In sales and marketing, Leads are potential customers. They are those who show interest in your product or services and may eventually become active customers.
Leads are important to any business to boost sales and to grow your customer base.
Having established the importance of Leads, the next question is:
- How to generate Leads?
- How to attract people to your products or services?
One way to do that is through Lead Magnets.
In this guide, you'll learn everything about lead magnets that will help you to quickly grow your email list.
Read on to find out more!
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What Are Lead Magnets?
Lead magnets are free samples of a product or services or any other incentives given out to prospective customers in exchange for their contact details to generate leads.
These lead magnets are generally some sort of valuable content that address your target audience pain-points.
The leads you generate by offering lead magnets are then directed down the marketing funnel to become customers in the long run.
Thus, if you want to boost your overall marketing ROI on your online business, you need quality leads to help your business grow.
And the best way to do this is to use Lead Magnets.
How Lead Magnet Works?
Before adopting lead magnets as your marketing strategy, you need a full understanding of how it works. Here is how.
When potential customers apply for a free sample of your product or service, they provide their contact details – email address preferably, to get access to the free sample.
The provided details are then passed as a sales lead. With their contact information in hand, you can continually send adverts and newsletters of your product to them, with an appropriate call to action.
Please note that users who don't find the free resources valuable are more likely to unsubscribe. That is why it is important that the resources you're offering for free should solve a particular problem your prospects are trying to solve.
Benefits of Lead Magnets
Asides from the major benefit of lead magnets – creating sales leads, there are other interesting benefits lead magnets has to offer, like;
1. Building E-mail Lists
Email is the most effective way to communicate with prospective customers, and there is no better way to do it than to build an email list. This is where lead magnets come into play. When your audience drops their email address, you can collate it to build an email list where you can send newsletters, offers and ads.
If you want to learn more, check out our article - Best Email List Building Tools, where I have compared popular tools that can help you quickly grow your email subscribers.
2. Developing Relationships with Prospects
Most businesses have a high number of competitors and every business wants to be at the forefront. It takes a lot to be in this position and to remain there for a longer time. That is why you need to develop a form of relationship with your prospective customers through lead magnets. Your prospects may have submitted their contact information, but reaching out to them is a way of nurturing the newfound relationship you have with them.
3. Enhancing Recognition
When you frequently reach out to your audience through their provided contact details, you also enhance recognition. When they constantly receive follow-up emails, texts, or calls from you, they get comfortable with it and build trust. Although some may see it as a nuisance.
Giving an Idea of What to Expect
From the samples and trials offered for free, your would-be customers can get a general idea of what your product or service has to offer. A lead magnet is a way of silently advertising your business and at the same time leaving your prospects with a need for more.
Lead Magnet Ideas
As a marketer, your intuitive reasoning should be on how to turn every opportunity into sales. Several things can be used as Lead magnets as far as they are important to your prospects. Below are some types of Lead magnets that you can create.
Guides and Tips
Most people are in search for guides and tips on a particular subject matter and that can be used as an advantage.
For example, if you are in the cosmetics business and have beauty products on sale on your website, you can create a downloadable PDF as lead magnets on beauty tips or guides that educate people on how to properly apply a beauty product.
You can add a subscription form on your blog with a clear call-to-action telling visitors to download the PDF in return for their email address.
Below is an example of lead magnet from OptinMonster where they're teaching 12 proven ways to convert abandoning visitors into subscribers.
Offer Free Samples
People like to get free samples of the product they love. Offering free samples of your product is another exciting way to force your visitors to subscribe to your email list.
Once they are inside your email list, you can send them regular newsletters with offers and discounts. If they like the free samples, then they are more likely to buy your paid products.
This method is used by many online businesses to grow their email list and boost their marketing campaigns.
Online Quiz and Survey
Online quiz and survey are engaging and add more life to a website. It can also be used to bring potential buyers.
The trick here is to get people to partake in a short quiz or survey and give them results after they fill in their contact details. However, your quiz or survey idea has to be appealing to get people to partake in it.
For example, if you are a realtor in Thousand Oaks, California, you can have a survey on how much a house costs in California. A customer who wants to relocate to California or buy a house there, will complete the survey but will have to fill in their mail address to get the result.
One of the finest tools that you can use on your website or blog to allow your site visitors to take quiz is Thrive Quiz Builder. Using this tool, you can create engaging quizzes without touching a single line of code.
Free Trials and Demo
Everybody loves freebies. Other ideas that can be implemented as a lead magnet are free trials and demo.
A great example of a free trial lead magnet is Semrush's free trial. The trial grants new users limited free searches but requires them to enter their e-mail addresses to get access to it.
After exhausting their free search, customers are faced with the option of either subscribing or missing out on the benefits.
Discounts
Another idea for a lead magnet is to give out discounts. When prospective customers know the value of your product or service, and you are offering a discount for a limited time, they will be convinced to purchase to enjoy the discount.
