Use the “Smart Freebie Formula” to Attract Paying Clients (Not Just More Subscribers) with Annie Franceschi

Allea Grummert (00:12):
Be there. Welcome to Happy Subscribers, a podcast that explores how bloggers and content creators can create more purposeful relationships with your audience through email marketing. I’m Allie ert, email marketing strategist, copywriter, email platform expert and founder of the Dump for You email marketing agency duet. I started as a personal finance blogger in 2016 and have since helped hundreds of bloggers and creators like you maximize your email marketing for more impact, more traffic, and a better connection with your subscribers. Be prepared for some advanced email talk as well as tactical tips to help get your valuable content into the hands of your audience faster and easier. I’m excited you’re here, so let’s do it. We can create a deeper, more meaningful connection with the community you love and serve through email.

(00:59):
Annie France, a former dizzy storyteller, branding expert and host of the Establish Yourself podcast. Since 2013, Annie has helped more than 400 coaches and consultants clarify their brand message, package their offers, and grow businesses with confidence through her practice. Greatest story Creative along the way. She’s spoken for thousands, been featured, informed, and written three bestselling books. Oh my gosh, Annie, what an overachiever. I love this. The books are called Establish Herself Permission to Try In Small Biz for Kids, a Duke University graduate and Major Muppets fan. Annie lives in Durham, North Carolina with her husband Gus, and their favorite Muppet, their son Leo. Annie and I were introduced to each other through Alison Hardy, who is a previous guest on Happy Subscribers. And once I learned about what Annie does, I knew it’d be a great chat. She’d be a great person to have on the podcast. Annie, I’m so grateful that you’re here with me today.

Annie Franceschi (01:54):
Thank you so much for having me.

Allea Grummert (01:56):
We are here to talk about storytelling among all of these other things that are going on in the world. How do we differentiate ourselves online? And Annie, I’m just so curious for more of your backstory. How did you get into the work that you’re doing now?

Annie Franceschi (02:12):
So I like to say that I used to work for a mouse. So I used to work for the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California because my dream growing up was to make movies. I wrote screenplays, I wanted to produce movies, and I did the very glamorous work if that’s your dream, which is you move out to Hollywood and you become somebody’s assistant. So

(02:31):
I was the second assistant to the head of Lionsgate Films, which makes the Hunger Games and Tyler Perry movie. Oh gosh. It was very glamorous. But I worked my way up kind of the food chain and ended up at a job at Disney and my job was helping tell the stories of upcoming films. So for about the course of five years, I ended up being the person that was helping tell the story of upcoming movies before there was any real marketing around them. So if Comic-Con happened, the president of production had to get up and say something about Maleficent. So I was the one taking the script and the concept art and putting that together. That’s so cool. It was so cool. It was really, really cool. I got to go to D 23. I was often in charge of building the deck for their live action presentation or at least writing the script for it, some of the slides. So it was incredible. But I often describe it as I finally worked my way up to the dream job and realized it was not the dream life that I thought I wanted.

Allea Grummert (03:29):
What was the dream life that you wanted?

Annie Franceschi (03:31):
Well, I didn’t know that was the scariest part. It was like I feel like I felt so responsible for giving something up when I didn’t know what was going to come next, but I knew enough of, okay, this is really fun and sexy and cool, but it’s not actually creating the meaning I wanted and I didn’t want my boss’s job or her boss’s job, and I wanted more balance and creativity in my life. For me, it was like I’m working on these major Hollywood films, but I wasn’t changing anything about them. I was just helping an executive tell the story of them to fans, which is fun, but that’s not changing anyone’s life. So I had a hunch of what that would be. And in 2013, I gave myself permission to quit dream job and permission to try entrepreneurship. And I did the really cool thing of moving back home to North Carolina and moving with my dad when I was married.

(04:19):
That was really cool. I did that before it was cool kids before the pandemic threw everything apart, but that was 12 years ago and I started my business greatest Story Creative on a hunch that I could take these skills that I had of telling stories for a big movie studio and helping real people tell their story in their business because I think that is the thing that you and I both really have in common in the work we do. We do it in different ways. We have different zone of genius, but it all comes down to helping people not miss what is so incredible about you and your story.

Allea Grummert (04:49):
Yeah, amen to that. How did you see the online space developing at that time where you knew that’s where you wanted to be versus finding just another job or,

Annie Franceschi (05:01):
So I wrote a whole book about it. So my very first book is actually called Permission to Try and you can listen to it on Audible, you can grab the first chapter off of Amazon just like you can with any book. And I tell a little bit of the story, but I actually did look for a job so I could tell the story in hindsight and be like, it all worked out this way. But I told myself, I have to be responsible. I can’t just have this business. I have to go get a job. And basically the short version is I kept looking for jobs, I got offered jobs and went, I don’t want to do that. I want to go all in on this business, but would that be insane for me to do? And I ultimately made a deal with myself to say, I’m going to give myself a year. Can I make this work in a year? Can I make a full-time income? And that was 12 years ago. So it has been the most incredible work of my life, and I’ve now worked there twice as long as I ever worked for Disney and counting, and I hope I never have to go work for anyone other than me again, but technically I have a child, so I work for him.

