Harness The Power Of Lead Magnets To Grow Your Business

Your Facebook ads fell short. The expensive videos you had made didn’t go viral. Your online presence is quickly dwindling into nothing. What’s the next best step?
I always tell my readers I won’t blind them with marketing jargon, but “lead magnet” is one of my favourite terms.

Lead Magnet can be a savior for both startups and seasoned businesses: Harness the power of lead magnets to grow your following, nurture qualified leads, build a strong email list, and ultimately scale your revenue.

So in the first couple days, I gave you tons of information to digest. By now, you should have a basic understanding of the Value Ladder, what a sales funnel is and how to address concerns of your potential clients. In this guide I am going to share with you how to harness the power of Lead Magnet.

What exactly is a Lead and how can this act as a magnet for your customers?

Depending on the organization, the definition of the term “lead” may vary. For some companies, a “lead” is a contact already determined to be a prospective customer, whereas other companies consider a “lead” to be any sales contact. But what remains the same across definitions is that a lead will potentially become a future client.

If you have started thinking about the pain points, now you can begin to formulate the Lead Magnets we discussed in the Value Ladder and Funnel chapter. This will be the key to building your list, creating the sales funnels and following up with valuable content that will lead you to sales.

Lead is actually what gives meaning to even run a business. It is like the blood in the veins of an organization.

What is a Lead Magnet?

A Lead Magnet is an irresistible and valuable offer that will be useful for the person wanting to download it. The goal of any lead magnet is to get the person to opt in and maximise the number of leads you are getting. To be more specific, a lead magnet is a concrete deliverable that is triggered by a stranger or a prospect who perceives it to be of value to them and receives it in exchange for their contact information.

A lead magnet is generally a free (or very low cost) item that is offered on your website as an incentive to potential customers

Harness The Power Of Lead Magnets To Grow Your Business

Now, a lead magnet can come in different forms:
• A one-page PDF
• A webinar
• An eBook
• Cheat sheets
• Checklists
• How-tos
• Toolkits
• A video

As I have mentioned a couple of times, it’s important to make sure that website visitors give their explicit consent to receive marketing content from you if they sign up for your lead magnet. For this reason, I always recommend using an opt in that asks something like ‘Are you happy to receive marketing material from me? I promise not to SPAM you!’ and gives them the option to say ‘No’.

Businesses today are heavily depended on Lead Generation as it enables the websites of such businesses to generate more traffic which may lead to the further conversion of such found Leads into Customers. This leads to an increase in conversion rates helping a business gain huge profits in the process.

Remember, you are giving solutions to problems. People trust people so you are relating to their pain points as the Attractive Character. Once your prospect downloads the magnet you want to make sure its easy for them to use. If its complicated, they will never look at it again and probably forget about it altogether. Keep it simple and straightforward.

4 Essential Elements Of An Effective Lead Magnet

Creating an irresistible lead magnet doesn’t have to be difficult but it does take a bit of strategic thinking and planning.

1. Make It Specific

Your irresistible lead magnet shouldn’t offer everything under the sun. All that’s going to do is overwhelm your audience and they’ll end up taking no action (which is what we don’t want!). Your lead magnet should be very targeted and specific Though you may offer a variety of services and products, you don’t want to create a lead magnet that covers every single topic related to your services and products.

For example: we offer WordPress theme templates as well as social media graphic templates and landing page templates.

2. Easy To Consume

If your eBook has 100 pages or the emails of your free course are too long and detailed, your audience will most probably not use it or will be bored with it. The best lead magnets hit a sweet spot of offering a solution to a specific problem with little effort.

3. Targeted

Your lead magnet should target your ideal audience. If you share tips for advanced website owners on your website, it makes no sense to have a lead magnet with tips for beginners. Although it may attract subscribers, they won’t read your newsletters because they are not interested in your content. This should be a no brainer, but you’d be surprised at how many lead magnets simply don’t provide any value. Why would someone want to give you their contact information if they won’t be getting value in return?

4. Super Helpful

Your lead magnet shouldn’t be just about random things you know. It needs to solve a specific problem for your audience. In addition to helping them solve a problem or challenge, you actually have to follow through on that promise. There is nothing worse for a brand than setting false expectations and coming through with broken promises. Don’t offer something you can’t follow through on!

“Easy To Create” Examples of Innovative Lead Magnets:

1. Entrance pop-up

Capture your website visitors’ attention (and intrigue) when the first thing they see on your site is an offer for something free that will benefit them and/or their business! It’s a great way to introduce the purpose and personality of your brand.

You might not have even noticed how common it is to use this as a lead magnet. Your visitor gets to try out your product, and you get a good list of prospective leads.

2. The Free Tool Giveaway

Can you offer a free version of your application or product?
You might not have even noticed how common it is to use this as a lead magnet. Your visitor gets to try out your product, and you get a good list of prospective leads.

3. Email signature

Adding a link to your lead magnet in your email signature is a great way to subtly introduce your lead magnet into every business conversation you have.
It’s severely underutilized way to drive traffic to your lead magnets but something that everyone should implement! After a few back-and-forth messages with a potential customer, they will be compelled to click on the link to learn just how incredible your lead magnet is.

4. A cheat sheet or list

The longer you work in a given industry, the more experience and knowledge you obtain – at least in theory! Some of it is probably difficult to find or access for someone new to the business. So why not take advantage of the years behind your belt and put them into a downloadable list or a cheat sheet?

We tend to forget about this, but there are people who prefer shorter pieces of content like cheat sheets over ebooks. They don’t have the time to download and read long-form content. They prefer something quicker to read that can help them make significant changes to their strategy fast.

5. Podcast interviews / guest posts

Podcast interviews and guest posts are super effective places to mention drive traffic to your lead magnets. Getting in front of other people’s audiences will help increase brand trust and knowledge of you a lot faster than any other marketing tactic.Think of interviews and guest posts as a way to continue the conversation and reel potential new customers in with a free incentive. Sounds too complicated?

Here are my quick ways to create a Lead Magnet:

As a business owner, you’re busy and sometimes want the quick fix for converting visitors into subscribers. Sometimes quick fixes translate into low-value activities, i.e. activities that do not move the dial when it comes to conversions! 

1. For an eBook, if you have the budget, I’d recommend hiring a graphic designer. If that’s too much of a stretch, then, again, Canva would be my go-to tool. They have templates you can use and you can download your design as a PDF directly from Canva.
2. If video is your choice, then there’s a great tool I use called Lumen5. You can create your own video in about 10 minutes.
3. For a one-page PDF, you can use Microsoft Word or Canva. If you use Microsoft Word, then remember to turn it into a PDF before promoting it. You can do that easily with free PDF converters.
4. If you want to use a webinar, then there are platforms to help you do that. I typically use Go To Webinar, but I have seen more and more people use Zoom.

My Concluding points:

I always recommend my clients who are on a tight budget to begin with these two popular Lead Generation methods: Blogging and Content marketing. Also, social media is a great way to make your business popular to potential leads. Advertising is a classic lead generation tool but can be more expensive than others. If your budget allows, try and get yourself a lead generation specialist who can be a great asset in generating new leads or work with the ones you have.

The growth and success of a business depends on its ability to attract new customers. While a business can smooth sail along if it has excellent customer retention, it cannot reach its full potential and thrive without a bank of new customers to fuel growth.