Lead Magnets – The WHAT
In plain English, a lead magnet is a thing you offer to your prospective client or customer in exchange for their contact information.
Lead magnets are also commonly referred to as…
- Freebies
- Value-adds
- Free downloads
- Opt-ins
- Whatever else Marie Forleo and/or Amy Porterfield decide to call them. (Those two have some serious pull when it comes to naming nuanced digital marketing items. Case in point: “Client Avatar”)
We often think of a lead magnet taking the form of a PDF download, but that’s not always the case. As we move through this month, focusing on lead magnets, try not to pigeonhole your mind on only PDF downloads. There are endless formats a lead magnet can take, so keep that mind of yours open here.
Take a look at this list of these 15 formats your lead magnet can take for some ideas (that doesn’t include a PDF download).
Lead Magnets – The WHY
As you can see from the in-plain-English description, the end goal of offering a lead magnet is to obtain your prospect’s contact information.
Typically, we prioritize obtaining their email address and their name, but depending on your industry and what you’re selling, you may want other bits of info like their phone number, geographical location, etc.
Ultimately, we aim to gather our prospects’ contact info so we can then have a bit more control of moving them through our sales process, making them warmer and warmer leads for us.
Notice I haven’t mentioned anything about “growing your email list” when speaking about offering a lead magnet. While growing your list might be a byproduct of offering a lead magnet, it’s not the priority.
The priority – the WHY – is to warm up a lead so they can, at some point in the future, like and trust you enough to do business with you. That’s the name of the game here.
Now that we have our minds set on what lead magnets are and why they actually matter to your business, next week I’ll bust some myths around them.
You know me – I’m all about finding feel-good ways to market our businesses, so next week we’ll essentially throw out the lead magnet rule book and create our own guidelines for what lead magnets we can and want to offer our prospects.
In the meantime, begin considering what format you would most like to offer as a lead magnet. And yes, think about that even if you already have a lead magnet available to your prospects! It might be time to tweak and update what you have already to produce better leads for your business.
Find what Lead Magnet works best for your Marketing Personality Type here
By offering a great lead magnet, your ideal customer will give you their email address in order to get the thing you’re offering as a lead magnet. More on how this works right here.
Cha-ching!
Well, almost. They don’t give you money for a lead magnet, but they get that much closer to being a paying customer because now you can communicate with them via email.
*Almost Cha-Ching!*
The problem with lead magnets, though, is there are a few lies out there about them that keep people (maybe you) from doing them right.
Before we get into HOW to create a great lead magnet that earns you paying customers (which I’ll teach you in this training) we’ve got to get on the same page about them.
Here are 5 Lies About Lead Magnets you can just go ahead and stop believing from here on out.
Lie #1 – A lead magnet is a PDF download.
Truth #1 – A lead magnet could be a PDF download. It could also be a number of others things. Let’s drop the idea that a lead magnet means “PDF download” and start thinking outside the box a little here.
Click here to grab a free list of these 15 Lead Magnet Formats. And no, not a single one is a PDF download.
Lie #2 – The size of your list matters most.
Truth #2 – The QUALITY of your list matters most.
You could have 10,000 people on your list. You could have 1,000 people on your list. You could have 100. You could have 10. It doesn’t matter.
What actually matters is how many of the people on your list are willing to pay you money.
How can you gauge the quality of your list (aka how willing your subscribers are to investing money into your offerings)?
By checking your open rates, click-through rates, and reply rates. The higher these numbers increase, the higher the quality of the list.
Why? Because an engaged list – one that opens your emails, clicks through, and replies – is one ready and willing to buy from you.
Lie #3 – You only need one good lead magnet to do the job.
Truth #3 – I found the sweet spot to be TWO good lead magnets. If you’d like to see what those two can be for your business, I’ll show you in this 1-hour training.
Lie #4 – Lead magnets are “set-it-and-forget-it.”
Truth #4 – Sometimes lead magnets are set-it-and-forget-it, but usually these take some time and experimentation to find one or two that work really well. Again, don’t worry – this 1-hour training will help quicken the learning curve so you’re not guessing and wasting time for too long.
Lie #5 – Once you have someone’s email address, you HAVE to email them every week with new content.
Truth #5 – Once you have someone’s email address, it’s a good idea to deliver exactly what you promised to deliver them in exchange for their email address. If you promised a weekly email with new content, well then, deliver that. If you promised something else, deliver that something else. The key here is to take the pressure away from the longer-term strategy, at least for the time being, so you can create the lead magnet(s) that’ll work best for your business.
Once we have your lead magnets up and running (and producing qualified leads for your business), we’ll talk about a longer content strategy in this other training in October.
So now, loosen that grip on the Lead Magnet Rule Book and…
Find what Lead Magnet works best for your Marketing Personality Type here
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