Allea Grummert (05:58):
I try and keep a roof over my cat’s head. That’s the most responsibility I really have. Yeah, that’s so cool. And then what is it about coaches and creatives online that gets you excited to be supporting this particular audience, this other crowd of people online?

Annie Franceschi (06:16):
It sort of happened organically. I was coming up where a lot, some of the big online luminaries were coming up, and I didn’t necessarily intend to set out with this online practice, but what I set out to do was to take what I was good at and turn it into a business. So I started working with all kinds of people. I was working with restaurants, I was working with realtors, I was working with coaches and creatives. And what I found were people who sell their time, people who sell their skillset, they sell it by the hour or they package it. We all have a unique challenge. You and I have a unique challenge because we are not selling, I always say, we’re not selling a million coffee cups. We’re not going, here’s a coffee cup. Buy the coffee cup. It’s 10 95, but the tariffs, it’s $200, whatever.

(06:55):
So we have this unique challenge of not only do we have to sell what we do, but we have to package it in a way that people get it. And as long as that’s a problem, I will have a business forever because that is for whatever reason, I’ve always just been really good at simplifying and seeing the story that’s really hard to name and claimant see in a clear way. So that’s always been the thing I’ve done since I was a little girl, just being able to tell the story clearly, and I didn’t know it was called branding, but that’s what it is. It always comes back to me as everything is how you tell the story. And I think that’s so true for those of us who work who are creatives or work with them, is that we are challenged in many ways almost makers are selling art and things like that, but many of us are selling our time and we can’t just be like by the hour anymore. That’s not the world we live in. And how to make a living from that is the art of how you tell your story and how you make it feel valuable and that it’s not just about you, it’s about the people who receive whatever it is you have to give, whatever transformation or feeling or support you provide. And that’s just really nuanced, but so valid and important.

Allea Grummert (08:00):
Yeah. What’s coming to mind for me is the question of there’s brand and then there’s also personal branding because I mean, I went to school for advertising and pr, so we were trained to work for a big massive agency like Mad Men Style and work for Nike or Adidas or whatever, but we’re running these smaller businesses, but what’s, I guess what recipe of having a brand but having a personal brand but making about the audience, how do you define that?

Annie Franceschi (08:33):
Well, I look at it this way that I don’t really tend, I know this is maybe a little bit controversial, but I don’t necessarily delineate a difference between a businessman and a personal brand. When you are a team of one or a team of two, there really isn’t much difference between those things. So it’s really about how you show up and talk about the work you do is your brand and people already have an impression of it. So what the work you need to do is shape it and impact it. Because I think there’s this kind of theory that we go create our brands. It’s like, no, we are living those things. I think for me, just to get at the nuance of it, of course I have a business called Greatest Story Creative. Greatest Story has a brand that’s separate from Annie Francesi, right?

(09:12):
Annie FRAs is the author of books, greatest Story Creative is where I do all my services, but it’s still just me behind the scenes and there’s a ton of similarities. So I think it depends on person by person, but I think it is about holding true to what does the business do for others and how do you tell that story and who’s the person behind it? And then there’re sort of that personal brand that comes under it or alongside of it, but the principles are the same, which is are you talking about the things that you do extraordinarily well? Are you talking about it in ways that your ideal clients or customers can hear and receive it and feel invited into that story? And are you framing it in such a way that deeply understands either their problems or their deepest desires?

Allea Grummert (09:52):
All of that. And the reason why I was like, Ooh, this is good, is the fact that that it’s all one is like, oh my gosh. It’s like why I do have a separate Instagram account for Duet Duet co. There’s nothing posted, hasn’t been the whole time I’ve had it. And it’s just such a relief because if you think about the idea of needing to manage both a brand and my personal account, it’s like that’s just double the work for a small business. And that’s not necessary.

Annie Franceschi (10:18):
We’re not Nike. We don’t need to be, we’re not even a micro business in many. We get no respect. Was it Rodney Dangerfield? We get no respect these one person businesses, and I think it’s okay. I think that the balance I try to strike with it is similar to you. I have a greatest story creative business page on LinkedIn, and I don’t really post there. I post as me the person because that’s who people engage with on LinkedIn. They’re not engaging with the brand necessarily. They engage with me if I had nothing but time and resources and I could maintain the separate, I did the same thing you did. I had a business page and a personal page and all as solo business owners, we sort of have to pick what is most important to us and where are people most likely to look for us even on social media and things like that. Because honestly, at the end of the day, and this is where I always come back to this kind of question around personal brand people invest in people. A lot of people don’t even know what my business is called. People who’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars may not pass a quiz on its greatest for creative versus any, but does that matter?

