This is a special bug-bear of mine.
The "fill in the BLANKS" freebie opt-in.
Always, ALWAYS beautifully designed in Canva - time-sucker for the terminally "working on their business"... but woefully lacking in content.
The landing page is LICKED. The ad is great. The follow-up email "I'm forcing you down my funnel" sequence are usually pretty good - if not WAAAAY predictable because they're EXACTLY the same as every other bloody sequence you've seen this year.
But the actual meat and bones of the freebie?
TERRIBLE!
Usually along the premise of "3 steps to build a 10k month" or some other such guff - but what's actually contained within these pages of wisdom?
Actionable steps? BULLETPROOF strategy which simply fucking works? An understanding of growth, visibility and copy to make a soldier weep tears of joy?
Nah. 10 pages of pastel-nightmare insipid bollocks questions. One sentence followed by half a page (at the very least!) where you're supposed to fill in the answers yourself.
The questions usually follow the same path:
1. "What's holding you back between you and your perfect business"?
Well, I don't KNOW sweetie! Perhaps if I DID I wouldn't have downloaded your fucking freebie which actually promised answers but actually doesn't so I'm going to be forced to pluck them out of my bum!
2. "What 3 things could you do to market yourself every day?"
I don't know poppet. Maybe design a dumb-assed freebie opt-in and advertise it everywhere hoping that some sucker will download it and think "ooh she's got all the answers".
3. "What does your perfect day look like?"
Errr.... rolling around on a bed of 50s eating dark-chocolate covered marzipan?
4. What's your income goal for the next year?
"Oooh a gazillion dollars"
And there you go. You've answered the stupid questions.
Understand how to build your business yet?
Nah, didn't think so. BECAUSE IF YOU KNEW THE FUCKING ANSWERS YOU WOULDN'T BE DOWNLOADING THE FUCKING FREEBIE IN THE HOPE THERE'S WISDOM CONTAINED WITHIN!
And yet, it's endemic.
"Everyone else" is punting low-value freebies - so surely that's the way to go right? If everyone else is doing it, then it must work and, and, and...
So let me ask you.
Why aren't you providing content which gives REAL value? A FREEBIE which actually SOLVES a PROBLEM?
Are you copying everyone else or... hand on your heart - do you just not KNOW the topic? Not know the answers YOURSELF?
These stupid "fill in the BLANKS" shit infuriate me. There's NOTHING there. Absolutely NOTHING. People come to you hoping that you will be able to help them solve their problems and improve their lives. With a shitty freebie, you're doing none of that. You're simply treating any potential clients like a cash-cow. You're disrespecting them and treating them as numbers without the brains they were born with.
I prefer to assume my clients are clever. Really fucking clever. So I'm not going to patronise them with some shit which brings NOTHING to them. Every time I create a freebie, or a YT video or create a blog - it's because I have something to share which is going to HELP.
Filling in the blanks is a bloody crossword book you do the day after Christmas because you've eaten too much to move and it's raining outside and you really can't be arsed. It's NOT helpful in terms of growth of knowledge.
Can you imagine being at University and instead of attending lectures, you're given pretty pink PDFs in an exam which ask questions you don't know the FUCKING answers to because that's why you CHOSE to go to University in the first place?
Aaaargh.
As you can tell - this is something which really, really gets my goat.
And I need to say. If you can't provide value, then learn MORE about the subject, work it, live it - until you DO know enough to be able to share something which is genuinely going to help someone... rather than having them waste paper and break out the "fancy pens" for your POS freebie.
Finally! - If that's the way "everyone else" is doing it - then that's the ABSOLUTE FUCKING WAY you should NOT be doing it!