3 Helpful Ideas For Your First Vertically Targeted Offer - A How-to for Marketing Agencies
Just today, I got an email from a Hubspot Partner marketing agency ready to dive into vertical targeting with the following question.
Q: <<I’ve been thinking about my first offer so I can create the content, landing page, etc. What do you think of “10 Tips for Marketing Your Accounting Marketing Practice This Tax Season”? The target is partners in CPA firms, particularly smaller firms. >>
What’s cool about this agency is that they are vertically focused and going after a niche area, accounting, with specialized content where they have a great deal of knowledge. I love the approach as mentioned in 5 Powerful Tips a Marketing Agency Can Use to Target Verticals and think this firm has the chops to put together a great offer.
Their question is a common one - "what should my first offer be?"
A: Here is the response I’ve put together.
Idea 1: Don’t just put together one potential offer idea – put together 3 and make their types vary.
Offer Idea #1 – A tip sheet is a great potential offer, but I’d jazz it up a little bit. Instead of “10 Tips for Marketing Your Accounting Marketing Practice This Tax Season”, make it something like “10 Essential Tips for Marketing Your Accounting Practice This Tax Season.” Let it be known that this is good stuff being offered!
Offer Idea #2 – If a tip sheet is a great first potential offer, a how to guide is a great potential second offer. Try something like “A Step by Step guide to Developing Your Accounting Firm Marketing Plan”. Some prospects are very planning oriented (accountants anyone?) and this type of offer has a good chance of appealing to them.
Offer Idea #3 – As a third option, throw in a negative spin. A provocative offer can draw good interest. Something like… “How to Put Together a Disastrous Marketing Plan for Your Accounting Firm. Top 10 Mistakes Real Accountants Have Made (and How you can Avoid them.) “ Plus…people love to read about others’ mistakes!
Here are 3 additional examples of the offer types above.
Idea 2: So now that you’ve got three potential offers, don’t ask me which offer is best, ask your target prospects.
I’d love it if I could successfully predict what a successful offer will be, but at the end of the day, I’m not really sure what your prospects are most interested in. I know who knows though – your prospects.
Here are two ideas to solicit help from your prospects:
1 - Pick out at 3 or 4 people from your network in the industry and simply ask them. You can’t ask them to create an offer for you, but if you start with 3 ideas as suggested above, they will certainly tell you which one they like best. Everyone loves to have their opinion asked for, especially when it’s an easy question like this.
2 - Start leveraging social media to help you guide and/or create the content. How about this - tap into an Accounting Linkedin Group, or Linkedin Answers board, or Accounting Industry Forums, or Twitter (or all of the above) and list your 3 ideas. Ask for feedback and leave the door open for ideas you might have missed. Engage those who respond, and share more ideas on your content, and ask for more feedback. Keep the conversation going. You’ll be creating a live pilot group, expanding your network, potentially creating industry champions for your content. Who knows, maybe you will even be creating potential prospects.
Idea 3: Once your create offers, measure and analyze.
I don’t know if you’ll have time to put together more than one offer, but if you do, test which one performs better. I’m hypothesizing that accountants will really like the step by step guide. However, that is just a guess.
If you happen to be using Hubspot software (Enterprise version), do an A/B test with your calls to action and see which has higher click through rates.
Here is an example of what A/B testing might look like (from Hubspot)
If you’re not running Hubspot Enterprise, you can still test offers, just not in true A/B fashion. List multiple offers on a single page and see which drives the most traffic and highest click through percentage. Once you know your highest performing type of offers, create more of them. If the step by step guide is highest performing for instance, start creating things like guides, checklists, templates and the like.
This was a great question. What do you think? Which offer will perform best? What are some other ideas about developing your first vertically targeted offer?
Want to target verticals? Start planning your attached today with the Vertical Targeting Worksheet.