Allea Grummert (11:16):
No. No. Oh, that’s such a good thing to think about and to consider. And well, and I want to dive into the conversation around how this relates to email marketing, but not just like I have a lot of conversations with how do we continue to engage people within email, but one of the things that you teach on is these leave magnets that actually better help convert people into clients. You’re not just growing your list for the sake of growing it. Tell me, what problem were you seeing in the online space that this conversation, the solution that you created came out of that?

Annie Franceschi (11:53):
The core of my work that I do at Greatest Story is all about helping you get clear on your offers and specifically how you talk about what you do.

Allea Grummert (12:00):
This

Annie Franceschi (12:00):
Is the thing where we get stuck on we’re not selling a million coffee cups as part of that. I obviously touch a lot of different things you do in your business, and I love a good system and a strategy, and so much of what we struggle with is how to get people coming into our world. I always hear every day, you and I both hear about how do I get more clients? How do I attract more clients, get a lead magnet? We’ve all been told that. And just last year I was kind of pulling together my best practices because I kept getting questions, how do you get a lead magnet? But it’s not just how do you put together this freebie or this lead magnet? How do you put together something that isn’t just fluff noise or just sits and collects dust on somebody’s desktop?

(12:37):
I think you and I, we probably could share war stories and maybe you should on the show, what are our worst lead magnets? I’ve been in the game for 12 years, so I’ve created everything, checklist, webinars, recorded classes, live classes, you name it, under the sun. And I’ve seen my clients do too, and I’ve helped them do it too because it’s an expression of how clear are you talking about what you do? Are you pulling people in based on their problems and turning them into clients? So what I created is what I call the smart freebie formula, and it’s the five things that your lead magnet needs to do to actually get you clients and not just downloads. What good does it download if it doesn’t turn in anything?

Allea Grummert (13:14):
Tell me more. It’s funny though, when you’re mentioning all the, I’m thinking of all the PDFs that I’ve downloaded from over the years. I started as a personal finance blogger in 2016, so I think I’m like, I immediately thought of Lion King with the graveyard, the elephant graveyard. That’s what I have somewhere on these hard drives that I’ve backed up on from my computer since then. I’m sure that I just, they’ve got dust, they’re disintegrating as we

Annie Franceschi (13:37):
Speak. They’re not easy to create. And as you know and you do in your work, it’s not just that you create the lead magnet, then you create the welcome sequence for it, the funnel for it. They download the believe magnet and then what happens? And that’s just all of this thinking and people are just winging it. And I know you and I both wing it and figure it out way we’ve

Allea Grummert (13:54):
Done some winging,

Annie Franceschi (13:55):
Right? So there’s this thought about, I don’t want to overinvest in this. That was sort of how this came up last year because I had a client who was like, I want to create something, but I don’t want to waste my time.

Allea Grummert (14:06):
Amen to that. So what did you tell me? Secret? What did

Annie Franceschi (14:09):
I tell him? It’s the secret ingredient. No, and when we were first talking, before we started recording, it’s just to say, I know some of you’re coaches and consultants and some of many of your’re creators and bloggers, and I think these five things, if you take only one away going to be useful for you. But let’s kind of take a stab. So the first thing is something I’ve had to learn many times the hard way, which is to solve one specific tiny problem your ideal client has. So the idea there is I think people pick these two broad, a topic where they pick the actual problem that their whole business solves. I have a messaging formula that I call brand chips, and it’s an acronym, C-H-I-P-S. And the P is problem. And so I always work with my clients when we’re defining how they position their brand, what is the biggest problem you solve?

(14:59):
And often people will try to be like, say you’re a career coach, and they’ll be like, how to optimize your job search in five steps. A better version of that is how to optimize your LinkedIn profile in five minutes to start your job search something more specific, tinier that isn’t the broad big picture of what you solve. And that’s a big nuance to how we can teach this. It’s like if you’re going to solve a tiny piece of the puzzle, you gain the trust you need and you also make it really easy for people to take that action and go, I want that thing. Ooh, that’s the thing that’s creating friction. And I see a very quick path to fixing that.

Allea Grummert (15:37):
And this is an early problem in the sequence of them maybe getting used to cooking or something like that or getting used. I’m thinking about my clients with an Italian food blog. What could be a tiny specific problem? I know one thing that I’ve worked with with clients is creating a pantry checklist. The food you need for an Italian kitchen is going to be different than a weeknight dinners crockpot American dinner type blogger. Yeah,

Annie Franceschi (16:03):
I think the journey, the timing of the journey matters. So ideally it’s something that happens early on that they need to take an action with that if they do that or if they come up against friction with it, it’s something you can help them with or you’re going to be the right next solution to them. That’s the idea. It’s getting up early in their client experience or their customer journey.

