Marketing Asset: Lead Magnet
This critical asset will help your business generate more leads
One of the marketing initiatives I always work on with clients is lead generation…
…meaning how do we get contact information for people who are potentially interested in our products or services, so we can keep following up with them until they’re ready to make a buying decision?
Read that again because it’s important.
Then, let me clarify here.
From my standpoint, a lead = contact information for someone who’s interested in what a business has to offer.
And contact information could be a name, email, phone number and more.
So in short, when my clients are looking to generate more leads – and they always are – we have to figure out ways to:
collect contact information from interested people, and
attract more people to the business who are interested in their offers or services.
I always start with #1 above.
Why?
Well, we can work on #2 all day long, but if we have no way to identify interested people and nurture them until they’re ready to buy…
…then it doesn’t matter if we have 1,000,000 visitors checking out the business online. Because they’re all anonymous, we don’t know who they are and have no way to follow up.
Have you ever heard the saying that’s popular in sales?
“The fortune is in the follow-up.”
It’s true! If you want more revenue in your business, you’ll need leads that you can follow up with.
The marketing asset you’ll need to create if you’re also starting with #1 right now is a lead magnet.
Not sure what a lead magnet is?
Essentially it’s fancy marketing speak for a free incentive you give an interested person in exchange for their contact information.
Lead magnets come in a variety of forms:
Discounts
Ebooks
Videos
Automated email courses dripped out over time
Cheatsheets
Toolkits or resource lists
Free trials
Contests
And more!
Pay attention as you browse the Internet and visit some of your favorite online sites. I guarantee you’ll be asked AT LEAST once to enter your email or phone number in exchange for some sort of free incentive.
Now, if you already have a lead magnet in your business, you might think that what I’m sharing here is rather basic.
While it is foundational, I cannot overstate the impact an amazing lead magnet can have on your business.
It can unearth sales opportunities you didn’t know existed.
It can open doors for your business that you never thought possible.
It can fuel your business growth, week after week, month after month, and year after year.
Yes, that’s right. ONE amazing lead magnet can be all your business needs. I’ve seen it happen time and time again with our clients.
It just might take the creation of a few different lead magnets before you land on that home run lead magnet.
Now, I’m going to share a little more with you about the types of lead magnets you can create and which one I’d recommend for your type of business and why.
And, I’m going to share some common mistakes that I want you to avoid…or fix if you’ve already made them. (No judgment here, by the way.)
Let’s get straight to it!
Here are the biggest lead magnet mistakes I frequently see:
Mistake #1: Creating TOO many lead magnets.
In most cases, I find ONE strong lead magnet at the top of the funnel to be enough.
The challenge is that sometimes it takes creating a few different lead magnets to really figure out which one converts the best and is going to perform well for you.
When you have too many lead magnets or too many paths for leads to go down, it can confuse them.
Plus, it frequently means needing to create far too many follow-up sequences than most teams have the capacity or expertise to do.
That leads me to the next mistake…
Mistake #2: Not having a strong follow-up email sequence.
It’s not enough to generate the lead.
You also have to nurture them and create a clear path for them to move to the next step, whether it’s a sales call, a demo, making a purchase, etc.
It takes a ton of work to create and optimize a follow-up sequence.
I find too many businesses disproportionately focus their efforts on creating more lead magnets instead of optimizing their follow-up email sequence.
Mistake #3: Giving too much away in your lead magnet.
The goal of a lead magnet, in my opinion, is to identify who is a potential prospect for your products or services.
You don’t need a lengthy report to do this. Not to mention, this takes a long time to produce the copy and design
A quick checklist, resource guide or coupon is frequently more than enough to generate leads.
When you give too much away, you risk the lead getting overwhelmed or feeling like there is no reason to open the emails in your follow-up sequence because you’re already delivered more than enough value to get started on their own.
Mistake #4: Not having a dedicated landing page to promote your lead magnet.
You want to be able to send traffic directly to a landing page to promote your lead magnet, not just to your website where there’s a mention in the footer or a popup.
Why?
First, then you truly understand how well traffic converts into leads because you’re only giving them ONE choice. Opt-in to this lead magnet. Or not.
If only 0.05% of your traffic is converting, there’s a problem.
If you’re looking at a 30-50% conversion rate of your landing page traffic, then you know you have a winner!
(By the way, while this would be a high conversion rate, this is frequently what most of my clients see…even on cold traffic. This is why I say ONE strong lead magnet can be enough.)
Also when you have a landing page dedicated to your lead magnet, you then have a system in place to eventually scale up with more advanced sources of traffic that you don’t own like paid ads and partner traffic.
Mistake #5: Not promoting the lead magnet on all channels.
