You have great content on your site, which can help you bring in thousands or hundreds of visitors each week. Wait, where are they going? Although attracting traffic to your site is excellent, are you capable of converting those visitors into paying customers as well? Visitors will not just visit your product page and then pay you. It’s up to you to capture that first visitor opportunity by collecting their data. How do you do this? First, you can leverage a lead magnet examples to grow your email list.
Why not use a lead magnet
A lead magnet is an offer or incentive you make to your customers in return for their contact details.
Lead magnets can be one of the most effective tools to acquire sales leads. You can tailor the content and resources that you offer to meet the specific needs of potential customers. These resources can be added to your website to meet the needs of particular buyers at certain stages in their journey. It means that any content you create has a better chance of reaching the right people and ultimately leading to conversions.
Once they convert, you have a direct line to communicate with them. You’ve done all this without spending any advertising dollars. It took you only a few hours to create content that could be reused, modified, and updated over time. You could potentially allow one asset to offer a significant return on investment.
How to make a lead magnet
Although the benefits of lead magnets are apparent, creating them can be a little more complicated. However, it is not as hard as it seems if you approach it strategically.
Identify your target audience
To create a lead magnet that converts, you need to reduce your customer base. The material should be valuable enough to make them willing to share their contact details. If you want to serve everyone, this is impossible.
Your approach should not target the entire market, but rather focus on a particular niche. It will allow you to create targeted and relevant material that meets the needs of your customers. While you likely already have customers in your mind, it’s a good idea to do an additional market analysis to help you understand the market.
Create your value proposition
Once you have identified the target audience, position your lead magnet to make it valuable. Like your products and services, all content you create behind a submission form must solve a problem. Notably, the problem must be solved by your audience.
Find out what they need and how you can meet them. Then, look for ways to explain how your product/service solves that problem. It will give them an accessible introduction that shows that you can help.
Make the content
It’s time for you to create the resource or topic once you have it in your mind. Although you should already have an idea of the content, it is time to decide on the format, structure, and design. It may be helpful to review some examples of successful lead magnets if you are unsure where to begin.
Top 10 Lead Magnet Options
1. Resource list
A list of resources and tools that can help you do more is a great way to make your life easier. It is easy to create a list with items and other resources that will help you out.
Let’s take, for instance, that you have a blog for photographers. It is part of your photography business. You are familiar with the software and tools required to create professional visual styles.
Amateur photographers are always asking about your process. Of course, you know that there is a market for your presets. But how can you make them interested? Start by making a list of all the software that photographers need to edit their files. You can then follow up with a message promoting your software presets.
2. Guide for a quick start
Your customers need a way for them to start their projects, training quickly, and so forth. In addition, you will build trust and demonstrate your expertise by being a resource that can help.
Let’s say you’re a social media marketing blogger who helps small businesses increase their presence on social media. You are familiar with the basics of setting up Buffer to schedule postings, creating posts, and building social media profiles.
You can give away a quick guide to help you get started with the tools you use every day. It will show your expertise. You’re also promoting your services while you give away your tools of the trade. In your first follow-up, you can reference the quick start guide and explain how your benefits will increase growth and simplify it further.
3. Cheatsheet
A cheat sheet can be considered a guide, a set of tips or cliff notes that your audience will find helpful. It’s not an exhaustive list, but it is a compilation of the best information covering a particular process. This option has the advantage of using any existing content or internal best practices and putting it together.
Let’s take, for example, a business that sells productivity software. It has been working with semi-remote teams for the past few years. People are looking for ways to host remote meetings to socialize, work, and learn from home. Your expertise could be a valuable asset. All you have to do is review your processes and ask for recommendations from staff. Then, create your cheat sheet.
4. Checklist
A checklist sounds very similar to a quick start guide or resource list. It shares a lot of the same structure. However, an index is a guideline for completing responsibilities. While this is still important, most people seek guidance to keep them on the right track when searching for information.
Here’s the best part: you can refer to some of the resources and templates you have already created. It is a process you are giving to them. If some steps can be made more accessible by content you already have, you should include them. As a result, customers can benefit from your expertise while simultaneously highlighting your resources’ value.
5. Templates
A template can serve as a test case or a free trial option. It should reflect the services or products you offer. It’s usually fill in a blank document that contains everything a user will need for the task.
You may think you are giving away resources to make it easier for customers to purchase your product. In reality, however, you are giving customers the chance to see why your paid solution is superior to a traditional one, even though it may seem like this.
Bplans has hundreds of business plan samples. These plans are easily accessible and cover many industries. They can also be downloaded as documents for rework. These same plans can also be used as starting points or reference material within LivePlan’s planning software. In addition, LivePlan offers financial forecasting tools and expert planning guidance. These planning templates are even more helpful because it also includes a variety of planning functions that are easy to use.