Allea Grummert (16:21):
Got it. Check. I’m taking notes by the way. What’s

Annie Franceschi (16:25):
Two Annie? I think also just on, I used to have this myth in my head that it was supposed to be exactly what your problem is, and that leads me to step two, which is to give a quick win without giving everything away

Allea Grummert (16:39):
That I mentally was like, but I can can give it all the way. Talk me off that same, talk me out of of that.

Annie Franceschi (16:44):
And we live in the, I mean, oh my gosh, you and I were talking about threads and there’s people on threads that are like, I’ve put my entire brain into a chat GPT bot, and you can get it for the low price of $20 a month. I’m like, why

Allea Grummert (16:56):
Are you selling your whole brain? Stop doing this. Is it because why are you saying no? Is it because we’re just, we’re overwhelming people or we want them to be able to buy from us later? What’s your reason?

Annie Franceschi (17:06):
There’s so much I can say, and let me illustrate it with, I learned this the hard way and I learned it as a veteran. So I learned it 11 years in business last year. So I was using the blueprint that many of us have come to rely on over many years is doing the masterclass, the webinar, the free class that leads to the paid thing. I thought I’m going to have my ducks and I’m going to do podcast episodes leading up to it. I’m going to do this free class. So long story short, I did an elevator pitch class. The core of what I do is teaching people how to talk about what they do in a clear way. A core part of what I do for VIP clients is write your elevator pitch. I do it as a free class. I have 75 people sign up. I have 39 people come live. They all rave about it. Who signed up for the program?

Allea Grummert (17:48):
One

Annie Franceschi (17:48):
Person.

Allea Grummert (17:49):
No.

Annie Franceschi (17:50):
Who ultimately weeks later was like, my schedule change. Can I get a refund?

Allea Grummert (17:54):
No, girl. So yeah, you gave it all away. I have heard back in a webinar theory of teaching them what needs to happen, but not necessarily how or no, it’s the why, not the what,

Annie Franceschi (18:09):
Something along those lines give the why not the what. I’m one of those people. Like you can’t stop me. The genie’s out of the bottle. I just want to help people. And I know that I hear that all the time. And the biggest thing that I learned from that was I gave the appearance of giving everything away. Did I give everything away? Not even close. I know that. But the thing is that everyone I came to, it was so they had such a huge transformation. They are so confused. If I were to review their elevator pitches, I would guarantee most of them need a ton of work and they’re not finished, but they thought they were finished. And that’s what matters. And so I will never give that talk again. Sorry guys for free, because it was giving away too much. And also I gave this impression so I overwhelmed. I didn’t breadcrumb. That’s why it comes back to that tiny problem of kind of in the journey. But you do want people to feel good. But I think if you rightsize the problem, if I could have fixed that by starting with step one, if I had said, you know what? This is giving too much the appearance of solving the big problem in my business. So what I need to do is pick a very small version of that, which I’m going to be sharing an example with you today of how I

Allea Grummert (19:15):
Fix that. It says, me thinking about the talk I just gave at tastemaker was on segmentation. And you’re like, oh my goodness. The more you get into it, you’re like, how do I teach this? There’s so many different directions that can go. And I basically had to say, I know there are a lot of directions. I’m going to teach you one way. I’m going to teach you a skill, and then we can talk. If you want my help doing more of it or if you want to do it on your own, great. But I was like, we’re not separating based on interest. We’re not separating based on skill level. We’re just separating your audience based on whether they want all of your emails or just one email a week. That’s it. I had to set these parameters. Otherwise you really, really overwhelm people. And then everyone is crying by the end. We

Annie Franceschi (19:55):
Don’t want people crying. The way I realized I need to be thinking about it was you need to find that balance between being helpful and being

Allea Grummert (20:02):
Hireable. What? Say it

Annie Franceschi (20:05):
Again. Do it again. Helpful and hireable because I over helped and you over helped, right? Or you’re worried about doing that. So you want people to come away feeling like they really got a lot of value, but that they didn’t completely solve their problem and they know exactly how you could help and it feels like the right next step. So we think we’ve gotten lost because the Amy Porterfield of the world have cashed in on subscribers and really ruined this for they think ethical markers out there. Not to slam her, I know she’s got her fans, but I saw one too many ads that were like cash in on subscribers overnight. I was just like, girl, can we not? Oh man. But I think the people I tend to work with tend to fall in this. If there’s a spectrum of selling, they’re on the spectrum of I don’t want to sell. I just want to give it all away. And the problem with that is that people don’t see you as the expert if all you do is just help endlessly and you don’t have anything for sale and you don’t gently lead them, ethically lead them from here’s some value and here is the next step. If you need more help, that is a responsible business owner standing in their value versus just giving over cheering. And even when you do that, you sort of lose their trust as the expert as well.

