8 Fundamentals of Lead Magnets that Convert

Standing out and succeeding in an ever-competitive business world isn’t easy. It takes a lot of time and hard work to attract the right audience to your business and prove your worth enough to make them willing to buy your products or services.

There are many potential customers out there who have the money but aren’t ready to spend it on your business yet because they don’t know you.

It’s your responsibility to create awareness for your business, nurture a good relationship with prospects, and get them to trust you and your brand.

This is where lead magnets come in handy.

What is a lead magnet?

A lead magnet is simply anything valuable that you offer potential customers freely in exchange for their email addresses or other contact information. Some common lead magnet examples include free templates, eBooks, reports, training, mini-courses, or cheat sheets.

A lead magnet’s primary purpose is to help you convert people who visit your website and consume your content into leads and, eventually, customers. The secret to achieving a higher conversation with a magnet is by providing your target audience with a specific solution that addresses a specific problem they’re facing at absolutely no cost to them.

By providing valuable information freely to potential customers, you’re:

  1. Showing them that you have their best interest at heart and that you’re not just after their money.
  2. Proving to them that you’re an expert in your industry and know exactly what to do to help them solve their problems.

The idea of spending some time and effort upfront to create a compelling lead magnet that attracts qualified leads may not be welcome by everyone. However, if you’re willing to do the work, a lead magnet can bring long-term benefits for your business.

Three Benefits Of Offering A Lead Magnet To Your Prospects

1. Helps You To Build And Grow Your Email List

Email marketing remains one of the main moneymakers for businesses. Some people still don’t believe this, but email marketing is less expensive to produce and has a higher Return on Investment (ROI) than other forms of marketing.

If you want to advertise your business through Facebook, for instance, you may need at least $500 to run and experiment with Facebook ads before you can determine if they’re working for your business or not. On the other hand, if you were to use email marketing for the same purpose, you’ll only need a small fraction of that amount to deliver positive results.

A well-crafted lead magnet can help you grow your email list immensely. Remember that the website visitors you’re sending your lead magnet to are people who are already familiar with you. By agreeing to receive your offer in exchange for their email addresses, they’re giving you permission to tell them more about your business.

If you use this opportunity wisely to provide value to the people in your email list, you’ll gain their trust and build a good relationship with them. When you’ve proved your worth, it’ll be much easier to convert them into customers down the line. This form of marketing is more powerful and tends to yield better results than advertising, which some potential customers find annoying and unsolicited.

2. Establishes You As An Expert In Your Industry

Considering that several businesses are already using lead magnets to lure prospects, offering the same old information that can be found with a simple Google search is a recipe for disaster. You need to go the extra mile and provide something different and unique to stand out – something that your competitors aren’t sharing at the moment.

Your prospects will start seeing you as an expert in your field when your lead magnet is filled with significant value. You’ll be their go-to-resource anytime they or their friends need the same services because they’ll remember how generous and helpful you were to them. The more new customers you’ll get, the bigger your customer base will become. More paying customers mean more profits for your business.

3. You Get To Know Your Subscribers’ Interests

Another benefit of offering a lead magnet is that it helps you to determine the kinds of topics your prospects are interested in. For instance, if you’re offering multiple lead magnets, you’ll see the topics that your prospects are most interested in based on the performance of different magnets. Statistics from the top-performing offers should give you an idea of how to improve your existing products or create new ones that will satisfy the needs of your prospects better.

Now that you’re conversant with the benefits of lead magnets, it’s only fair to tell you how to create one that will convert your web visitors into long-term clients.

How To Create A Lead Magnet That Converts

How do you create an offer that’s tempting enough for prospects to agree to opt into your email list? Here are five questions to think about as you come up with ideas for your lead magnet:

1. What Common Problems if your Target Audience Facing?

A great lead magnet is one that provides a specific solution to a specific problem your target audience is facing. So, identifying the common problem your prospects are experiencing should be your first step when creating your offer. Make the offer about what they really need help with. It shouldn’t be about you, or what you need them to know.

For clarity purposes, let’s assume that you’re a personal trainer. One common problem for your potential customers would be the lack of enough time to exercise at the gym. Because you want to offer a solution to this specific problem, your magnet can include short, but effective exercises they can do from the comfort of their homes without equipment to stay fit and healthy.

