipping Book Funnel, the reasoning behind giving things away for free, and where you can learn more about lead gen funnels.
Introduction to the Free + Shipping Book Funnel
A free + shipping book funnel is a type of lead generation strategy where you give away a book you have written for free. All visitors have to do is pay shipping and handling and they get a physical copy of your book.
Having people pay for shipping and handling gets them comfortable with buying from you, and primes them for the offers you have to make them after they get past this first stage.
The idea of this funnel is to peg yourself as the expert in whatever subject you have written about. You’ve literally written the book on this subject, and you want to get it into as many hands as possible.
The book is usually considered a front-end offer not only to what you are offering within your book funnel, but also to get an email list built out of people you know are interested in what you have to offer. You can then add them to automated email sequences and sell them other, high-ticket, items to give them even more value.
Why You Give Your Book Away For Free
You’ve spent so much time outlining, drafting and writing your book.
You’ve spent even more time becoming the expert in the subject matter so you can be qualified to write the book to begin with.
Why on Earth would you give something that valuable away for free?
You see, that’s exactly the point.
People know the value of a book.
To most people, writing a book is beyond anything they can imagine themselves doing in their lifetime because the task seems too daunting.
The fact that you created all this value and are now willing to give it away for free shows people that you really care about them.
It shows you are willing to be a giver in this relationship, and that you want them to succeed in solving whatever problems they have.
Building this trust is important going forward in your business relationship with people.
And if your book provides awesome value, you have just created a raving fan.
What You Should Offer As An Upsell
When designing your offer stack, it’s important to make sure that your offers align with the content of your book. Offers that don’t add more value to solving the same problem they got your book to solve will really put people off and don’t help your bottom line.
One offer that commonly goes with a book is the audiobook version of what you just sold them. People love physical items, but they hate waiting for them to ship. Offer them instant gratification by giving them the option to purchase the audio form of your book.
Similarly you could also sell them an ebook version instead. This would scratch the same itch of needing something now.
The best part about building your own sales funnel is you don’t have to stop there. You can add as many add-on purchases as you want. Just make sure it’s a number of upsells that makes sense, or you will make people angry, wondering when they will ever get out of your funnel.
Other common upsells and one-time offers include video trainings, full courses, discounts on coaching, and even software that relates to solving your buyer’s problem.
This last one was implemented famously in Russell Brunson’s Traffic Secrets funnel where he sold lifetime access of Funnelytics as a one-time-offer (OTO) on the backend of his book funnel.
Whatever it is that you offer on the backend, scale the price up as you go, offer more value as you go, and make sure it is solving the problems that the buyer came there to get a solution to.
Thank You Page
No good lead funnel is complete without a thank you page. Once people make it through all of your offers, be sure to add a thank you page as the last step so people know they are done.
Without a thank you page, your buyers will not know they are done reviewing what you have to offer.
This is also the page where you explain to people how they will be receiving their items and the timeline it will take for them to get what they purchased.
You can have a single thank you page for the whole funnel, or you can have multiple thank you pages depending on the options they chose in the funnel.
It’s also important not to waste this last step of the funnel. Even though they are done buying, you can still put next steps in front of your buyer.
This can be further reading on your blog, or a simply a final affirmation that they made the right chocie purchasing with you and they are well on their way to solving their problem.
Learn More About Lead Gen Funnels
If you’ve written a book and want to make your email list blow up, then a free + shipping funnel is definitely a good way to build your lead list.
If you liked this article but want to learn more about lead funnels, the different elements, and see some world-class be sure to check out the Lead Funnels Swipe File.
This is 106 example funnels that have worked wonders to build the email lists of top marketers across the internet.
