You’ll know if you’ve heard me talking about landing pages and high value content offers that one strategy to grow your email list is by offering a lead magnet. Something valuable that your audience will handover their coveted email address for. It might be an ebook, a checklist, cheat sheet, a webinar video or some kind of challenge (I have a list of 44 ideas in my Offer Vault, hit me up if you need some inspiration).
Most of the time a lead magnet is offered free, sometimes there can be a micro offer that has a small cost, say £5 or £7 and these aren’t to be underestimated. It’s all part of the path to building goodwill with your audience and profit so micro offers can have a massive impact.
Your goal with creating a lead magnet is to build your list of engaged subscribers. We know from the hottest marketers on the planet that email marketing is alive and well - the difference between those who are super successful at this is that they focus on creating lead magnets that have a clear path to “eventually” converting a subscriber into a client. In other words, there’s a clear path to revenue.
Email marketing has the potential to drive revenue and sales in your business if you get intentional about it and understand a few key principles in order to map your path to profit. Let’s get your list generating revenue.
Oh by the way, if you’ve not yet launched your product yet or started offering your service you should absolutely be listing building now so lean in. If you’re wondering why - isn’t it so much better and less stressful to launch a new product to an engaged list instead of putting it out in the world and hearing crickets? I see this all too often. Business owners have these amazing ideas for a product, course, platform, service and they spend so much time, money and effort pouring themselves into creating it and yet no time, money or effort is put into building a list. When the big day arrives, surprise surprise there are no sales. Isn’t it better to future pace by launching to a hyper engaged list of your ideal customers.
If you don’t have a list, have a small list or want to up your game I’ve got you covered in Zero to Email Marketing Hero. It’ll have you up and running in less than five days with less than 45 minutes effort per day, no crazy tech and you can do it for next to nothing. I’ll walk you through it step by step and you’ll be pushing your profit lead magnet out to the world in no time. Seriously, you won’t need to pay a web developer it’s that easy.
Ok let’s get back to creating your lead magnet. I hope you’ve listened to my podcast on the 3 ways to grow your business, I explain the 3% rule holding your back. Very quickly I’ll recap. Out of your audience so anyone who visits your website or your ideal customers at any point in time, only 3% of them are ready to buy from you right now. That 3% are the hunters, they’re your impatient buyers and they want what you’ve got. Our focus with a lead magnet is to start to serve and start to build a relationship with the other 97% so that when they’re ready to buy they already know, like and trust you. Capeesh?
Plan the journey from subscriber to client
With a very well thought out lead magnet and top class email marketing, you can take that person on a journey to becoming a client. And that’s what marketing is, guiding a person on a journey to help them make the right decision for their business. When we do that with generosity and helping to solve little micro problems along the way you’re going to build a list of raving fans and eventually your list will become profitable for your business.
That end result, the conversion of subscriber to customer is where you start to think about your perfect lead magnet and make sure it’s aligned with this path. I’m probably stating the obvious but you want your lead magnet to be in the same ball park and on the same base as the product or service you want to sell and you want it to provide incredible value. You really want your ideal customer to think “wow if this is free imagine what the whole caboodle is like.” That won’t happen if your service is creating WordPress websites and your lead magnet is about SEO or social media marketing for example. Ok they might vaguely be in the same ballpark but they’re not on the same base. Your ideal customer is looking for a new website, thinking about SEO isn’t even a thing yet.
Now I need to come clean on my dirty little secret. I’m a little bit of a hyper subscribing hyper buyer when it comes to this stuff, I download literally thousands of lead magnets and I spend a lot of time analysing what’s good, what’s downright crap and what I think works. I’m not joking, I’ve signed up to over 3,000 lead magnets and micro offers in the last six months. It’s that analysis and what I’ve learned that I’m going to share with you to make sure you create a lead magnet that’s going to help you drive conversion, sales and profit.
So what have we figured out so far?
Your lead magnet needs to be on the same base as your product or service, it needs to add massive value and you need to have a clear path from subscriber to client.
What is your product or service that you’re ultimately selling?
What does your ideal customer need to know for them to want or need your thing?
Why am I asking you these questions? Having these things top of mind is going to help you stay on track and think about how you can position your high value content offer and be strategic about your lead magnet.
Well aligned lead magnet
Here are a few components to a well aligned lead magnet after you have clarity on those questions.
To start with, at the heart of your product or service there’s a real, genuine problem or pain that you solve for your ideal clients. They may have some thoughts, fears, concerns with where they are now. Your lead magnet (or your micro offer) is a little glimpse into what it will be like for them when they have solved that thing.
You have to meet your audience where they are first. Remember the 3% rule while you’re imagining this scenario. Picture a bridge, your ideal client is at point a on one side of the bridge and they want to get to the other side, point b. You can image a nice bridge made of wooden steps over a serene river through the alpine mountains or you might be imaging a rope bridge over a 400 ft crevasse with 60 mile per hour winds. This is a metaphor by the way for the level of pain or the size of the problem your product or service solves. Each little step along the bridge is a micro problem solved, you want to imagine pulling out on of those ruts or steps and that is your lead magnet.
