Do you know you just had a visitor on your website? And there is a high chance that he would never return?
According to statistics, an average visitor spends no more than 15 seconds on a website, and this is the time you can either make it or break it.
It is possible that you’ve been maintaining a high number of daily traffic and monthly leads. But did you know that you could also be losing a lot of leads and hence money if you do not have a funnel strategy that involves lead capture and email automation?
Converging lines of evidence suggest that email generates $38 for every $1 spent, which is an astounding 3,800% ROI, making it one of the most effective marketing methods.
It does not matter whether you are selling digital products or physical products; you need to grow your audience, build your authority, and position yourself as an expert in your niche.
For this, it is important to understand a buyer’s journey. No one bumps on a website and then starts buying right away. There is a process that takes a visitor to become a lead and then a customer that eventually purchases from you.
First, you have to know your customers/visitors, identify their pain points, and be able to relate with them. However, it is almost impossible for every visitor to submit his details.
People are now very cautious about submitting their data online. So you have to show that they can trust you or you have to entice them to do so.
That means you have to give them something in exchange for their contact information. Additionally, whatever you want to offer must be relevant and valuable to your visitors. You can offer this for free for their contact information. This is called lead capturing.
Then you can use this to update them about your offers, more resources through email marketing.
In essence, a lead magnet is a secret sauce for growing a mailing list fast!
What is a lead magnet?
A lead magnet is a term used by marketers to describe anything that is given for free to motivate people to take certain actions. Such action could involve registration for a webinar or email sign-ups.
The offers usually include free eBooks, guides, cheat sheets, or checklists.
If you want to know how to create irresistible lead magnets for your business and use that to double your revenue, then read on!
Top Strategies to Create The Best Lead Magnet for Your Business
Make it Solve a Particular Problem
Identify your customer persona and target them likewise
One of the best strategies to acquire email registrations smarter and faster is by creating a lead magnet that solves ‘one particular problem’. It is achievable through a problem-oriented approach.
Never create a lead magnet without first doing audience research. See your lead magnet as a unique product on its own. What is a product worth if there is no audience to use it?
Here are few lead magnet ideas for a health and fitness website with a big female audience :
“Free Cheat Sheet Reveals the 5 SNACKS You Must Avoid to Lose Belly Fat Fast”
Or
“5 easy yoga poses you can do at home to lose postpartum belly fat”
Hence, we recommend you perform background research on what people actually want.
Make it Valuable
“Identify your value proposition and customer’s perceived value”
A lead magnet should give visitors compelling reasons to download. Identify a doable promise and deliver instantly to move them down the funnel.
Just because it is free should not mean that you will give anything that holds no value to you. It should be something you are proud of and yet have a high perceived value.
“The customer value perception is what they want; your value proposition is what you offer to the customer. IF you want a win-win situation, you both need to match.”
One place to test your lead magnet idea is on Facebook groups and other social media platforms. For instance, you could join some Facebook groups related to your service. Try as much as possible to answer questions and provide solutions to questions asked by the group members.
It is just a means to gain a certain level of recognition.
The next stage is to pitch your idea; you can use the template below and modify it to suit your business; The hypothetical case below focuses on a lead magnet to get email subscriptions for an online course launching.
“Hey everyone. I have been working on a course that teaches you how to run Facebook ads for your business and get $3 for every $1 ad spend. We have tried this Facebook ads method for several of our clients, and it works! This training is going to be FREE but will only be available for a limited time.
Click the link below to join the waiting list, and you’d be the first to be notified when the course is ready!
Guess what a free PDF guide is included!”
If you look at the template above, you can notice that it promises something unique for free. It also shows measurable results ($3 for every $1 ad spend) and has social proof.
It uses ‘Fear-of-missing-out’ ( FOMO) as a part of a marketing strategy to increase conversion rates. Stats show that more than half of the world (especially millennials) purchase because of FOMO, and if implemented correctly FOMO can increase the conversion rates by 40%-200%.
This method works effectively, and you can even gather as much as 2000 emails before creating your lead magnet.
(We recommend that you inform the group admin that you have something to promote to avoid getting banned for self-promotion)
Demonstrate Your Expertise
You can demonstrate your expertise by showing how much grasp you have of the subject in real-life use cases. It comes in the form of a portfolio. If you have not started building your portfolio, it is time for you to have one.
Your project portfolio does not just demonstrate your expertise; it is your 24/7 sales machine. Your project portfolio is your lead capture engine that you must share on all your social media profiles and landing pages.
One easy way to build your portfolio fast is to do something for free. Do this for two or three clients and add these to your portfolio. Ask the clients to give you testimonials and share their success stories.
