Lead magnets. Ever wondered what they are and why you need one?
What types of content can you put in them?
How do you get it in front of people so they can get it?
This blog covers the basics of what a lead magnet is, how to put together a lead magnet that’s irresistible to your audience and how to get it in front of your audience.
What’s included:
- What is a lead magnet?
- Why do you need a lead magnet?
- What your lead magnet must have so your audience gets value from it
- How to be clear on what you want your lead magnet to do for your business
- What types of lead magnets you can offer
- What can you use to create your lead magnet?
- How to create your lead magnet
- How to set-up your lead capture system
- What happens before, during and after a sign-up
- How to drive traffic to your sign-up page for your lead magnet
- How to improve your email conversations to improve your conversion rate
- Why lead magnets fail to get sign-ups and convert to sales
What is a lead magnet?
A lead magnet can also be called a list builder, ethical bribe or a freebie or maybe you’ve heard it called something else.
Whatever you decide to call yours, it offers your audience great content that helps them to solve a problem.
How does your audience get their hands on it?
They sign-up for it giving you their email address in exchange for it.
Here’s what a sign-up page looks like:
‘You then send it to their inbox and you send follow-up emails with lots of useful and helpful content for them. After a while, you can then offer them your products or services and they become a client.
Why do you need a lead magnet?
There’s plenty of social media platforms to be on, so why have a lead magnet?
Because you don’t own the friends, likes, followers, connections, subscribers on any of your platforms.
The platforms own them and the platform could go at any time. Change their rules and you’re always beholden to their algorithms. The joy!
Which is why a lead magnet, to build and grow your list is an important part of your business.
There are other really good reasons to have one:
It’s a great relationship builder – helping you to build the all-important know like and trust factor.
It’s keeps a flow of potential clients coming to you – think of your business as a leaky bucket, as clients move on you need to replace them.
A useful and helpful lead magnet:
- Increases your authority in your area of expertise.
- Increases your engagement with someone who has a problem you can solve.
- Increases your conversion rates.
What your lead magnet must have so your audience gets value from it
You want your lead magnet to be a fab experience for the person that signs-up and potentially, become your client.
Make sure your lead magnet meets the following criteria:
- It solves a problem they have – if it’s not a burning problem they’ve got, they’ll not sign-up for it.
- Give them a quick win – this lets them experience what’s possible and you could be the person to help them.
- Be easy to consume – give it to them in a way that’s practical so they can make good use of it.
- Easy to get – they don’t want to be jumping through hoops to get access.
- Showcases you – make sure your lead magnet shows your expertise.
How to be clear on what you want your lead magnet to do for your business
It really can grow your business when you get it right.
Remember your business will grow when you create a relationship with your audience through your content, but your lead magnet is a great way to build a relationship with an individual who may buy from you.
Your lead magnet shows them that something is possible for them. Something that they struggled a bit with before. And that’s where the value it includes is important.
- You’ve taught them something
- You’ve saved them time
- You’ve made them feel better
- You’ve opened their eyes to what’s possible for them.
They’re only just getting to know you so chances are, they won’t buy from you straight away.
But you can increase your chances of turning them into a client.
Before You Create Your Lead Magnet
Before you create your lead magnet, you’ll want to know how to make your lead magnet super valuable for your audience?
Ask yourself what are your client’s biggest problems?
- What are they looking for help with?
- What do they need to know now?
- What would be useful and interesting to them?
- What are they searching the answers to?
This is what you then tackle with your lead magnet. You help them with their biggest challenge or something that’s really troubling them.
What types of lead magnets can you offer?
Here’s some ideas for you:
- Checklists
- Cheat-sheets
- Infographics
- Reports
- Whitepapers
- eBooks
- Download a video
- Download a video series
- An email series
- A webinar
- A tutorial
- A training session
- Worksheets
- Workbooks
- Templates
- Scripts
- Calendars
- Planners
- Spreadsheets
- Calculators
- Generators
- Challenges
- Quiz
- Survey
- Giveaways
- Discount coupons
- Free shipping
- Discounted shipping
- Competition
- Book
- Free chapter
- PDF download of book
- Sample of your product
- Free trial
- Free consultations
- Free groups
How to create your lead magnet
From the list above, you can see you have lots of lead magnet options.