Say your client has a business, they have a quick shoddy website they’ve thrown up but they know to scale their business in the future they’ll have to invest in a shiny new website that’s world class. They’re at point a. They know what a nightmare it is to create a website, they know they’ll need to choose a provider and it’s a mine field out there. They’re not sure what platform will be right for their business and they’re not sure what makes a good provider or a good solution to begin with. They’re worried about how much it’s going cost, if they will make the right decision and if it’ll be a waste of time and money. In a previous life maybe they’ve been burned by a cowboy builder. You have to meet them where they are and position your lead magnet to solve one of these micro problems for them. You start with the conversation that they are already having in their mind.
You’ll want to think of a lead magnet that joins them in that conversation. Think about our business owner starting to think about needing that new website…. Maybe the lead magnet could be a guide and it could be one of the following…
10 smart strategies to plan your perfect website cheat sheet
8 hidden costs you must know before building a website
How to write a website brief so you get what you want
A winning lead magnet
A winning lead magnet will instantly compel your ideal client to take action now, give over their email address and get that lead magnet. It’s got to have an attention grabbing, compelling headline. The topic of your lead magnet is pivotal to making sure you have the right types of conversations.
So to recap, your lead magnet is going give them a glimpse into the future, meets them where they are and it’s high quality high value content offer. Solving little problems on their journey you’re building up goodwill and deposits in the bank of your audience so you can make with drawls in the future.
What happens next
The lead magnet is important. But what needs to happen after someone has downloaded your lead magnet you need to continue the conversation as this is now how your audience gets to know you better, like you and eventually trust you enough to buy your thing. You’ll have a sequence of emails* after the download, this is important because you want it to follow up and get your subscriber used to receiving and opening emails from you. After that you want them to go into your main list to receive your regular emails keeping you top of mind until they make it to the top of the triangle and become part of the 3% ready to buy your solution.
(*By the way, Zero to Email Hero is packed with over 47 plug and play sequence emails for you to swipe. )
This is your funnel, your pipeline. Weirdly with my business and with clients who I work with to create a pipeline, I’ve seen someone download a lead magnet and buy a micro offer to becoming a client in a couple weeks and I’ve also seen it take a months. A healthy, growing list is a sign of a healthy growing pipeline and business.
By now you might start to see a comparison between having a really good list building lead magnet and a conversion or profit driven lead magnet. The latter is very intentional with a specific conversion or sale result.
Your action point
I want you to map out a client’s journey, a likely journey that your ideal client avatar might take to get from a to b, to travel from where they are now to where they want to be over that bridge. Thinking about their thoughts, feelings at each step of the way. By mapping out this exercise you are going to come up with the lead magnets that will add massive value.
Let me share a real life journey that one of my client’s clients has taken to become a client. They were frustrated, concerned about pricing their business. It’s a competitive world that’s rapidly changing due to covid so she’s worried about it and thinking about it. Scrolling on Facebook she sees a sponsored ad for a “pricing cheat sheet” aimed specifically at her niche. She downloads the guide, receives and opens the lead magnet drip emails all of which add massive value. She pops onto Instagram to message and say how it’s helped, follows the page and starts engaging on other social posts. She sees an insta story about an upcoming webinar and signs up. The webinar followup email makes a special offer with a one to one call which she books onto and becomes a client. Phew, Julie has been in the funnel for approximately 10 weeks. Everything has been designed for her to get to know, like, trust and eventually become a client when she’s had one small problem solved and been shown a glimpse into how the product is going to help her business get to where she wants it to be.
You might think that’s a lot of effort but how many Julie’s do you have in your ecosystem right now? Don’t you think it’ll feel great to build a list of Julies who eventually become clients but also raving fans and advocates of your product or service? That is super exciting to me, the path might be quite long but I’d rather have lots of people on the path than none at all. Building a pipeline and a list is how you build a thriving business. I really hope you see how it all works together and how you can have lead magnets and profit driven lead magnets with intention and purpose.
By the way, you’ll find some lead magnets will be more effective than others. It’s all about testing but before you get to that it’s your duty to get to know your ideal client avatar really, really well. If you want them to part with their hard earned cash with you for your products or services then don’t you owe it to get to know them? Really get to know their problems and fully understand how you can help them move away from pain, move towards their desired outcome or result. Start with your client in mind, end with them in mind and add value to them on every step of the journey.
When you start the conversation your client is already having in their mind, you have the right lead magnet or micro offer that’s driven by generosity and adding value, you follow up with the genuine intention of walking your potential client on a journey to make the right decision for them - then my friend, you are destined for great things.
If you’ve thought of a lead magnet and you’re wondering what to do next, you’ll definitely want to get your hands on next week's blog and podcast when I’ll be talking about TRAFFIC.