Allea Grummert (21:19):
Hey, if you enjoy what you’re listening to and want even more of this, go to duet.co/happy for a few different free resources. And while you’re there, you can also join my email list, which is where I share so much valuable content that you really cannot get anywhere else. Plus you can reply back at any time to any email, and it will go to my inbox. And if you’re curious about duet and our services and how we work with clients, you’ll find links to that there as well. Go to duet.co/happy and I’ll include the link in the show notes so that you can grab more.

(21:55):
Oh my goodness. So many thoughts because part of it too is like we coming from a blogging background too. We produce, we produce, we produce reproduce, and we don’t want to ask for anything in return. And then they complain about our recipes. I say our on behalf of the community, and it’s like, well, honey, you changed half the recipe. Please stop calling. Or they’re like, you told your life story again and a blog post. I’m like, but was the recipe free? Julianne, come on, Julianne, do you want to go buy a cookbook instead because you can. They’re ad free. I get all defensive from my people. How does this just work with where to really, where in these info spaces or where do you see the info space world going? Are we good? Are we safe? Nobody’s safe. I know. So that’s where the helping too. Do we have to differentiate? What can we uniquely help with that they can’t just go ask the internet for?

Annie Franceschi (22:56):
Yes, exactly. And something that I’ve been working on the past few years and kind of the culmination of a lot of my work has been a framework I call package your process. So package your process is I think the answer to how we continue to stand out, how we continue to thrive, how we continue to be sought after humans and the age of ai. And what that really means is you not being the email strategist, it’s you having your unique framework. It’s me not being just another brand strategist or elevator pitch writer. It’s that I’m the creator of the package or process framework. This is the core of the work I’m doing with clients. When I say I help you get clear on your offers, I’m not just helping you with your elevator pitch anymore. I’m helping you package that into a packaged or productized offer into thought leadership.

(23:41):
I have a whole thing I talk about on my show Establish Yourself podcast, where it’s episodes 33 through 36 when they’re all about frameworks, and it’s this idea, but I think this is how we help ourselves stand apart, is that we sort of have to start coining terms creating systems. I know you and I both have these. If you and I were to sit down for the rest of the afternoon, we could document your brand vocabulary, the things you believe. It’s time more than ever the process that many of us go through. I know I went through when I wrote my second book, establish Yourself was to literally put up on the wall, what do I believe? Even something like the smart freebie formula didn’t exist until I had to put a podcast episode together about lead magnets went well, actually, it’s these five things.

(24:19):
It’s we need to be taking those steps and becoming known for our intellectual property, our ip. That’s what Chad GPT can’t do. GP can do can endlessly give us output. It’s only as good as what we put in and what we do with the output, but it’s going to be, if you want to be a human in this business, people are going to seek you out because of your unique thoughts and perspective and story, which I know you are so gifted at in the work you’re doing with your clients to have that come through in their welcome and nurture stories.

Allea Grummert (24:48):
Yeah, thank you. And it’s funny, I think about a couple of specific clients like Alyssa who has a cleanup rating with every one of her blog posts. She’s like, I’ll have a recipe here, but I want to make sure that you know how long it’s going to take you to actually clean it up. And that’s so unique to her, which is so cool. And no one else is saying that or doing that.

Annie Franceschi (25:09):
It’s so thoughtful. And I think we’re in an age where, and part of what I try to talk about, I know sometimes I should say in my lane of branding and positioning and messaging, so much of what I like to talk about on the show is systems and a lot of that being how have you thought about your offers from your client’s perspective? How have you added fun back into your business so that they’re having a great time and you, why are we doing that so we’re not having a great time and being thoughtful, putting in that the cleanup, everyone needs to be way more honest about how long it takes to clean up some of these recipes.

Allea Grummert (25:40):
Well, and it’s funny because I will chat with clients and they have told me they will tweak the recipe itself to give you fewer dishes. They’re not putting that front forward, but they’re thinking about, well, could you just use the same quarter teaspoon you are using for the other thing for the garlic powder? Yeah, it’s not going to change the recipe that much, but it’s one less, you don’t have to get the one eighth teaspoon out of not all or

Annie Franceschi (26:05):
Capes, right? And we

Allea Grummert (26:07):
Dunno this. I’m like, they know it. You should be bragging about the things that you’re already doing well, right. Okay. So we’ve covered two of the keys to the smart freebie formula. Tell me more.

Annie Franceschi (26:20):
Yeah. So we want to solve one tiny specific problem. We want to give a quick win without giving it away. The third piece is really interesting. It’s feel making sure that it feels safe and simple to sign up for. So this is really interesting, right? It took me a while to realize this, that there’s so much that factors in. So I worked with a financial services advisor and we put together a, and it was very intentional. It was a quiz where yes or no, how retirement ready were you, but it was really intentional to make sure that you didn’t have to give any numbers. So it was like you didn’t have to say how much money you had to do this quiz. So it was very, very simple and you weren’t giving too much away about your personal information.