You can use word, excel or power-point to create documents but be sure to check out Canva. They have lots of great templates you can use. From documents, checklists, infographics, workbooks to worksheets.
If you’re planning on creating video, you can use your mobile phone, Loom to record your screen or ScreenCastOmatic and upload your videos to YouTube or Vimeo to share with your sign-ups.
You can use SurveyMonkey or Typeform to create a Quiz.
How to set-up your lead capture system
Once you have created your lead magnet, how do you get it into the hands of our audience AND collect their emails so you can add them to your email list?
- Create your landing page for your lead magnet
- Create your email list using an email automation system
- Create welcome email and deliver your lead magnet
- Follow-up with useful and helpful emails
You can automate the entire process using an email automation provider.
A few email automation providers are:
How does the process work for the person signing-up for your lead magnet?
- The person goes to your landing page for your lead magnet
- They put their name and email address in the sign-up box
- They receive an email asking them to confirm their email address
- They confirm the email address (if they don’t, they won’t get the lead magnet)
- Your email automation system sends them an email and includes the lead magnet to download
Now you have a lead on your email list and you’ll want to know how you go about turning them into a client.
How to improve your email conversations to improve your conversion rate
Your emails should be leading your prospect to a buying decision.
- Have a welcome series and tell them how often you’ll be popping into their inbox and what type of content they can expect
- Give them the lead magnet
- Have an email series that nurtures them before you make your offer.
- Have an email sales series that answers their objections to buying
- If they don’t buy, continue to send them useful and helpful emails.
How to drive traffic to your sign-up page for your lead magnet
You’ve spent time creating your lead magnet, your sign-up page and your emails. Now you want to grow your email list.
You want to let people know you have something fabulous for them – for free.
Here’s some ideas on for your list building tactics.
Use Your Website
You can use your website as a way to promote your lead magnet.
Some of the places you can put it on your website are:
- Your home page
- The sidebar of your blog
- Your about page
- Include it as a call to action in your blog
Use Your Social Media Profiles
Use social media to promote your lead magnet:
- Share it, with the URL for the sign-up page in your posts
- Add to our social media profiles
Paid Promotion
Run ads to it on your social media platform.
More List Building Tactics
Other fab places you can put your landing page for your lead magnet:
- Your email signature
- As a gift to the audience, if you do speaking gigs at events
- A call to action on guest blogs
Why lead magnets fail to get sign-up and convert to sales
Just because you’ve created a lead magnet it doesn’t automatically mean it will fly. You need to keep a close eye on how it’s performing and tweak it.
The best way to improve your results is by testing and tweaking as you go to make improvements.
Once you know the lead magnet fails you can avoid them or give your current freebie a once over so you can transform it from a dust collector to a lead collector.
Fail number 1: You’re talking to everyone
Your lead magnet is for everyone and anyone. And yes, you can be thinking that talking to everyone is a great way to add a big amount of emails to your list but remember you’re going for quality here before quantity.
It’s your ideal client you want to be working with so create a lead magnet for them.
Your audience wants to know you’re talking to them and that’s important to them. Because they need to know you’re right for them.
If this is their first time meeting you online, and you’re not talking directly to them, they’ll swipe or click away.
It’s all about getting the right eyeballs on your business and getting leads.
By talking to them specifically about a problem specific to them – you’re cutting through all that online noise out there.
Fail number 2: It’s not solving their BIGGEST problem
It doesn’t tackle their number one problem. Your lead magnet may solve a problem they have, but it’s not your audiences big burning problem.
There’s something more pressing for them, so again they’ll swipe and keep on searching for a solution to their biggest worry, fear or concern.
It’s not a case of guessing the problem they need solved – it’s about knowing the problem your audience wants solved.
Fail number 3: It’s not being delivered to them
Your automated system isn’t delivering it to their inbox.
Fail number 4: Emails don’t convert sign-up to buyers
You send them your lead magnet but then you don’t get in touch for months or your emails don’t add enough value so that when you offer your product or service, they can’t see the benefit to buying from you.
In Summary:
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