The discounts can be in form of a buy one get one free or free shipping. Although this is not as free as the rest, it offers a way to help customers save, and everybody loves discounts.
Webinars and Videos
Webinars are digital seminars to instruct your audience on a particular subject matter. Using popular webinar software, you can invited people to your webinars and impart them the right knowledge, training, and expertise to solve a particular problem.
These webinars and videos can be incorporated as lead magnets and offered as a free download by your prospects when they drop their contact information.
Types of Lead Magnets
There are different types of lead magnets to cater to different cases, depending on how you want it. It could be Time-dependent or evergreen.
Time-dependent Lead Magnets
These lead magnets are valid only for a while. Take Bella Rosa, for instance, an author who releases snippets of her book, weekly, to those who subscribe to her newsletter. Her lead magnet idea – book snippet, becomes irrelevant when her book gets finally published and sales are already made. For every new book series, she sends out a different snippet to attract readers.
Permanent Lead Magnets
Permanent lead magnets last for a very long time. An example is a link on an insurance company’s website for visitors to get a free quote. This link requires that they provide their contact information before they get a quote. In this case, the lead magnet - free quote, remains permanent as far as people keep clicking on the link to get a quote or as far as the company remains in existence.
How to Create Lead Magnets?
Creating a lead magnet is not as difficult as you think, however, there are steps and tips on how to go about it. Here are some:
1. Brainstorm for ideas
Before creating a lead magnet, you need to have an idea of the appropriate kind of lead magnet to suit your business.
Is it a "how-to" guide? or a webinar? or a free trial? The answer to these questions is dependent on your business kind.
2. Identify problems your prospect face and how you can solve that
After brainstorming for ideas, the next thing is to identify the problems customers to your business are facing and try to address them with your lead magnet.
Take, for instance, one of the problems people have with insurance is how to get a quote, if you are in the insurance business, you can make your quote available online instead of getting them to come down to your office.
That way, you've solved a problem. You need to create a persona for your buyers to understand what they need.
3. Study your competitors
You need to stand out to stay ahead of your competitors.
Do not try to copy them because they have more success stories, rather, study them to understand how they do it.
Replicate their ideas in a better way and add something different to it.
4. What should prospects do after receiving the freebie?
The reason for the lead magnet is to nudge your prospective customers into becoming active customers after getting a free sample.
Your lead magnet should contain some sort of instruction or silent messages for recipients to take action.
These actions can be in the form of clicking a link to make a purchase or participate in the partner training programme. All this is to develop your leads and take your buyer-seller relationship to the next level.
5. Determine how your opt-in page will look
The opt-in page design determines whether or not recipients will truly opt-in. The simpler your page, the better. The more good things you say about your product or service, the more unreal it will become. People lose interest in things they feel are too good to be true, so keep it short and straight to the point.
Below I have mentioned some Lead Magnet Creator Tools that you can use to make your first lead magnet in PDF format.
Tools to create Lead Magnets in PDF form
Here are some important lead magnet creators that can be used to create lead magnets in PDF:
1. Google Docs. It is a free online tool by Google. You can easily create a simple guide, checklist, templates, research reports and others in Google Docs. Once your ready with your lead magnet, you can download it as a PDF by going to File >> Download >> PDF Document (.pdf).
If you want to convert your existing content in the form of a blog post or YouTube videos or Facebook Posts, then I would recommend you to try the following tool in our list.
2. Designrr. It is one of the best eBook creator software that allows you to convert your existing content in the form of downloadable PDF. For example, to convert your blog article into an eBook, you just need to enter the blog URL in Designrr tool, select the template and import it.
It also has a built-in editor where you tweak the design of your eBook by changing the fonts, background color, adding images, header & footer, padding, margins, table of contents and others. Checkout the Designrr review to know more about this wonderful tool where I have explained all its key features & benefits, pros and cons, price, alternatives and more.
When your eBook is ready, you can download it and share it on your website. You can add the eBook on your subscription form where visitors can download it after subscribing to your email list.
How to Drive Traffic to Your Lead Magnet Opt-in?
Once you have your lead magnet idea, creating it is not a problem. The issue lies with getting recipients to opt-in. There are ways to do that.
Advertise your lead magnet on social media
Use social media to your advantage. You can post the opt-in page on all your social media platforms - Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. You can also recruit a media influencer to help you with this task. These influencers have tons of followers who will be interested in your product or service.
Draw in traffic through ads
Facebook ads may not be the best form of ad, but it has a way of drawing targeted traffic. To get the most out of Facebook, team up with a pro who knows how to run ads on Facebook. You can also combined it with Google ads to drive traffic to your landing page that displays subscription form containing your lead magnet to your site visitors.
Keep sending E-mails
With the e-mail lists you’ve created – both old and recent ones, you can send as many emails as you want. The e-mail is another way to bring recipients to opt-in after participating in free samples.
