Using Client Portal to deliver educational
content to your clients (with examples)

In this article, we are going to delve into one of the most effective strategies to attract potential clients: creating educational content (also known as lead magnets) to showcase your expertise and build credibility with your clients – or potential clients.

 

We’re also going to go through how you can use Client Portal to deliver this content and set yourself apart from your competitors.

 

Let’s start at the very beginning (it’s a very good place to start)…

 

What do we mean by educational content (or lead magnets)

 

Educational content or lead magnets are useful resources that you can offer your target client to help them learn about a topic that you are an expert in (and that you have a service for).

 

This includes things like:

 

• Articles and blog posts
• Videos
• Webinars (live or automated)
• Infographics
• eBooks
• Online courses
• Podcasts
• Tutorials
• Quizzes and assessments

 

There are two things that you want your educational content to do:

 

1. Convert your (unqualified) leads into (qualified) prospects
2. Convert your (qualified) prospects into paying clients

 

Intermission: What’s the difference between a lead and a prospect?

 

Before we go any further, let’s get a few quick definitions out of the way:

 

Leads are the people at the top of your sales funnel. These are people who may be aware of your company and/or the problem they need solving but are not yet qualified as being a good fit.

 

Prospects are leads who have been qualified. This means they are confirmed as being a good fit for your service and are likely to buy.

 

Clients are people who have bought your service and those you are actively working with.

 

Got your popcorn refill? Had a bathroom break? Let’s get back to it:

 

For most service providers, educational content is the first part of your sales funnel.

 

And with this educational content, you want to give your clients as much information to be able to do the service you sell… by themselves. This might seem counter-intuitive – like you’re talking yourself out of a job – but by doing this we’re doing two important things:

 

1. We’re weeding out any clients who may not be a good fit for your services right now. Typically these are clients who have more time than money. They can’t afford your services yet so would be better off DIY’ing it rather than wasting your time creating proposals that are out of their budget. (But since you’re providing so much value, when they are ready to hire someone, you will be first on the list).
2. We’re showing the clients who are a good fit how much expertise we have. We want our potential clients to trust that we can do the job better than anyone else. And we do that by openly showing them not only how much we know, but also that we are able to communicate what we know in an easy-to-understand way. Ideally, they will see all the work that goes into a project and ‘Nope!’ right out of doing it themselves.

 

Making your educational content stand out

 

You’re not going to be the first to provide educational content as a way to get more leads and clients. It’s something that many service providers already do. And with the rise of AI, producing this content is easier and faster than ever…

 

…But easier and faster does NOT mean better.

 

You need to be better.

 

No, you need to be the best.

 

You need to provide the best, most useful, out-of-this-world educational content that you can.

 

Because if you don’t, it’s just not going to be effective.

 

So don’t let AI bots write your content, it needs to come from you and it needs to be good.

 

And if you’ve got that, you’re already miles ahead of 99%* of educational content out there.

 

*a totally made-up statistic, but you get the point.

 

But what else can you do to stand out?

 

What if, not only do you have the best content out there, but you also delivered it in a beautiful, state-of-the-art portal 🤩

 

It goes from being “Meh, just another lead magnet” to “WOW, this is like a proper course/product that I would literally pay money for!”.

 

Top five educational content ideas and portal examples

 

Let’s see how this looks in practice. Here are five examples of portals you could create to deliver an exceptional lead magnet to your potential clients.

 

Example 1: The Fundamentals of Bookkeeping Portal

 

This portal takes your leads through the fundamentals of bookkeeping. You could include a jargon buster cheatsheet, software comparison and recommendations, and a monthly accounting checklist.

 

 

Example 2: Proven Copywriting Formulas Portal

 

This portal outlines ten effective copywriting formulas to help businesses boost their conversions and sales. Each module would be all about one formula, and you could break it up into categories (or Phases, to use Client Portal terminology 😎).

 

 

Example 3: The SEO Toolkit Portal

 

This portal could be a curated list of tools, apps, and resources that can streamline the SEO process. You could also use affiliate links to add a bit of extra revenue to your business.

 

 

Example 4: Avoiding Common Legal Pitfalls Portal

 

This portal could be a mini video course educating potential clients on common legal pitfalls they might encounter in their daily lives and providing advice on how to handle them proactively.

 

 

Example 5: Discover Your Life Purpose Portal

 

This portal would guide individuals through self-discovery exercises to identify their life purpose and set meaningful goals. This could include videos, workbooks, prompts, and cheatsheets.

 

 

How to set up educational portals in Client Portal

 

There are a couple of ways you can set up educational portals depending on how premium you want these portals to feel.

 

1) Have your leads sign up via WooCommerce

 

For a truly premium experience, your lead magnet could be displayed as a fully-fledged product in WooCommerce. You would set the price to $0 or even a discounted price ($49 FREE!) to really show off its value.

 

Each lead would then be able to log in to the portal through your website and you can pass their email address over to your email service provider to add them to your email list. Here’s how to use our WooCommerce integration.

 

2) Have your leads sign up via your Email Service Provider

 

An easier way to achieve a similar effect would be to use your regular email opt-in form (MailChimp, ConvertKit, Active Campaign etc.) and simply send your new subscribers a link to the portal on the confirmation page and/or in the first email.

 

 

These are just a few examples of ways you can use Client Portal to create educational portals or lead magnets for your business.

 

Creating useful assets like these may take some time to perfect, but when you do you will have something that will continue to grow your business indefinitely – and on autopilot.