(27:02):
Similar things like that. If you’re a career coach, maybe you’re not ready to tell other people you’re looking for a job. So are you creating things that feel confidential? Do people have to give the email at the beginning or do they have to give their email at the end to you? Can they just use your tool without you giving the appearance of you having the data though? Obviously you have some version of the data if it’s interactive, but it’s the idea of have you thought about your lead magnet from your ideal client or customer’s perspective? Would this feel safe to them? Would it feel easy and simple and straightforward to sign up for? If you can’t answer that confidently, yes. Or you interview folks, you’ve got to fix that because I have a tool that we’ll link to in the show notes. It’s called the Referral message creator.

(27:44):
And when I first created it, it was actually called the Referral Intro generator. It’s a really cool tool. It’s based on A PDF. That was one of my original lead magnets from years and years ago. It’s a template I teach everybody to use when they follow up. If you were like, oh, I need to introduce you to Alice and Hardy, I’d be like, awesome. Let me put together a little three sentence blurb about myself and you can just forward that to her and be like, I just met Annie. Here’s all this stuff about her. Do you want to connect with her? So I call that a referral message. So I built this amazing interactive tool. You can check it out@greateststorycreative.com slash message, but when I first launched it, I called it the referral intro generator, and I made you fill the whole thing out before you could get it.

(28:24):
I thought, oh, this’ll be like magic and it’ll just be easy for people. And I had to take a step back because I was seeing 7% conversion and people getting stuck on filling it out. And I went, oh, no. When I really stopped to think about it, I was like, my ideal clients are at a point in their business where they’re feeling confused about how to tell their story. So I’m sort of demanding answers, even though I try to simplify it, like I’m asking for these answers in an interactive format. I’m also giving the impression that this is AI by calling it a generator when it’s not. It’s just plugging in a template that a human built, there’s no AI involved at all. So the changes I made is I renamed it to the referral message creator instead of generator, and then I made it so that when you go to it, if you go right now, you can just get access to it. You don’t have to enter anything, and you can also get a PDF version of it. So if you don’t want to use an interactive tool, more power to you baby. And that is how I went from 7% to 60%

Allea Grummert (29:20):
Conversion. Wow. Oh my goodness. That’s incredible. I’m even thinking about the language we use on opt-in forms, embedded forms. One really common way that bloggers are getting new subscribers right now is send me this post or send me this recipe even just to say, you’re signing up for our delicious recipes for me. Just know you can unsubscribe at any time.

Annie Franceschi (29:43):
That’s right.

Allea Grummert (29:44):
That kind of message.

Annie Franceschi (29:45):
Yeah. Is it safe and is it easy?

Allea Grummert (29:48):
Love it. Okay. Number

Annie Franceschi (29:49):
Four. Number four. This is another good one. Not going to, I’m going to say this is probably the one that’s the least one size fits all, but I’ll just say that generally it should be quick to try. So five minutes or less.

Allea Grummert (30:02):
Ooh, I like it.

Annie Franceschi (30:05):
Yeah, because examples, that’s the problem. We download stuff and we’re like, if it feels like a big thing, we’re not going to get into it.

Allea Grummert (30:11):
Yeah. I’m already thinking about some of my resources, Annie.

Annie Franceschi (30:16):
Well, I was kicking myself a little bit this morning. So I do an episode about this and I was thinking about it and I was like, the one exception that I can name to this would be that you can get a free chapter of my book, establish yourself@greateststorycreative.com slash read. And it’s the first 50 pages of the book. And what I was going to say is I think if you have a book, and that’s sort of a known thing where it’s like I want to read a book. I’m used to reading the first chapter book that I would say is different than creating, I made an ebook that answers how to create a LinkedIn profile that’s different than giving an excerpt of an established or bestselling book. So that’s a difference. That actually has been a very effective lead magnet for me that I’ve used lots of different ways that I was skeptical to create, because Amazon has the preview. So I was like, well, why would I create a version of this? I’m like, actually, it’s been phenomenally successful and it’s one of my top lead magnets because people do getting a free sample of a book, and even though they could get it from Amazon, they’re on my site, not on Amazon.

(31:14):
So just stuff like that there you happen to have a book that is a really good step that I think breaks this rule a little bit. But I think generally, if you’re creating a true lead magnet tool or whatever, if you can’t do it in five minutes, people aren’t, they’re not going to consume it. So that’s the problem. Getting around the problem of collecting dust on somebody’s desktop

Allea Grummert (31:33):
In my PDF graveyard, all those things. What are some formats that would allow for that five minutes or less? Are we talking checklists, quizzes?

Annie Franceschi (31:47):
Yeah, checklist quizzes. Let’s see, what else would You could even do a five minute class. I don’t know. I’m not a big, I’ve fallen out of love with Donald Miller for a lot of reasons, but he has a very successful series where he was like five minute videos. He had like three, five minute videos that we’re talking about how to do better marketing. So there’s lots of different ways. I think using the litmus test of is this quick enough to use or track?

