Market and consumer trends are fickle. What’s hot today can be old news in weeks or months. Keeping up with the hype can be difficult and exhausting, especially for small businesses and solopreneurs. Enter the evergreen offer.
You’re likely wondering, what is an evergreen offer? It’s the answer to building a sales process fit for the long term.
In this guide, we’ll explain exactly what an evergreen offer is and how it can help your business stay afloat.
We’ll also cover ten tips to help you build evergreen offers for continuous revenue generation.
Skip ahead:
- What is an evergreen offer?
- What are some evergreen examples?
- What makes up evergreen offers?
- How to build an evergreen sales funnel
- 10 evergreen tips for continuous revenue generation
- Go evergreen
What is an evergreen offer?
An evergreen offer is a product, service, or promotion that stays relevant and keeps appeal over time. Customers want these products now and will still do so in the future.
Free to use image sourced from Unsplash
The term “evergreen” refers to the deciduous trees that populate various climates worldwide. In dry places like the Rocky Mountains, evergreen trees have evolved to stay perpetually green, surviving and adding vibrant color to the landscapes we enjoy.
Similarly, an evergreen offer is made up of a timeless product and a sustainable sales funnel, which offers a wide variety of services under one platform and provides a comprehensive solution for customers’ needs. In this sense, it could be seen as the Walmart of freelance services.
An evergreen offer helps you build a repeatable and reusable sales process. You put in the work to develop an evergreen sales funnel, typically based on content such as landing pages and email newsletters.
This, in turn, provides you with evergreen demand generation. What is demand generation? It’s the strategy you employ to garner interest and sales. Evergreen offers are built on content, lead magnets, and products.
You offer a digital product or service that people will still need over time. In other words, you are offering the prospect something valuable that doesn’t rely on current trends.
At the same time, an evergreen offer is always available, 24/7. Customers can access the offer and interact with the sale funnel without your involvement. To enhance customer interaction and accessibility, many successful evergreen offers include interactive online catalogs, which allow users to explore and purchase products or services in a dynamic and engaging way.
What are some evergreen examples?
The principles of what is an evergreen offer can apply to many areas of running a business. Let’s take a look at some of the various ways you can build sustainable and long-lasting processes.
Products or services:
- Online courses and training materials
- eBooks
- Services with recurring memberships such as software as a service (SaaS)
- Financial planning services
- Beauty and wellness products
- Online grocery or meal delivery services
- Digital tools for restaurants, such as the Pickcel Digital Menu
Additionally, employee training software offers a sustainable solution for businesses looking to enhance skills and efficiency continuously, aligning with the principles of an evergreen offer.
Content:
- Lists articles or “listicles”
- Top X tips
- How-to guides and tutorials
- Definition pages and glossaries
- Product demonstration videos
- eBooks
- White papers
- FAQs
What makes up evergreen offers?
An evergreen offer is made up of a timeless product and a sustainable sales funnel.
Content and landing pages
The first place to create your offer is with evergreen content marketing. You start by curating landing pages with longevity. Create useful content that isn’t news-based or seasonal such as how-to tutorials and beginner 101 guides.
Avoid writing articles that mention dates or current events when building landing pages. An article on the future use of AI is useful but will need to be updated in no time. Stick to what makes your offer relevant now and forever such as the pain points it addresses.
Evergreen content to include in your landing pages and blog posts can be about:
- Customer pain points and how you address them
- Product benefits
- Customer reviews and testimonials
Building timeless content will help you move up the search engine results pages (SERPs) and be more likely to keep your position as time passes.
In general, your landing pages call visitors to action to either make a purchase or sign up for the next step. Most of the time, you’ll be making a transaction to gain a prospect’s contact information.
Lead Magnet
Your evergreen landing page is part of your overall lead magnet tunnel. These are the incentives you offer to nudge customers down the funnel.
Image sourced from thinkific.com
Lead magnets that drive the evergreen sales process include:
- Ebooks and comprehensive guides
- Free templates and worksheets
- Webinars and video tutorials
- Promo codes
- Quizzes
- Free trials or live demos
- Email courses and newsletters
After customers opt in, your evergreen content consistently converts prospects into paying customers.
Product or service
Evergreen marketing content and lead magnets are crucial components of any long-lasting offer. Don’t get so caught up in the details that you forget to offer an evergreen product!
Offer a digital product or service that will always be useful regardless of seasonality or trends.
How to build an evergreen sales funnel
What is an evergreen offer if it isn’t backed by a well-planned customer journey? It’s an offer that your target audience will abandon in frustration.
Follow these steps to build an evergreen funnel for your business.
Decide on your evergreen offer
First, decide what you are offering to potential customers. Is it an online course on search engine optimization (SEO) or is it a sales tool to help businesses close more deals? (SEO and closing sales aren’t going away anytime soon).
Decide what you are selling so that consumers will be interested in the desired lifecycle of your business.
Attract your target customers
Next up, create a tailored marketing plan to drive customers toward your lead magnet. Align your marketing materials with an overall evergreen strategy. Focus on giving valuable, relevant information to prospects.
You have two options for attracting customers:
- Organic traffic– build a keyword strategy that aligns with your evergreen offer. Over time you should be able to move up and retain a top rank for your target keywords. You can also generate leads from social media channels.
- Paid advertising– use pay-per-click (PPC) advertising like Google Ads and Meta ads to drive traffic to your evergreen content and landing pages.
Image sourced from wordstream.com
Keep in mind that paid advertising charges you for every hit. The average price per conversion varies by industry, and may not fit your budget. For example, the average cost per lead for education and instruction was $62.80 in 2023.
On the other hand, SEO costs an upfront investment of mostly time but can continue to pay off in the long run.