What Makes a Good Lead Magnet?
Several things make a good lead magnet, like:
Well-tailored to a target problem
Your selected lead magnet should be directed towards solving a problem. Only then can it be seen as more useful. A fuzzy lead magnet may not likely interest your prospects, but you can create more than one lead magnet to provide different solutions to different problems.
Must be seen as high value
A good lead magnet should be seen by your audience as a thing of value. The psychology behind it is that, if your audience thinks you are giving a thing of value for free, they will have a reason to give their contact details.
Should be attractive
Attraction is another characteristic of a good lead magnet. The attraction brings fast consumption, which in turn brings curiosity. Curiosity brings customers. For instance, if a financial consultancy creates a lead magnet and the idea is a guide on how to make money through YouTube. No doubt, this will have fast consumption and the curious-minded readers will try out what the guide says. If it turns out to be a success, your audience will come back to see what else you can offer.
Should convince customers
Originally, the main reason for offering lead magnets is to bring prospective customers and subtly guiding them towards becoming paying customers. However, if your lead magnets are not convincing enough to customers, it has failed this purpose. To bring in leads, your lead magnets must leave customers without a doubt that your product or service is better and patronize you.
What if I don’t get any leads?
The chances of not getting any lead are zero to none. Everybody loves free samples and discounts. When you used that to your advantage, you are sure to get leads. Just be sure you have the right audience and an effective lead magnet.
How to Present Lead Magnets to Your Audience?
The offer for the lead magnet is usually accompanied by a form where visitors to your website can fill in their details before getting a freebie. There are several ways to present a lead magnet.
Pop-ups
Pop-ups are usually small windows that appear over a web page when using your browser. They appear over open tabs without interrupting your browsing. They are a form of advertisement and can be used to create lead magnets offers.
Landing pages
Landing pages are web pages exclusively for lead magnets. It lets you make special marketing deals and converts visitors into leads. You can advertise your lead magnet here with the sign-in form to get visitors’ details.
Follow-Up E-mail
When recipients give their mail address for a lead magnet offer, they usually receive a mail of acknowledgement: follow-up mail. This mail often contains a direct link to access the lead magnet. This kind of presentation is often used for previous recipients to create awareness of a new product or existing one.
Thank you page
The thank-you page is an acknowledgement page for detail submission. Visitors see this page right after submitting their contact details for a lead magnet. This page may also contain direct links to access the lead magnet.
Popular email marketing service provider such as ConvertKit allows you to create beautiful and responsive email opt-in forms that you can display on your website to offer lead magnets in return for their email address.
You can join ConvertKit for free and collect up to 300 subscribers. You can also get huge discounts on ConvertKit during this year Black Friday event. Check out this link to know more about the deal - ConverKit Black Friday.
How to Test Lead Magnets?
It is important to test-run your lead magnets before scaling them to its full potential. This way, you get to rate its effectiveness and see what else can work better. It is also popularly known as A/B test.
First, you need to create different lead magnets for different types of problems. Then you examine the result to conclude on which works best.
For example, you can create lead magnets as webinars and another as a "how-to" guide. Then design a different marketing strategy for each, like the landing page.
You can then see which of the two is more effective. The most effective should be used as the primary lead magnet.
To run A/B test on your lead magnets, I would recommend you to try ConvertPro. Apart from A/B test, it also offer the following important features:
- Drag and Drop Editor
- Multi-step Call-to-Actions
- Ready-to-use Templates
- Google Analytics Integration
- 30+ Mailer Integrations
- Exit Intent Popups
- On-Click Popups
- Info-bar / Slide-in
- After Post / Inline CTA's
- Yes / No Forms
- Full Screen CTA's
- Convert Mat
- Page Level Targeting
- Split / AB Testing
- Referrer Detection
- Device Detection
- AdBlock Detection
- Product Updates
- Premium Support
- Unlimited Website Usage
- Risk-Free Guarantee
Get ConvertPro
The most affordable lead generation plugin for WordPress website.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Do Lead Magnet Works?
Lead magnets have been tested by experts and have been found effective. However, the possibility of its working depends on how you strategize it.
Why do I need Lead Magnets?
As a business owner or salesperson, you know how important customers are to your business. Lead magnet brings in prospects that may become paying customers.
What if I don't get any leads?
The chances of not getting any lead are zero to none. Everybody loves free samples and discounts. When you used that to your advantage, you are sure to get leads. Just be sure you have the right audience and an effective lead magnet.
Wrapping Up
Lead magnets are one of the tested-and-tried marketing tools available today. They're an effective way to pull in customers and generate more sales for your business.
As a salesperson or business owner, incorporating one or more lead magnets is a sure-fire way to quickly grow your email list and drive more conversions.
The above details will help you on your marketing journey. Feel free to try out any one of the mentioned Lead magnets!
Which lead magnet is working best for your business? Please offer your comment below.
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