Attracting new customers and subscribers requires one to develop content we commonly call lead magnets. If you have just started your journey into online marketing and are willing to learn about lead generation, you have landed on the right page. In this guide, we will understand lead magnets from inside and out. We will discuss why you should use them in your lead generation campaigns and how to build lead magnets that genuinely convert. Sounds interesting? Let’s get started!
What is a lead magnet?
Lead magnets are content that is delivered to potential buyers in exchange for their contact information. These are quite valuable assets during lead generation as they boost conversion rates. Modern-day customers are savvy and don’t accept vague promises made by marketers. They do their due diligence and are always looking for more information to make a solid purchasing decision.
“Like flowers attract bees, lead magnets attract potential prospects.”
This is precisely where lead magnets come to the rescue. Lead magnets are highly targeted content that is shared with customers seeking more information about a company, product, or service. These are free of charge yet brimming with value for the customers. Most online transactions go through multiple touchpoints where lead magnets provide the necessary educational value. Now that you know what lead magnets are, let’s dive deeper and figure out why you need them anyway.
What are the benefits of creating lead magnets?
Customer acquisition is a massive part of growing a business. This is because it is quite challenging to grab someone’s attention in this ever so noisy world of marketing. Lead magnets act as an incentive to attract your target audience and collect their personal information while providing something valuable. Here are some of the critical advantages of creating lead magnets:
Helps build a strong brand image
Lead magnets give you the opportunity to provide free information in your quest to build a solid business-customer relationship. You will gain prospects’ trust and influence them to convert eventually. The information in the lead magnets, if appropriately developed, helps brands showcase their abilities and skills – positioning themselves as industry experts and leaders.
Leverage personalized targeting
Lead magnets, as you will learn later, perform best when personalized. The content in the lead magnet shouldn’t be generic. It should be highly targeted and offer incentives and discounts to prospects that intend to convert. Proper understanding of the target audience helps develop highly personalized lead magnets.
Makes information more accessible
You render your business helpful when prospects find the information in your lead magnets valuable. Keeping the content easily digestible, visually appealing, and well-structured helps the audience grasp the information quickly and provide instant gratification.
How to create the best lead magnets?
The best lead magnets are relevant, valuable, and serve the audience a purpose. Developing the best lead magnets for your business isn’t rocket science. Just follow these steps, and you’ll be good –
Find your target audience and figure out their pain points
Creating a lead magnet that converts requires one to figure out the target audience. You should know who you are creating the lead magnets for. In other words, you should pen down your ideal customers to make the lead magnets more personal and targeted. Although you’ll require an in-depth understanding of your buyer persona, figuring out your target audience will be enough for now.
What are the common obstacles your potential customers struggle with? You should have a list of problems your target audience experiences. The lead magnets should have the ability to help the audience solve them. This is where you will add value to your prospects’ lives. Make sure you focus on what they should know to overcome the problem instead of promoting your products or services.
Find a fix for their problems
Instant lead generation thrives on instant gratification. Your lead magnets are good as long as they help solve the problems quickly. After all, you want the prospects to convert now, not six months down the line. The idea here is to provide the leads with valuable information that they can apply now and get results.
Produce relevant and unique content
It’s time to put all the information into a format that your target audience would love. The content format depends entirely on the buyer journey you designed during campaign formation. Different stages of the buyer’s journey will require different lead magnets. Here’s a quick rundown of the lead magnets that work during the three stages of the buyer’s journey – 1) Awareness, 2) Consideration, and 3) Decision.
Apply tempting and instant CTA
Indeed, your leads will use the gated content to their benefit. But, that is not where you want the lead magnet’s impact to end. You want the leads to take action and convert. To achieve that, you should add call-to-actions prompting the recipients to take action now. Encourage them to do business with you.
What are the different types of lead magnets?
So, which lead magnet should you prepare for your target audience? Let’s discuss the different types of lead magnets you can create and offer to your prospects.
Whitepaper – A classic, efficient leadmagnet
A whitepaper helps share in-depth information, advice, or perspective with the target audience. The idea is to give the readers an understanding of complex issues regarding the industry or product and what steps were required to overcome them. Whitepapers are quite helpful in marketing campaigns with a long sales cycle.
Webinar – Hit or miss
Marketers firmly believe in the power of video. Webinars help develop engaging video content that can be shared with the audience and later used to conduct a Q&A session. You can offer on-demand webinars and use them to generate leads for months or years to come. However, you’d want to keep the webinar focused on a specific issue for better impact.
E-Book – a useful guide to something new
eBooks or guides help solve customers’ pain points. They target the issues your audience is facing by sharing content that can range from a few to over a hundred pages. eBooks and guides aren’t data-heavy, i.e., they are highly visual, entertaining, engaging, and conversational – giving the audience information in a friendlier way.
Demo or free trial – show of your product
Smart customers try before they buy. That’s one reason why you always find SaaS companies offering free trials upon successful signups. Certain companies even ship product samples to prospects’ homes to generate leads! After all, they get their addresses and personal information in return. Such lead magnets are powerful since the prospects might make an immediate purchase if they liked the product.
Case studies – let your clients be you ambassadors
Do you want your audience to have compelling proof of your abilities? Create and share case studies. You can convert case studies into lead magnets just by putting them together as a downloadable PDF. Gate the case studies by asking customers to register before downloading.
Quizzes – challenge your readers
Why not add interactive elements to your website or marketing campaigns? After all, such elements attract user attention and influence purchasing decisions. We highly recommend you create quizzes, surveys, or polls for the target audience, asking them to register to be a part of it. A recent study shows that companies that use lead generation quizzes can lower their cost per lead by up to 90 percent!
So how does your organisation utilize lead magnets the best way?
Believe us – not many companies are taking complete advantage of lead magnets, including your competitors. Lead magnets are crucial if you want to build a solid business-customer relationship. After all, these attract potential buyers and influence their purchasing decisions. Therefore, it is better if you start thinking outside the box and develop high-quality lead magnets off the bat. You will be blown away by the top-dollar transactions you’ll generate. Did you find this post helpful? Let us know in the comments. Also, don’t forget to check out other informative posts on the blog!