2. How Do You Plan To Give Your Prospects A Quick Win?

Other than providing a specific solution to a specific problem, a great lead magnet should also offer instant gratification to prospects if you want it to convert highly. Nobody wants an offer that takes several months or even years to solve their problems, even if it’s for free.

Because of this, you want to ensure that whatever you’re providing is simple, easy to digest, and can be accessed and used immediately, something that produces great results instantly. This is what we call a quick win for your prospects. On the same note, you should avoid complicated and lengthy magnets because they require lots of time and effort to produce and tend to convert poorly.

3. What Do You Want Your Prospects To Do Next After Using Your Freebie?

It’s also a good idea to think about what you’d like to happen next once your prospects finish using your free offer. In other words, what’s your ultimate goal for your email subscribers?

Your relationship with your prospects shouldn’t end when you provide them with a lead magnet in exchange for their contact information. On the contrary, you should take advantage of the opportunity you have to take the relationship to the next level. You can do so by creating an offer that prompts them to take some form of action.

Assuming that you’re a personal trainer, you can ask your prospects to sign up for your paid personalized training sessions once they’re through with the free offer. This is an important part of nurturing your leads and encouraging them to do business with you eventually.

4. What Do You Want Your Opt-In Page To Look Like?

It’s also important to think about the design of the page where your web visitors sign up for your lead magnet. How do you plan to design your opt-in page to ensure maximum conversions?

We recommend that you keep your opt-in page as simple and straightforward as possible. This is mainly because users have a very short attention span, so you don’t want to give them a reason to change their minds before they sign up for your offer. Go straight to the point by telling them exactly what they’ll get from your lead magnet, what they stand to gain by using it, and what to do in order to get it.

As a personal trainer, you can mention the following things in the lead magnet’s opt-in page.

  • Get 15 simple exercises you can do from the comfort of your home without equipment.
  • Get fitter and healthier without going to the gym.
  • To get these workouts delivered right into your inbox, just enter your email address below.

5. How Do You Plan To Get People To Sign Up For Your Lead Magnet?

Lastly, you need to have a plan to get people to sign up for your lead magnet once you’re done producing it. Here are some tips you can use to promote your offer to your target audience:

  • Promote On Social Media – Considering that billions of people across the world use social media on a daily basis, it makes sense to start your promotion here. Different social media platforms offer different features that you need to utilize fully to promote your lead magnet. For instance:
    • You can join different groups on Google+, LinkedIn, and Facebook and take part in relevant discussions. Be sure to include a link to your lead magnet’s opt-in page at the end of your posts.
    • You can post a status update on relevant platforms and include a link and an image to your opt-in page.
    • You can drive traffic to the opt-in page by advertising on the social media platforms where your target customers spend most of their time.
  • Send Personalized Emails – You should also consider sending personalized emails together with your lead magnet and ask the recipients to share it with the people they know. Don’t forget to include a link to the landing page in your email signature to get as many people as possible to sign up for the offer.
  • Promote On Content Hubs – Content hubs are simply websites where people go to find different kinds of information or sites where content is consumed. Promoting your lead magnet in such websites makes sense because of the huge numbers of people already visiting the sites daily, so you’re guaranteed maximum exposure. Examples of content hubs include:
    • Aggregator sites (e.g. Reddit) – These sites allow registered users to submit different types of content such as articles, videos, news, etc., which are then ranked based on the number of up-votes and down-votes they receive.
    • Question and Answer (Q&A) sites (e.g. Answers and Quora) – These sites allow users to ask and answer questions on various topics.
    • Forums (e.g. Medium) – Forums are sites that encourage users to post content, ask and answer questions, and interact with one another.
  • Promote Your Offer On Your website – Some of the locations on your website where you can promote your lead magnet include:
    • On the index page of your main blog.
    • Within the posts that are related to your offer
    • In a pop-up, footer, or on the sidebar of your homepage
    • In a thank you page – If you have a page where you thank your readers who have converted into customers, you can also use the same page to promote your latest lead magnet
    • In a resource page – If you’re offering multiple lead magnets like videos, eBooks, and whitepapers, consider having one central location for all of them to make it easier for your web visitors to find all your offers at once

Overall, offering a high-quality lead magnet to your prospects is one of the best things you can do for your business. It’s an easier and more effective way to get people to sign up to your email list, build a great relationship with them, and convert them into paying clients in the end.

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