(32:18):
It’s not too long. It’s not too involved. The reality is we’re just all so busy and we don’t make time for the courses we paid for. Why are we going to make time for the free thing we just downloaded? That’s why I do love a glance, like a checklist or even a quick, it could be a checklist. It could be just an article, it could be a case study, could be any number of things. Could be, I know a lot of people have seen success with private podcasts. It could be a five minute little audio episode or video. I think the big thing is making sure that it is, and this can help you with starting with the very first thing is what is it that this is designed to do? What is it you’re wanting to do? And does it meet that really quickly? Does it let you do that thing really quickly? And if you say, oh, I can’t do that in five minutes, maybe it shouldn’t be the lead magnet. Maybe that should be the paid training.

Allea Grummert (33:06):
I love this conversation so much. Annie,

Annie Franceschi (33:10):
What about number five? Number five, it brings it all together, and I think it’s probably the most important point of all of this, which is a great lead magnet is something that you are proud of and that you share regularly.

Allea Grummert (33:23):
This is what I tell my clients all the time.

Annie Franceschi (33:25):
Okay, go, I’m not a plan, but you can PayPal me the $20. Right? No. So this was something that I’ve had to learn and remind myself of and tell my clients a lot because I think that the myth is that the lead magnet is the marketing, but the lead magnet is just a free product and you have to market and sell it just like anything else

(33:49):
To get people, people into your world and for it to work as a traction. So I mentioned earlier that a referral message creator, this is something I have just fully embraced with this tool, no other freebie I’ve ever had because you can find that on my website. We are talking about it on this podcast. I have done lead magnet swaps with it. I have done LinkedIn posts about it. I have integrated it into virtual presentations. I have two whole presentations where we actually do that tool live. I have an in-person version of the talk that I do for women’s leadership conferences that has a version of that tool for job seekers and leaders in addition to entrepreneurs. So I don’t go, oh, it exists and go check. It’s on the website. It’s not just on the website. That was the very beginning. So this tool has been used, I think I was looking at maybe 400 or 500 times since I created it just a few months ago.

Allea Grummert (34:42):
Oh my goodness.

Annie Franceschi (34:43):
Because I am willing to repackage, repurpose, talk about act on multiple podcast episodes, just about that tool. And I think that that’s the mistake we make is we create this thing and we expect it to have its life of its own, but it’s like you’ve created an asset. How are you using it in a variety of ways. So it keeps paying dividends

Allea Grummert (35:00):
To that. I mean, when I say this is what I tell my clients all the time or what I was just talking about with people at Tastemaker, I’m like, if you have something that you’re excited to share, you’re going to yap about it. You’re going to yap about it on Instagram. You’re going to remind your list about it. You’re going to use it in a list swap. You’re going to want to test it out on your website or share about it in your stories. But a lot of times people either think that their lead magnets aren’t effective when really they’re just not getting in front of any eyeballs to really even know if they’re effective preach.

Annie Franceschi (35:28):
And that’s true of their whole businesses, Allie, their whole business is why you and I have jobs and we’ll always have jobs because this is the thing of people come to me all the time, why don’t I have clients? Why? Because you don’t talk enough about what you do, who it’s for, and how to work with you,

(35:43):
And this is a subset. This is a tinier problem of that. It’s important. It’s a huge problem in your world, and I was going to offer one other real, I feel like you’re going to nerd out about this, but here, please, exactly what I mean by this, where you talk about getting it shared regularly. It’s not just even that you believe in it and you share it and you shout it from the rooftops and repackage it. You build in little incentives for other people to share it too. So if you actually take me up on my offer and you do the referral message creator, you’ll get an email from me with that populated that template that’s personalized to you, and you’ll see a ps, do you want my professional bio template share about the creator on LinkedIn and I’ll send it to you right away.

Allea Grummert (36:25):
Oh, I like that.

Annie Franceschi (36:27):
So every one person becomes multiple people, right?

Allea Grummert (36:32):
Yeah. The way that I’m going to go so quickly join your funnel is insane. Me. I’m like, I want all these resources. This sounds so lovely and so applicable, and the one that I keep coming back to is what can we provide that is quick to try and I mean, of course it mattered. The other points matter even leading up to that, but it’s got my wheels turning about what kind of lead magnets we create for our clients or recommend for them. I know that. Yeah, there’s a plethora of ways that you could set up what as a creator and just oftentimes, and you get this too, we have clients who don’t realize how awesome they are and what they’re already doing and what already exists, and a lot of times it really is just repackaging that or taking a sliver of that and making that available.

Annie Franceschi (37:23):
That’s something that’s taken a better part of my career to really embrace and put my arms around and say, because I feel like you’ve experienced this, I have too, where it’s this pressure to just constantly be creating, especially if you are a content creator or those of you who are creating recipes or otherwise creative is like there’s this pressure that we can’t ever revisit something or it’s sort of lame or not wanted if we repackage something we’ve already created, but I’m here. I feel like the very big secret that I was not in on is that is exactly how you become the leader in your space.