There are SO many places you should be promoting your lead magnet, including but not limited to:
Popup on your website (no it’s not spammy if the lead magnet is a stellar one)
Link in your social media bios
In dedicated social media posts
In your email marketing
In the signature of your emails (and your team’s emails)
In paid ads
In other words, there’s no channel that isn’t a good candidate for promoting your lead magnet.
Mistake #6: Overcomplicating the heck out of your lead magnet.
Oh my gosh, I could write a novel on this, but I promise I’ll spare you and keep it short.
I see too many businesses choose THE MOST complicated types of lead magnets and therefore it takes forever to produce and therefore delays promotion.
Which then delays your understanding of how well the lead magnet will or won’t perform.
This means you’ve spent all your time producing what may end up falling flat, and then you’re back to square one. And it’s taken months to run this experiment instead of days or weeks.
Getting leads to raise their hands doesn’t require complication.
Which then brings me to the next part of this post…
What types of lead magnets exist and which is the best for my type of business?
Below is a short, non-exhaustive list as well as the pros and cons of each.
Discounts
10% off your first order! Free shipping! $5 off when you buy $60 or more worth of product!
If you’ve done any sort of online shopping, you’ll be familiar with this type of lead magnet.
It’s easy (and quick) to create. And there is major purchase intent…meaning someone who opts in is likely to purchase.
If you have any sort of product or e-commerce site where the purchasing happens online, this would be my top lead magnet recommendation.
Ebooks
Definitely valuable and the right content can get high-quality leads to raise their hand.
But these are not quick to produce both from a copy and a design standpoint.
And if you’ve guessed wrong on the topic and opt-in rates are low, well you just did a whole lot of work for nothing.
I personally would prefer you not waste your precious resources on this type of lead magnet until you know it’s a for sure thing.
And, I’d consider using this as a qualifier lead magnet, middle of funnel, after someone’s already identified themselves as a lead and you need to see if they’re ready to take the next step to purchase your products or services.
Webinars
Like an ebook, I see a free webinar as a great qualifier lead magnet middle of funnel.
It wouldn’t be where I’d start.
And, if ebooks are complicated, webinars are 10x more complex!
I was just outlining for a client how many steps are involved in creating all assets for a webinar. (Short answer, it’s 17. That doesn’t include all the sub-tasks involved in each of those steps.)
A webinar is an advanced marketing asset. And yes it can absolutely be a very powerful sales mechanism in your business.
But, like any lead magnet, it requires optimization to get it to convert at an optimal rate. Which means you need to run it over and over again.
In short, it’s not a small job and not the first lead magnet I recommend creating.
Cheatsheats / Checklists / Toolkits / Resource Lists
These are frequently the easiest to create, get great opt-in rates and don’t require a ton of production time or resources.
Plus, many people believe that tools solve their problems. Ie: “Which tools do I need to post video on social media?”
When you know they’re really looking for: “How do I use video to generate more business through my social media channels?”
It’s a great opportunity to hook them in with what they want and then position your products or services as what they really need.
If you have a service business, this is absolutely where I’d start with your lead magnet.
Free Audit / Consult
If you’re looking for 1:1 work, this is a great way to identify potential prospects.
There’s not a ton of production time upfront, which means it’s easy to get up and promote this lead magnet quickly.
There is, however, a lot of work on the backend in order to deliver the audit, so this isn’t necessarily easily scalable.
Use this lead magnet wisely, when your biggest challenge is getting prospects to raise their hand…not when you’re booked solid and have no extra time to deliver on this promise.
Pricing Guide
This is also a fabulous way to get potential prospects to raise their hand, especially if you run a service-based business.
Someone who’s inquiring about your prices is likely considering hiring you.
And you have a way of identifying who that is.
Plus, you also get the added bonus of qualifying them by only asking them to take the next step if your services are within their budget.
Contests
In my opinion, the name of the game here is lead volume.
You want to generate a ton of leads with a contest…because you’re then going to have to cull the leads that are only there for the deal and not actually qualified to take the next steps with you.
I personally tell my clients to use contests in conjunction with another lead magnet, so they are attracting both a high volume of leads AND the right type of leads.
Quizzes
These are an advanced type of lead magnet that can be very effective.
I find that quizzes generate great quality leads, typically at a lower cost.
And, you can send leads down different paths based on their responses.
But, quizzes are not easy to create, especially because you want to deliver the response and personalized next step to the quiz taker. This means setting up quiz software and ongoing optimizations.
So again, I might use this as a second type of lead magnet in the business. For example, have a coupon and a quiz or a resource list and a quiz.
In summary…
If you’re looking to generate more leads, creating a lead magnet will be a powerful marketing asset for the business.
Have questions about lead magnets? Comment below and I’ll do my best to answer.