How to Create a Freebie - A Tutorial for Course Creators

Congratulations!! You get to do a really fun thing - create a freebie for people who are interested in your course! Don’t mind me - I just get really excited when people get to share their passions with others 🥹

Ok, on to the info you’re actually here for.

Creating a lead generation tool is more than just thinking of a design and making it - although that part does come soon. There are a few extra things to consider before diving in:

1. Lay out the complete pathway to your course
2. Identify a beginning step in your sales funnel
3. Choose the type of freebie
4. Write the content for the freebie
5. Design the structure of the freebie
6. Add your content into the freebie

Lay Out The Complete Pathway To Your Course

Another word for this pathway is your course’s “sales funnel”. Your sales funnel describes each of the steps a prospective buyer takes to ultimately purchase your course.

It is important for you to have at least a rough idea of your sales funnel to move forward with creating a lead generation tool. There are plenty of experts online who specialize in sales funnel creation, and if you are enrolled in a course creation course (so meta 😉), then part of that content might cover sales funnels.

Identify a Beginning Step in Your Sales Funnel

Now that you have your sales funnel drafted, you can determine which step of the funnel would be ideal for utilizing an opt-in.

Your freebie likely won’t be the very first step in your sales funnel. The first step is typically something like reading one of your blog posts, seeing your reel on Instagram, or watching one of your YouTube videos. It is with those marketing efforts that you introduce the prospective customer to your freebie.

The freebie you create should be a next step for someone to take to dive deeper into your course topic. Ideally, it will give them a leg-up and prep them for your course material.

Choose the Type of Freebie

The type of freebie you create will depend on what you think will be the most valuable for someone at this stage in their journey. We want it to be enticing and easy for someone to say, “of course I will trade my email for this free download!”

Another thing to consider is the best way to organize the information you want to give away. A lot of the same content might fit nicely in a checklist, worksheet, or planner, but which is the best option for your specific use case?

I don’t want you to stress too much about this, but simply take a moment to consider the best way to lay out the information and which format a prospective buyer would find most useful. If you want some ideas for different types of freebies, check out this blog post.

Write the Content for The Freebie

Lay out the information you want to give prospective buyers and try not to think about the design too much just yet.

Remember that this is a free offer you are giving to someone - it doesn’t have to be extremely detailed or lengthy. In fact, it should be quite short. The more digestible the content is, the easier it is for your future customer to complete it quickly and develop their trust in you.

Design the Structure of The Freebie

Now is the fun part (in my opinion) - the design!! Your next step is to take all the content you just wrote and choose to do one of the following:

• Create a freebie design
• Purchase a freebie design

If you are confident in your design skills, go ahead and create the design structure for your freebie. Don’t forget to use your brand colors, fonts, and add your logo, website, and copyright information.

If you’d rather leave the designing to someone else, find a lead generation freebie template online that you can download and edit. Since you didn’t create the structure of the document, there might be areas that you didn’t create content for, or there might not be spots where you can input specific content you wrote. Hopefully the template you purchased will allow you to move elements around to create a freebie that covers all of the content you want to share.

Add Your Content into the Freebie

The final step is to add all of your amazing content into your freebie design. Finalize the design and export it as a pdf. And then bam, you’re done! Let me say congratulations (again)! You’re one step closer to selling your course and helping others achieve their goals.

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You’re probably wondering, “Ok, what now?” The next step for you is to create a delivery sequence so that people can submit their email, confirm their subscription, and receive their freebie. Lot’s of fun and somewhat technical stuff - but not to worry, I’ve got you covered. 🫶

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Craving more deets related to freebies? Here are some related posts:

Grow Your Email List: 8 Lead Generation Freebies for Course Creators

6 Subtle Freebie Mistakes That Even 7-Figure Course Creators Still Make