Lead magnets can greatly benefit your business by building credibility, providing customer education, and gathering valuable leads. When implemented properly, they have the ability to streamline your lead generation process and continue delivering returns as long as the information remains pertinent.
As a marketer leading a small team or a multi-hat wearing business owner, it is important to know how to create a lead magnet efficiently and speedily.
Lead magnet
A lead magnet is a reward that is given to potential customers in exchange for their contact information. Often, this reward takes the form of gated content such as eBooks, checklists, videos, courses, or coupons.
To receive someone’s email address requires a valid reason. Therefore, providing a lead magnet that provides an immediate benefit or resolves an issue increases the likelihood of acquiring leads for your enterprise.
Tips for Creating Effective Lead Magnets
It is exhilarating to have a lead magnet that generates leads around the clock, but it can be challenging to produce a lead magnet of great worth when you are also managing your business. Select the appropriate lead magnet style and start working on crafting something that will aid in the expansion of your email list.
1. Content upgrades
These giveaways are essentially added to well-performing blog articles to enhance the content within them, free of charge.
One option is to enhance your top-performing blog post by incorporating additional and thorough information, improving its user-friendliness, perhaps including some visuals, and transforming it into a PDF, a PowerPoint, or another format that would be suitable for your targeted audience.
You can enhance the quality of your content by offering a lead magnet that aligns with the post you’re elevating. Consider these strategies to improve the value of your content:
- Add checklists or Excel sheet planners to your post (like a real estate rental checklist or a party-planning checklist)
- Link to a gated video of a webinar or a tutorial
- Include more value—for instance, if your blog was about how to plan a camping trip, make a buying guide for specialty gear
By perusing Mattia Di Stasi’s weblog on constructing a catalog of prospective crowdfunding supporters, you’ll perceive that he integrates a call-to-action towards the end for his complimentary manual on 3 effortless strategies to flourish on Kickstarter and Indiegogo. It’s highly probable that an individual who is already engrossed in a crowdfunding blog will likewise be inclined to retrieve the electronic book.
One useful tip is to identify your most popular article by utilizing Google Analytics or by determining which content is frequently shared from your social media profiles.
2. Podcast and video transcripts
One excellent lead magnet idea for businesses that produce podcasts or video content is to generate transcripts and offer them for distribution. Transcripts can be more accessible for certain individuals, while others may prefer written versions of the information. This technique is a no-brainer because the material has already been created.
Although creating a transcript could be perceived as a tedious task, it can be expedited by utilizing various online transcription services such as Rev, Trint, Otter, TEMI, or Datalyst. Additionally, enhancing the transcript’s body content, incorporating an interesting introduction and conclusion, as well as including a template or checklist, followed by converting it into a PDF file, will enable a smooth process.
A helpful tip is to offer a transcript as a lead magnet for your company’s webinars, even if the video is no longer available.
3. Audio versions of blogs
Numerous individuals listen to audio content during their daily commute or when taking a break. Therefore, it is essential to present your top-performing posts in audio format. It can be compared to an audiobook adaptation of your blog. If you are recording yourself, you may opt to utilize a free tool such as Audacity or purchase GarageBand or Adobe Audition (or hire an expert).
Marie Forleo, a business coach, effectively utilizes audio lead magnets on her website.
4. Quizzes
It’s apparent that people have a fondness for discussing themselves, as evidenced by the remarkable achievement of BuzzFeed.
Creating quizzes can be an enjoyable experience that conveys care and attention toward your audience. With user-friendly platforms such as Typeform, Interact, or Airtable, quiz-making is a breeze. Not only are quizzes handy for segmenting leads, they also function as excellent lead magnets. This is why quizzes are frequently used by financial and nutrition consultants.
5. Swipe files
Copywriters create a “swipe file” to gather their top-performing copy, including sales letters, emails, blog posts, and other projects that they may wish to reuse later. Essentially, it’s similar to Pinterest, but strictly for professional purposes.
In your industry or organization, there is likely an equivalent of a “swipe file”. You can gather successful sales presentations, efficient processes, engaging blog entries, or any type of exemplary work that your audience will benefit from.
Convert your documents to PDF format and you’re ready to go!
6. Analytics and data visualizations
Sharing concrete data is important in building credibility with individuals who seek to believe your claims. Therefore, it is advised that you do not withhold any information and offer real-world outcomes, statistics, and figures. Delve into your Excel records, charts, marketing reports, split-test data, experiment results, and timetables. If you have conducted exclusive research, transform it into a well-designed presentation.
White papers or downloadable data visualizations could also be created, utilizing services such as Infogram.
7. Product previews
Your lead magnet should ideally serve as a tool to pre-sell the product or service that you will eventually ask your subscribers to purchase. Therefore, it is logical to provide them with a preview of what they can expect. As an author, you may choose to share a chapter of your book, while a graphic designer may offer a website template. In the instance of a real estate agent, a condensed list of properties is a viable option.