People love success stories; video success stories are even better and engaging. They convert more. Share these testimonials and success stories on your landing pages and even on your social media accounts.
Use Case Studies and Success Stories
Case studies and success stories position you as an expert and give you an authority in your niche. Additionally, it naturally builds trust in your audience.
If you show people a walk-through of your method, it demonstrates that you have your unique approach that works.
Here is an awesome example of case study by Backlinko:
Case studies and success stories work well with all lead magnet types, but you can see good results with webinar lead magnets.
You need to know how to pass the message. For instance;
“Alex was doing just $1000 per month in sales on his e-commerce store. He only managed to convert by just 10 percent. Today, Alex is doing $10,000 per day in sales.
Would you like to know how we scaled his e-commerce store from $1000 per month to $10,000 in sales per month?
Register for this webinar now and discover the hidden Facebook ads marketing strategy we use to scale businesses to six figures within 90 days.”
Some more lead magnet tips:
Offer a Step-by-step Guide: Promise a walk-through that offers a step-by-step approach.
Make your lead magnet beginner-friendly.
Promise that no matter their level of experience, be it a beginner, intermediate, or expert, they would find your lead magnet useful and deliver on that.
Leverage ‘how-to’ approaches to promote your lead magnets.
And do not stop there. Try as much as possible to give free support.
Include a section for Frequency Asked Questions (FAQs) on your landing pages and copies so that the audience can know what to expect.
Top Lead Magnet Ideas with Examples
Checklists
Checklists are one of the highest converting lead magnets. They are both easy to create and consume. They are designed to let the audience get the needed information right away.
Here’s a cheat checklist magnet example of an ultra-specific and actionable checklist from backlinko.
Webinars
Videos are the king of content marketing in 2020 and beyond. If you want to build interaction fast and convert your followers to the audience very fast, then try videos. Gone are the days when webinar softwares used to cost a fortune.
Live appearances will make it easy to create stronger connections with your audience. As an incentive to participate in the webinar, offer a free EBook. This approach uses a double lead magnet system, a free webinar, and a downloadable EBook, workbook, or checklist.
Here is an old webinar lead magnet example from Neil Patel
Webinars generally have higher perceived value, and in the end, you can upsell a digital product. If you are creating a webinar, then make sure to provide perceived value as most webinars miss this part and become too salesy these days.
Cheatsheets
Cheat Sheets are great as a resource for quick references. They are a little easy and fast to create. Cheat Sheets can be used to encourage email subscriptions on website popups or as content upgrades. The purpose of cheat sheets is to educate your audience on how to reach their goals faster. Here is a cheat sheet example from Smartblogger.
EBooks
These are one of the most popular types of lead magnets that are very easy to create. You can easily create one for free using Canva eBook templates.
Try as much to keep eBook lead magnets as short as possible. Additionally, pack it with lots of resources and endeavor to make it follow a step-by-step approach in a beginner-friendly manner.
My favorite lead magnet ebook example is from optinmonster and is spot-on for converting its visitors to subscribers.
Templates
A template is a digital asset that serves as an outline or a blueprint to create something new. These are usually tested and proven content materials. They are great lead magnets as they can be used as inspiration or customized to create something new according to needs.
These Facebook Ad templates are quite popular lead magnets from DigitalMarketer
A mini-course
A mini-course is a good and powerful idea to provide solutions to visitor pain points and turn them into subscribers. These mini-courses can be divided into small parts and delivered overtime via email to keep customers engaging with your brand.
This mini free course from enchanting marketing is a good example of a free lead magnet course.
Discounts and Giveaways
This list would be incomplete without discounts and giveaways. These are powerful and simple lead magnets to build email lists for e-commerce stores. These discounts can range from free shipping to dollar-off coupon for first-time visitors.
Here are a few lead magnet examples for first-time visitors:
And another one lead magnet idea for a giveaway from pottery barn
These work as people love free stuff and discounts. Also, sharing an email id can potentially help them save some dollars on their future purchase.
Bonus Tip: Do it Again (Make more than one less Magnet)
Now once you have successfully launched your lead magnet and you may have started getting some email subscriptions. But do not stop there. The value delivery chain is endless.
The more value you deliver, the more chances of getting more irresistible lead magnets subscriptions. Periodically publish cheat sheets, checklists that summarize the content in your lead magnets and make them as persuasive as possible.
The traditional AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action) approach to copywriting still works, and we encourage you to leverage it to market your irresistible lead magnets.
Wrap up:
Lead magnets have dominated the marketing industry, and they are here to stay. It does not matter what you are selling; you should have a lead magnet. Provide something highly valuable following the tactics we have outlined so far, and you would watch your email list grow within a short period. You might have heard the famous adage “money is in the list”, it is time for you to prove it.