This post originally appeared on tBL member Joshua Lyon’s blog Joshua Lyons Marketing Blog and is republished with permission. Find out how to syndicate your content with theBrokerList.
Trying to gain exposure for your brand can feel like a difficult and daunting task, particularly if you’re not quite sure how to attract the right customers. There are many simple tools and techniques that you can implement to help your business gain exposure; among them, lead magnets. Lead magnets are a great way to capture your audience and turn casual browsers into brand-loyal followers if you use them correctly. In this blog post, we will discuss why lead magnets are important, offer you some tried and true examples of successful lead magnets, and tell you exactly how to implement your own lead magnet strategy in five simple steps.
What are Lead Magnets?
Lead magnets are marketing tools that help your business to attract new leads through a simple exchange. If you’ve done your job well, your target audience is already searching for your service or product. Now, you just have to encourage them to choose you over your competitors. A lead magnet can help you to do just that by offering any visitor to your site access to a valuable resource (for free) in exchange for their contact information. You may be asking yourself, “How does it benefit my business if I’m giving things away for free?”. Let’s answer that.
How Do They Help You Reach Your Audience?
Lead magnets help you to reach your audience in multiple ways. For one thing, they allow you to stand out from your competition by offering unique content that is specific to the nature of your business and valuable to your audience. You will know that your offering is considered valuable when people are willing to give up their personal contact information in exchange for what you have to show them.
They are also a means of showcasing your expertise on a given subject and teaching your audience what your brand is all about! Done correctly, your lead magnet can give your audience a sampling of what it might be like to work with you in the future.
Next, gathering contact information in this manner helps to ensure that the database that you are building is full of potential customers who have already shown an active interest in your product or service. This starts your relationship on a very positive note.
Lastly, once you have built up your database, you have a reliable email list that you can continue to educate about your business, thus building trust and brand loyalty, which will eventually lead to more conversions.
Examples of Lead Magnets
Let’s take a look at some of the most common types of lead magnets you are likely to find.
E-Books
An en-book will further educate your audience on a topic, especially if your landing page already gives an introduction to it. These are also an easy way to recycle your content (a collection of old blog posts, for example) into an info-packed offering.
Guides
Guides are particularly useful if your business is part of a saturated industry. Rather than trying to think up a bunch of new content, you can create a compilation of great articles that already exist on the subject.
Checklists
Checklists give your audience a step-by-step process to achieve a particular goal. They typically explain a process they must use to accomplish something.
Workbooks
Turn the focus of your business into a downloadable workbook that your audience can do at home. This will help them to apply the principals that your business is built upon and see the value in them before they commit to working with you.
Webinars
A webinar is a live talk, hosted by yourself and other colleagues in your area of expertise to further educate your audience. The best part about this is your audience’s ability to ask questions (which also gives you valuable feedback about what your audience is looking for).
Widgets
Widgets allow your audience to have a unique experience with your product or service. This is usually done before committing to anything by creating a custom widget.
Contests
Contests engage your audience by giving them some incentive in the form of a grand prize in exchange for their information and the sharing of your product or service. In order to run a contest, you must be in a position in which you can give something valuable away.
Special Offers
A special offer can be a coupon, free delivery, or any other option that adds value to your service or product. Be sure the offer is only available to those who see your lead magnet so it is truly valuable.
Free Trials
Offering a money-back guarantee or a no-obligation trial period is a great way to encourage your audience to personally try your product or service. When they realize how much they enjoy your product, they will be more inclined to purchase it.
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Quizzes
Quizzes are an easy way to both engage your audience and learn more about your potential customers. Not to mention, they can be fun for customers to take.
Video Courses
Pre-recorded video courses educate your audience. They also help them to understand who you are and what you stand for, and keep you active and relevant in their mind for the duration of the course.
Case Studies
A case study takes a real customer experience and turns it into a viable marketing tool by creating a case study. Don’t forget to get permission from your customer to use their story!
Cheat Sheets
If your topic is a little complicated and in-depth, create a cheat sheet that highlights the most important takeaways your audience should have. This will be greatly appreciated, and can help position you as an authority figure.
Creating Your Own Lead Magnet Strategy in Five Simple Steps
Now comes the fun part! Creating your own lead magnets doesn’t have to be incredibly hard and following this easy five-step protocol can help make the process even easier.
1. Identify Your Ideal Client
Don’t make the mistake of trying to appeal to everybody all at once. On the contrary, each lead magnet that you create should target a very specific niche (also called buyer persona) of your broader audience. In this way, you can ensure that you are speaking their language and offering them an incentive, freebie, or takeaway that will be considered valuable to them personally.
2. Create Your Value Proposition
Based on the buyer persona that you choose to work with, what type of guarantee can you make that will speak specifically to them? Understanding their pain points will eliminate guesswork and allow you to rely solely on giving your buyer something that they are already in the process of looking for. You don’t have to go overboard here, either. In fact, simpler is typically better. Determine the problem and offer a quick and easy solution to that problem.
3. Name It
The name of your lead magnet will be your audience’s first exposure to it, so make sure that it catches their attention. Just like crafting a catchy headline or drafting up the perfect hook for a novel, creating the right title for your lead magnet will help to make sure that it gets the exposure you are hoping for.
4. Choose Your Type
Earlier, we gave 13 examples of valuable lead magnets. This only scrapes the surface. The possibilities are truly endless regarding what you can offer to your audience. This can be the toughest part of the process simply due to the myriad choices available to you. But try not to get overwhelmed.
Remember that bigger is not always better. In other words, keep it simple! Pay attention to your own personal strengths and go from there. If, for example, you are an avid techie, creating a widget might be right up your alley. If you just scratched your head wondering what a widget is but you have an affinity for being in front of the camera, you might choose to host a webinar or create a video course instead.
5. Start Creating
Once you’ve figured out which type of lead magnet you’d like to create, get to work! A bunch of small steps will eventually get you to the end result of a valuable lead magnet you can use for years to come!
Follow this simple process and start creating lead magnets for all of your buyer personas today!
