INTRODUCTION

HubSpot and KISSmetrics have something in common; they both have a killer inbound strategy. An oversimplified version of their strategy is as follows: create a great blog which generates traffic, have an offer for a free ebook on every post of the blog, capture the users contact information in exchange for the free download of the ebook, and begin sending them emails with the goal of selling them a subscription to their service. Most people don’t attempt this strategy because they don’t have the first ingredient (a great blog that generates traffic), but we found a way around this requirement!

HubSpot Example – scroll to the bottom to see the ebook download button:
http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/elements-of-modern-web-design-list

KISSmetrics Example – look on the left of the page to see the marketing bundle button:
http://blog.kissmetrics.com/product-descriptions-that-sell

STEP ONE

The first thing you need to do is create an ebook, but throw out all the best practices that you think you know concerning ebook creation because we’re going to do things differently. You don’t have the staff of HubSpot or KISSmetrics, so we’re not going to act like you do. Here is what you’re going to do:

1) Select a topic that your ideal user would love to know more about.
2) Come up with a name for the guide that cannot be ignored.
2) Don’t write a long book. Just write 10-15 pages of awesomeness.
3) Spend most of your time and budget on making the cover look super professional.
4) Add an extremely high price tag as a part of the cover design in a prominent place.

If you do this step correctly then you should be able to write your book in a weekend. Don’t get fancy with the page layouts either. Just use Google Drive and export your finished work as a pdf, and then add your cover image to it. Until someone gives you an email for the download all they will see is the cover, so that’s where you will spend your time. Surprisingly, if the 10-15 pages you do write are high quality then people will actually thank you for not be long-winded.

STEP TWO

Now you are going to create an account on Gumroad (https://www.gumroad.com), and upload your ebook. Be sure to set the price of your ebook to match the insanely high price tag that you designed on the cover. But here is the important part. Create a discounted version of your product on Gumroad for 100% off. Gumroad will give you a special link that you can give out which shows the original high price and shows the current free price.

STEP THREE

Hubmetrics Hijacker: Next, instead of building a huge following of your own you are going to guest blog for people that have already captured your ideal audience. Here is how you are going to pitch the article. Tell them that you’d like to write an article for their audience and tell them the title you are thinking of using, but then also tell the blog owner that you’d like to end the article by giving away your really expensive ebook for free. Our high price was not in vain. It was partly to make guest blogging easier. The other reason for the high price was to compel people to take advantage of the free offer. An ebook that has always been free has less value than an ebook that is expensive but is being discounted. It’s just psychology.

STEP FOUR

At this point you have a guest blog post written for a popular blog in your industry, and the end of the post tells people about your expensive ebook that is now free with a link to the discounted Gumroad page. When people click through to Gumroad they require an email address even for a free download and this is an important part of our strategy. This is what HubSpot and KISSmetrics do right. They know that the goal wasn’t just to get a branded ebook in your hands. The goal was to get your email address and start you on a drip campaign that would send you certain emails at certain times in the hopes of closing you on a subscription. Gumroad allows you to access the email addresses that are being captured so now you must feed those emails into a drip campaign. You can use the Gumroad API (https://www.gumroad.com/api) to automatically import the email addresses into your own database, or you could use Zapier (https://www.zapier.com/zapbook/gumroad) to handle the integration with popular apps like MailChimp and AWeber.

CONCLUSION

Now you have successfully replicated a very powerful strategy without having a popular web property of your own. You have hijacked the HubSpot/KISSmetrics method without their level of resources. As a working example of this you can read my article on the Sixteen Ventures Blog (http://www.sixteenventures.com/growth-hacker-manifesto). Scroll towards the bottom and you’ll see my free $79 Growth Robot ebook (https://www.gumroad.com/l/growthrobot/free). From this one blog post we have added hundreds of people to our email list, and many of those will upgrade to a paying membership as the drip campaign works its magic!