Your prospects should be able to easily understand where and how to buy your product through the use of this lead magnet. Additionally, you can insert a call-to-action link within the preview that directs them to your sales page.
8. Your lead magnet should have an ‘origin story’
Primal Branding by Patrick Hanlon taught us that an ‘Origin Story’ is a powerful tool for elevating a brand. An Origin Story attracts people to a cause, motivating them to support it until it becomes a reality. Tesla exemplifies this concept by aiming to create high-end electric cars as a means of eventually manufacturing affordable ones for the general public.
Your lead magnets should revolve around a cause that your tribe and brand cherish, much like Tesla’s founding tale. Your squeeze page must instill trust in me by demonstrating a desired result. Have you experienced the same, if not greater, level of anguish as I have? If not, there will be no familiarity bias, and I will quickly pass by your page without a desire to provide my email.
9. Keep lead magnets targeted
For a lead magnet to be effective, it must be highly focused. Providing a general free item on your form may result in you accumulating leads that are not relevant to your enterprise.
If you are a brand specializing in grooming men’s beards, publishing a guide titled ‘How to Increase Your Beard’s Popularity on Pinterest’ is unlikely to generate significant leads as the platform’s audience is predominantly female, comprising 80% of its user base.
By enabling users to generate and enhance their landing pages, Unbounce gears its lead magnet, the “Guide to Landing Page Copywriting” in the form above, towards its prospective clientele.
10. Use separate lead magnets for separate funnel stages
Lead generation forms without lead magnets cannot indicate the quality of leads, whereas those with lead magnets have the potential to attract the desired leads with specialized content designed for the specific conversion funnel stage.
BOFU content can be used to target users who are more likely to become paying customers. This type of content usually appeals to those who have already carefully considered your product or service but have not yet committed to making a purchase.
A lead magnet or BOFU content refers to a resource that is closely related to your company’s product or service. This can take the form of a whitepaper that explains the functionalities of your product/service or granting free access to a trial version.
11. Give a glimpse of your content beforehand
How can you make sure that your regular lead magnets are also understood by readers? It’s easy! Just inform them.
When creating your lead-gen form or click-through page, emphasize the benefits readers can gain from your lead magnet. Enumerate the main headlines and specific practical tips that your lead magnet includes.
The eBook offered as a lead magnet is highly tailored to attract potential customers of Kissmetrics. It should be noted that the form requires visitors to fill out numerous fields.
By providing a detailed portrayal of the eBook, the webpage offers a sneak peek into its material. Additionally, the page outlines the advantages that users can gain from acquiring the eBook. These incentives encourage hesitant visitors to take action and download the resource.
Emphasizing the business value of a lead magnet on the form is crucial. Clearly articulate how the lead magnet can assist visitors in achieving their business goals, drawing inspiration from the headings “Optimize Your Conversions,” “Find More Customers,” and “Drive Real Growth” provided in the aforementioned form.
12. Employ your best performing content
Looking to begin with your lead magnet in the shortest time possible?
Browse through your content collection and pinpoint the content asset that demonstrated the highest level of performance. It could be anything, such as the eBook with the greatest number of downloads, the blog post or success story that received the most views and shares, the Slideshare presentation deck with the highest viewership and sharing figures, or the webinar that attracted the largest attendance.
Lead magnets can easily be created from content resources such as eBooks, webinars, and slide decks. If any of these resources are your top performer, then you can start creating the form. But, if you want to use your best blog post or success story as a lead magnet, you must first transform it into a downloadable file.
Transform your blog post or success story into an eBook, checklist, or cheat sheet and utilize it as a lead magnet.
13. Provide more than just eBooks
Although eBooks are a convenient item to offer, what if your site visitors desire something different? What if alternative resources are more relevant to your business and potential clients?
There are certain novel lead magnets that are worth trying out.
Jarrod Drysdale, who is the mastermind behind Studio Fellow, Bootstrapping Design, and Cascade, has devised an exceptional and captivating design course to attract potential customers. He presents this course on The Tiny Designer platform, catering to individuals with and without design backgrounds, in order to acquire leads.
14. A/B test your lead magnets
Determining the effectiveness of a lead magnet requires A/B testing. Despite attracting a substantial number of leads, it’s difficult to ascertain if it’s the optimal outcome without conducting such tests.
This post itself offers some A/B testing ideas that can be extracted.
- A/B test in-content lead magnets with a sidebar lead magnet or a pop-up lead magnet.
- Test to see if a glimpse (gist) of lead magnet on a form helps you increase conversions in comparison to a form with just an image of the lead magnet. Find out what is driving the conversions (the offering or the form design).
- Test to find if a package of content works as a better lead magnet than a standalone content resource.
- Test different kinds of lead magnets given in the extensive list under point number six.