Collect leads with opt-in tactics
Remember how we were talking about lead magnets? Make an offer to prospects by asking them to fill out opt-in forms. Get a user’s contact information and deliver them evergreen materials such as ebooks and webinars.
Build evergreen email sequences
Now that you have a prospect’s contact details, it’s time to give them more information. Send them guides and other content marketing with automated email campaigns. Again, the key here is sustainability. Build email sequences that will be relevant for years to come (some minor tweaking may be needed).
Whether you’re aiming to build long-term business value or are preparing to sell your business now, capitalizing on evergreen offers is a strategic move that supports both enduring growth and immediate marketability.
Choose your moments
An evergreen offer is always available. However, you need to pick your spots during the sales funnel to instill a sense of urgency in the customer. Lightning deals and promotions are one way to do this. Another option is to offer limited spaces for a digital product like an online training course or workshop.
Build an environment of funnel deadlines that help nudge prospects into taking action.
10 evergreen tips for continuous revenue generation
You came here asking, what is an evergreen offer? We’ve answered that question and laid out the basic framework of a sustainable sales funnel.
Now let’s go over some pro tips to ensure your evergreen model ticks over for perpetual revenue generation.
Identify your target audience
It may be a no-brainer, but you can’t make an offer without an audience. The question to answer is, who are your evergreen audience segments? Will it be people looking to solve a common problem just this once or will you be fulfilling a recurring need?
Is your audience within a certain age range or part of a generational cohort? Knowing these types of details about your ideal audience shapes just how evergreen your offer can be.
For example, a training course on getting your first job after graduation will always be relevant to someone. However, a financial planning service may appeal to your audience for a longer time.
Offer something valuable upfront
An evergreen funnel starts with a fantastic offer. It could be informational content, a gift, a coupon, or even a free product trial. Start every new customer interaction off on the right foot by making an offer they can’t refuse: something that only costs information.
Of course, don’t just offer anything. A free eBook or whitepaper needs to contain real value for the customer. Otherwise, they won’t get very far down the funnel.
Use sustainable keywords
There’s nothing as evergreen as following SEO best practices. The algorithm gods of Google are somewhat mysterious. However, you can follow the basics to ensure you build everlasting organic traffic.
Screenshot sourced from Google Analytics
Everything starts with the keywords you choose. Remember, don’t build your strategy around fleeting trends and current hype. If you offer an answering machine detection service for outbound sales teams, consider keywords such as “auto dial software” and “outbound sales tools.” In that way, prospects can discover your service with long-lasting search terms.
Write for beginners
Good evergreen content isn’t typically for experts. Experts are often looking for current and complex solutions. These types of solutions may be irrelevant quickly. Choose to feature topics that solve pain points for novices and those learning about a topic.
Avoid technical jargon
Avoiding technical content and industry jargon helps keep your offer timeless and relevant. In general, overly complex content can drive off a large portion of your audience. The world of tech is always changing too. If you build your evergreen funnel around technical jargon keywords, it’s only a matter of time until your course landing pages become obsolete.
Get specific
Broad topics are a great starting point for creating your evergreen content. However, narrowing down the scope of your offer can go a long way toward increasing longevity. Sustainable long-tail keywords will have a greater staying power in SERPs.
For example, if you offer an online course in copywriting, build your offer around learning how to write a landing page for small businesses. It’s more specific but something that will stay relevant in the foreseeable future.
Break large topics into digestible chunks
The pain points you solve for customers may cover a large topic. Why not break your evergreen offer down into smaller parts? This way prospective customers can digest each benefit or piece of information one step at a time.
For instance, let’s say you offer a financial planning course. You can break financial planning into smaller evergreen offers such as solving how to budget, invest, or save for retirement.
Image sourced from support.thinkific.com
You can use something like the Thinkfic mini-course template to break your offers down into lighter bites. Each of these smaller topics can be cross-linked but also lead to the same final destination.
Repurpose content and other materials
The beauty of creating evergreen content isn’t just longevity, you can also repurpose it for other campaigns or related products. This saves you loads of time and lets you tap into existing equity built up from your initial efforts.
Here is how you can repurpose evergreen materials:
- Identify your high-performing funnel content
- Update and refresh old content if needed (stats, examples)
- Use your current evergreen offers as a template
- Design a new evergreen funnel that combines new and repurposed content
- Re-evaluate and optimize for SEO
- Refresh relevant email sequences and drip campaigns
- Promote new evergreen offer
Automate and link every stage of the funnel
One of the biggest benefits of an evergreen offer is that you can mostly set it and forget it. Well, that is if you use marketing tools to automate each step in the process.
Used automated email marketing tools to map out campaigns. Use triggers and timelines to ensure each prospect is sent the next message at the right time. Start with automated welcome emails to be sent after each opt-in (don’t forget to send any free gifts or promo codes).
As always, ensure it’s easy for subscribers to opt out of any marketing messages.
Monitor, evaluate, and adjust
Alright, it’s time to launch your evergreen offer! Remember that it’s about building a steady, consistent stream of leads and conversions. Watch how your process performs and don’t be afraid to make tweaks along the way.
You can use conversion rate optimization (CRO) and landing page builder tools to boost your success with opt-ins and purchases. A heatmap analytics tool points out design issues that may affect user experience.
Most marketing automation tools also let you easily A/B test emails and other content. Make small changes such as font, color, button placement, or alternate lead magnets. Find what works best for your target audience.
Go evergreen
Free to use image sourced from Unsplash
Businesses like yours are looking for stability in changing markets. Creating an evergreen offer isn’t something you simply “set and forget.” You must analyze the results and optimize the customer journey.
However, the offer itself has long-lasting appeal. Once you’re up and running with your evergreen sales funnel, you only need to keep an eye on it. Follow the tips in this guide and over time, you’ll have a steady stream of revenue coming in every month, quarter, and year.