Allea Grummert (37:56):
Yeah. This goes back to the way that I started doing email marketing with personal finance clients because I was in the personal finance space. Annie, what I always heard was, well, that’s an old blog post. Well, that’s an old blog post. I was like, is it still about paying off student loans in this particular method that you recommend? And I go, yeah. I’m like, is that still something you would talk about? Well, yeah, so it’s not old. It’s old to you because you’re content created and you’re constantly generating things, but how easily you could package that up, especially thinking about if the people who are going to come to your site are people looking for that resource, you’re just going to have it ready for them so they don’t have to go dig for it from blog posts two years ago.

Annie Franceschi (38:35):
That’s right.

Allea Grummert (38:36):
Or in our case with email marketing, we’re like, so that’s something that we tell them in the nurture sequence. This is content that we make sure that they see, and then having those resources as a lead back. That would be a great way to draw them in.

Annie Franceschi (38:48):
Yeah. If you study the top creators, if you study the top people in the online business space, they’re known for stuff and they talk about it all the time, and that’s part of why they have an audience, because somebody sees a reel or a TikTok or whatever and they go, oh, I want to learn more about that, and they can easily find that. They find their frameworks, they find their systems, and they talk about it constantly because that’s consistency. That’s what we’re looking for in a brand. We’re not looking for, oh, they have a new idea every day and they never repeat themselves. That’s an internal pressure we put on ourselves that is actually shooting ourselves in the foot.

Allea Grummert (39:21):
I’m like, I actually want everyone to sound like a broken record, like be known for the thing.

Annie Franceschi (39:25):
Yeah. In my book, I call it, you want to be playing your hit song

(39:30):
And how The Beatles, it took them two years to become as huge as they were in the UK here in the United States, and that’s because they had to go and they had to play their music consistently. Imagine if every time they got up and sang their hit song or journey got up and they kept changing the lyrics and the melody to don’t stop believing, you would stop believing. You have to be sick of it, but that’s how people remember things is that’s how we remember the quicker picker upper and just do it. We just threw repetition like a song lyric. We’re willing to sing our song. You sing your song enough times in front of enough people that you find an audience and they’re singing it back to you and bringing their friends.

Allea Grummert (40:12):
All of that, all of the above. I support it. Well, Annie, thank you so much for your time today. Is there any last soapbox or thing you want to make sure everybody takes away from today?

Annie Franceschi (40:25):
I think really the biggest thing here is to make creating a lead magnet worth your time. It has to be really based on knowing who you are, who you help, and what’s the biggest problem you solve for people. If you can figure those things out, you can apply this whole formula and you can put it into action because you deserve a freebie. That’s as excellent as the work you do or the content you create.

Allea Grummert (40:51):
Oh, gosh, I love it. Yeah, guys, as she’s saying that, I’m like, hands fisted. Yeah, this is so exciting. Two hands, like a kid in front of a cake. I’m like, yes, yes, yes. Do that. Annie, where can I send everyone? Of course, all the links and resources you mentioned I will include in the show notes, but is there anywhere in particular you want to send folks so that they can learn more about you, your work, and connect with you?

Annie Franceschi (41:11):
Absolutely. Well, if you love listening and you’re a big podcast person, come on, hang out as well at the Establish Yourself podcast, and you can also find me@greateststorycreative.com, and I always do free consultations for anybody who’s curious to work on their brand and how to clearly talk about what they do.

Allea Grummert (41:29):
There’s nothing better than just a free chat to see if it’s a good fit, so there’s no harm in that. Please reach out to Annie. Annie, thank you so much for your time and sharing your expertise with us today.

Annie Franceschi (41:37):
My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Allea Grummert (41:45):
Thanks so much for listening to Happy Subscribers in our conversation about email marketing today. I hope you feel inspired to take action, even if it’s a small change so you can more confidently share your valuable message with your community through email. Special thanks goes to my team who makes it possible to produce and share these episodes with you. Seriously. Thank you guys. If you want to share more email marketing tips, strategies, and success stories to help you develop deeper, more meaningful relationships with your email subscribers, be sure to subscribe to happy subscribers so you don’t miss an episode. If you have a few seconds, I invite you to share this episode link with a friend or post it on social media so your peers and community can benefit from it as well. And if you have a few minutes, I’d appreciate if you’d leave a written review of the podcast since that helps more people hear about it, and I believe we need more creators sending more valuable emails to their audience with more confidence. If you want to reach out to me directly, the best way to do that is to join my email list through one of my top freebies listed in the show notes. You’ll get regular emails from me that are packed with value, and if you hit reply to any of those emails, it’ll land in my inbox and I can’t wait to chat with you there. Until next time, let’s do it.