Getting started with content upgrades

When you can get good numbers in your email game using something like content upgrades, you have to take a hard look at that strategy. The experts tell us that content upgrades are a good strategy. Robbie Richards, Brian Dean, Authority Hacker, the Grow and Convert Team, they all have given the benefits and the numbers of success using the strategy for them or their clients.

So, what is a content upgrade? According to Grow and Convert,

In short, content upgrades are content specific bonuses. Instead of offering a generic ebook at the end of your posts, you offer a bonus that’s intimately tied to the topic of that post itself.

Authority Hacker defines it like this,

A content upgrade is a complementary piece of information your readers can download in exchange for jumping through a hoop such as sharing the post or giving you his/her email address.

Content upgrades have been very effective for many marketers. Because of that, we are going to look at the effectiveness as well as ways to implement content upgrades.

Effectiveness

How effective is the content upgrade? How does a conversion boost of 459% sound? That’s what happened to Josh Thompson of MyGolfTutor.com.

Brian Dean tells the story in a case study on his blog. Josh used a content upgrade for his blog by creating a simple checklist. He chose the blog post with the most traffic, created the checklist, and watched his conversions soar.

According to Dean, it took him approximately 45 minutes to whip up the content upgrade. Thompson still uses the tactic on his blog as you can see in the screenshot below.

Wishpond has always claimed big conversion rate increases. In short, multiple publishers are finding extremely good results with using a content upgrade. It may be the most effective type of lead magnet one can employ.

Ways to implement

There are many ways to implement a content upgrade, but we are going to focus on three simple options.

Worksheets

One of the most relevant ways to take advantage of content upgrades is by creating a worksheet. This allows you to create homework for the user to implement the task. This can be by using a worksheet, a template or some kind of checklist. Either way, the motive is to get the user to take action.

Email courses

Another effective way to implement a content upgrade is by creating a free course. Creating a free course can be a video course or an email course. This sounds like a lot more work than it really is. Marketers have been doing email courses for years.

An email course can be easily implemented by taking existing content, arranging them in an order and using them to send emails to new sign-ups. The blog posts are articles that teach your audience how to do something.

Another way to implement an email course is to come up with a set number of tasks and send an email out for each one per day.  That’s what Buffer does with their monster email course for social media. The email course, called 25 Expert Social Media Growth Strategies, is sent out over 25 days. Buffer has a stellar reputation for social media and well-researched articles. The email course is attractive to anyone who works in online marketing.

PDF Download

Another option for a content upgrade is to create a PDF download of the blog post. This works really well when the blog post is long with lots of actionable information.

Robbie Richards noted that he created a PDF download of a 7K word blog post on SEM Rush he wrote. As a result, he was able to sign up over 694 subscribers in 90 days.

Richards used a chrome extension to download a printer-friendly PDF of the blog post and used his Thrive Themes to create the popup

Other options

These are not the only options to implement content upgrades. Mary Fernandez gives 30 content upgrade ideas in this article at OptinMonster. If your idea can be a lead magnet, it can be a content upgrade.

Tools

There is more than one way to get to your destination. There is also more than one tool you can use to implement content upgrades. Here are a few tools you can use to create content upgrades.

Google Docs

Google Docs makes it easy to create the body of your document. Whether you are creating a checklist or worksheet or writing emails for an email course, it is a super easy way to create the document.

You can also Google Documents to create spreadsheets that serve as a template that users can use to document a task.

Don’t use Google Docs? Zoho Docs or Office 365 are great alternatives.

Canva

The great thing about Canva is you can create your entire content upgrade or just create the cover. It is a fantastic, easy, and a free tool that will allow you to make beautiful documents without the need for a high priced graphic design program. Of course, if you have a graphic design program and are a whiz at using it, you can simply use that.

Designrr and Beacon

These online applications are made to turn high-value blog posts into a downloadable PDF. Both Designrr and Beacon come with customizable templates and even can help with delivery of the PDF.

WordPress Plugins

To execute a good content upgrade you are going to need an opt-in plugin or a good contact form. There are several that are already created to execute a lead magnet or content upgrade.

OptinMonster 
OptinMonster has a good lite version of the plugin you can use to deliver your content upgrade. The plugin executes various ways for email sign up forms including popups. For more features, consider one of the paid plans.

Convert Pro
From Brainstorm Force, the makers of the Astra Theme, the Convert Pro plugin has what you need to create optin forms. Licenses are per year or for a lifetime. The user interface is clean and it has powerful features.

Sumo
Sumo has been around for some time and has a suite of plugins built into their application. Some might find the use of Sumo for an optin as a bit of an overkill, but it works well for email sign-ups.

Thrive Leads
Thrive Themes is a suite of products that they describe as “Conversion Focused WordPress Themes & Plugins.” While they provide almost everything you need to grow subscriptions including a page and landing page builder, themes, and other plugins, the Thrive Leads plugin has all of the optin solutions you need.

Other Plugins

These two plugins were made for content upgrades. They are both premium plugins but they might be a good option.

Content Upgrade Pro

Content Upgrades by Audience Ops

A good contact form will also give you everything you need to deliver your content upgrade. Most plugins such as Ninja Forms or Gravity Forms give you an option to inform the client of their successful subscription. Usually, there is the option to provide a redirect to a thank you page. From here, you can include a link to your content upgrade. Therefore, you can use a good contact form plugin to deliver your content upgrade in a very simple way.  You will need to integrate your contact form with your email software provider to add emails to your list.

Another way to deliver your content upgrade is by providing a hypertexted link to a Google Document. This is a good option when you have a simple template. Just supply some instructions letting users know to copy the document to their folder. You want to make sure you provide the appropriate link sharing settings and the “View Only” mode.

Screencasting and Youtube

If you are creating a presentation as a content upgrade, you will need to use a screencasting software to record your presentation. You can use Powerpoint or Google Presentations to layout your presentation and use the screencasting software to record as you run through the presentation.

You will need a place to host your video. Youtube is a good choice. You can keep it private so that only those who make it to your delivery page can see the video. Upload your video to Youtube, create a thank you page for the delivery with the embed of your Youtube video.

Wrapping it up

There is no reason that you can’t take advantage of using content upgrades and do it quickly. And, if you don’t want to use a popup, no sweat. You can always use inline forms or other methods of getting optins to your list.

Really, you don’t have to use any ultra fancy tools, at least to get started. Google Drive and a good contact form can get you where you need to be in the beginning. Robbie Richards made a PDF Download of a popular post using a Chrome Extension and delivered it with Thrive Leads. Your content upgrade just needs to be relevant.

Have you implemented content upgrades? Drop a line below and let us know.