I’ve said previously that the most effective way to build your list is with a good lead magnet – or three.
A good lead magnet can generate thousands of leads per month for your business. Lead magnets, those ubiquitous free offers attached to a signup form for an email list, are a great opportunity to gain targeted leads. Creating a lead magnet is easy. But creating a lead magnet that gets you targeted leads is challenging. Here are some tips that will help you overcome those challenges to create dynamic lead magnets that get great results. But before we start, let’s lay some groundwork.
What is a lead magnet?
A lead magnet is any content that is given away to someone in exchange for his or her email address. Instead of purchasing an ebook, for example, they simply sign up for your email list and then receive a link to download the ebook free.
Know your customer.
All good marketing begins with knowing your customer. Do your research to be sure you have your customer avatar fleshed out. Who are you trying to attract? Where are they online? What do they read? What do they really truly want? What is the transformation they want? Google, YouTube, and Amazon are great research tools to get deep into the minds of your ideal customer.
Defining your target customer, the ideal person you’d like to have sign up for your email list will help you refine your content offer so that your lead magnet attracts not just plenty of leads, but well-qualified leads.
What creates conversion?
You must give customers a reason to provide you with their contact information. Most people today are so inundated with emails, newsletters and offer advertisements that the lead magnet must be truly stellar to get people to add one more email to their inbox. Simply inviting people to sign up for your list no longer generates the results it once did. You must give something of value in order to receive something of value — namely, a customer’s email address.
Nearly every website or business with an email list uses lead magnets to attract customers to their list. The question, however, isn’t whether lead magnets attract prospects, but are they the right prospects that are not only interested in your offer but also willing to spend money with you later on down the road.
The best-performing lead magnets add great value to the customer receiving them while satisfying a need or solving a problem for customers. These lead magnet appeals to the target audience because they provide a much-needed service, important information, and directions to solve a specific problem or some other piece of information that the customer craves.
Another attribute of the best lead magnets is that they are highly specific. They do not provide answers to all of a customer’s questions, but very specific questions. Instead of “Learning How to Be a Sought After Speaker” a much better lead magnet might be “The Introvert’s Guide to Becoming a Sought after Speaker,” The latter is specific enough that it will attract a very dedicated prospect who has the challenge of being an introvert. The more general your lead magnet, the less likely it will be to convert. You can’t be all things to all people!
How do you use a lead magnet?
Now, where do you actually offer these lead magnets on your site? Remember, you are creating a multi-use asset for your business, so make it available in as many locations online as you can.
- Feature Box
- Top of Sidebar
- Within a blog post
- The Footer Of Your Site
- On Your About Page
- The Banner across The Top Of Your Page
- A Popup Box on your home page or blog
- Create a landing page, or opt-in page as a stand-alone area to offer your lead magnet. I’m a big advocate of Leadpages for landing, opt-in and sales pages.
You may also want to take that same lead magnet and produce it in a variety of formats. Create a PDF, record it and create an audio file, do a video with the same information, conduct a Facebook Live. All can be used with the same purpose of collecting an email address.
5 Lead Magnets to get you started
Here are five ideas for lead magnets that are top converters and can be customized for your business Remember, the more value you can add to the lead magnet, the better the results should be. Make it a fairly quick read, with truly actionable material.
NOTE: Want more ideas? Lead magnets should be used at every stage of your prospect’s journey; from simple brand recognition all they through to becoming a customer Click here to download “50 lead magnets for every stage of the Prospect Journey”
- The “cheat sheet.” Cheat sheets are short tips; lists or worksheets that help customers solve a specific problem. Because they are short, design counts, so you might want to hire a professional design to make your cheat sheet look spectacular. The specific problem-solving nature of the cheat sheet makes it very appealing alone or combined a related blog post, podcast or video post of more depth.
- Free templates for anything are extremely popular and generate lots of leads. Make sure your template supports what you are selling and doesn’t supplant it. For example, if you offer social media consulting services, a free Facebook ad template or graphic generator for a Facebook profile page might be a good lead magnet. Templates can be in Word, Excel or any other common program and should be designed to appeal to the target audience.
- Free training series. Videos, workbooks, a combination of these tools or free training delivered through daily emails make for a great lead magnet. This is especially true if you sell a similar training service and can put a dollar amount on the value of the training. Think about problems that require multiple steps for your customers to solve. These can make ideal step-by-step training products for your lead magnet.
- Swipe files. A swipe file is a file set up to collect good examples of things that you like. For example, a swipe file of article headlines might include the 50 best headlines you’ve ever seen in an email campaign. Swipe files provide valuable ideas in a way that make them unique and useful.
- Tool kits. Tool kits can be a little more complex to create, but because they are filled with resources, they can make excellent lead magnets. You may not need to start completely from scratch with a toolkit. You can use existing resources, blog posts and other content to complete your tool kit. Common tool kits include one or two ebooks and a worksheet, a video or a checklist.
Lead magnets continue to evolve, but one thing remains the same — they work. The greater the value you give your customers, the more they will trust you when they give you their email address to fill your pipeline with leads.
Want more ideas for creating Lead magnet for all stages of your prospects journey? Click here.
Want more ideas for lead magnets to use throughout your business. Click here to download