These templates are accessible for people who are still unsure about business planning. They also help those who can’t afford to pay for planning software. The benefit of incorporating the same lead magnet templates into the tool is that users will justify joining the platform more efficiently.
6. Online course
Lead magnets are designed to encourage people to return to your website. You may also want to get their email address so that you can establish a connection. However, in most communications, you are pushing them towards your site. An online course can help you drive more return visitors.
SEMrush’s team does this exceptionally well. SEMrush provides a variety of courses, certifications, and quizzes covering questions related to their products and industry. They also offer the following class every week as new courses become available. People are coming back to the system because of the content. But, unfortunately, they also need to wait for the next class.
While online courses can be an excellent resource for many reasons, it is also a significant financial and planning investment. Therefore, before you create the entire course platform, make sure to run a simple validation test.
7. Email course
An email course is a great way to validate larger-scale onsite systems. It follows the same steps as an online course, but it cuts down on time by sending the next class directly to the user’s email. These are not interactive and more like a quick start guide with additional steps or “Homework” added.
It is an excellent benefit because it can be light and spread out over several days. As an “additional reading” option, you can also promote other downloads on your website. Again, you can frame it around the content you already have, but with additional guidelines to help your audience navigate it.
Make sure you have a well-organized inbox so that you and your team can respond quickly to any questions. For example, it is not a good idea to send out a course promotion via email and not follow up on it.
8. Quizzes
Who doesn’t love quizzes? They work well as lead magnets because you give customers an individual result at the end. In addition, the responses can be segmented automatically, which further narrows down your audience. Finally, it allows you to quickly follow up with messages, offers, and resources that best suit the individual’s needs.
If your quiz is interesting enough, you can also promote social sharing. It is an excellent way for you to test out this type of material. You can also create lighter versions on social media. You can adapt the lead magnet to your site if you get a lot of engagement.
9. Giveaways
It’s a proven way to build your mailing list by giving away something free. It’s essential to make sure that the people you give away are interested in your product.
You can undoubtedly win thousands of leads by running a contest to win an iPhone. But, how many of these leads are interested in your products and services? How specific can you make your follow-up communications?
Although it’s tempting to go big and call the day, it’s not the best idea. Instead, you should focus on your audience’s needs and pick a prize that suits their wants and needs. You can even offer free copies or early access to your product to get the best leads possible.
10. Live Training
What makes webinars and live training so powerful? A live webinar gives your customers more than just a download. They get an experience. It’s a chance for you to demonstrate your expertise and to get to know your customers better.
But, running a successful webinar is probably the most challenging piece of content. Finding the right platform and equipment for your needs can take time. You will also need to refine your presentation and visuals. You can start small and adapt content that you already have. Then, stick with what you know. If they are related to the webinar topic, you might consider including some lead magnets as signup bonuses.
Prepare to collect leads
We spent a lot of time discussing the different types of lead magnets that you could create. However, preparing to sort and collect all your leads is equally important. So, while we won’t go into detail, here are some things to consider before you launch your lead magnet.
Landing page
It is necessary to have somewhere to host your lead- magnet and embed a signup form. These downloads will eventually be a permanent part of your website. However, it is easier to get started with a tool that creates landing pages quickly. Unbounce and a variety of other platforms are affordable tools that can be used to help you accomplish the task.
Next, you will need to design the layout, call-to-action, and content for the page. For more information, you can consult our guide to creating a landing page coming soon.
Sort leads and gathers them
It’s something we have said before: Getting someone to fill out a form without a way to follow up immediately is one of the worst mistakes you can make. Even if you do follow up, if your contacts aren’t organized and sorted out, you will quickly lose conversations and get drowned in emails. You can prepare for this by using a system that automatically collects and sends out emails.
Mailchimp and Hubspot are great tools that will help you keep your communications running smoothly. You should consider using a tool to help you create landing pages and collect leads if you are able. It will save you time and avoid having to navigate two different platforms.
Promotion of your content
Your business strategy and marketing budget will determine how you promote your lead magnets. Start small and focus on the channels that your audience is already engaging with you. To reinforce the reason someone should complete a form to receive this piece of content, optimize your message, spending, and landing page.
Lead magnets can be a powerful tool, but they take time to create
If you offer value and prioritize your audience, lead magnets can be a cost-effective and long-lasting way to generate sales. However, it’s not enough to throw something out there and expect any results. It takes time and refinement before you can create something that resonates. However, once you have a system in place and have found content that converts well, it will be possible to continue using it for many years.
Disclaimer. The opinions and views expressed in this article are the authors Judge Napolitano.
