Category Archives for "Lead Magnet"

What are your strengths?

So I’ve been sitting here thinking about my strengths, you know the ones that everyone else knows you have but sometimes you doubt yourself. Well, I started thinking about lead magnets, I’m a marketer and that’s just where my thoughts go sometimes – I mean you think about lead magnets too right, otherwise you wouldn’t be interested in this post right now 😉

Anyway I digress, it hit me like a hammer and I thought holy crap this is it, over the last 12 years my focus on a daily basis has been about building Partnerships, you know the ones people call Strategic Alliances or Joint Venture Marketing opportunities etc. The type that skyrocket your business – those ones!

The importance of Lead Magnets!

Well every one of those conversations that I’ve had has led me to either download a lead magnet, create a lead magnet, tweak a lead magnet, send a lead magnet, read someone else’s lead magnet, find typo’s in a lead magnet, help with the layout of a lead magnet, build the marketing funnel around a lead magnet, edit a lead magnet or adjust the call to action in a lead magnet and you know what I like to do in my spare time…you guessed it… download lead magnets!

So clearly I’m a lead magnet freak or as I call myself “A Lead Magnet Strategist” and I feel like screaming it from the rooftops… why you ask?

Because it’s a lead magnet that has lead to the insane growth of all of the companies I’ve worked with. 

People call me a rain maker, the Partnerships Queen, but I couldn’t do what I do without the humble lead magnet!

In fact as I’m sitting here having had this light bulb moment I started reminiscing about the very first critical conversation I had about a lead magnet, which was probably around 2008 (from memory). I was dealing with a lovely keynote speaker (Siimon Reynolds actually), and he was telling me about his keynote and I asked him about the next step, how was he going to capture people’s details? What was he selling? What did his funnel look like?

Well ,I was stunned to learn, that at that time, he just did his keynote (which was exceptional I might add) and walked off stage!

What a missed opportunity and how inefficient – efficiency is a BIG value of mine. Anyway needless to say I sat down with Siimon that very week and we started to map out a bit of a funnel so he could really capitalise on the opportunity at hand but more importantly, he could continue to add value to those that liked what he stood for.

So I sit here nearly 10 years later and it’s obvious that this ‘lead magnet’ phenomenon isn’t going anywhere soon!

In fact if anything it’s gaining traction, which I think is remarkable considering that the lead magnet has been around in one form or another since the 1940’s, possibly earlier!

Now if you’ve read this far and still don’t actually know what a lead magnet is then, thank you for waiting this long and more over let me explain!

What exactly is a lead magnet?

So in it’s simplest terms a lead magnet is a downloadable file. It could be a document (PDF) or it could be an audio (MP3) or a video (MP4) or a series of video’s like a free course for instance. Generally it will fall into one of those 3 categories, it could also be a template that fits into a particular software and as a result, would have a different file extension but I’d say at least 90% would fall into the above 3 categories. Though your lead magnet could be a free event but I would still recommend having a lead magnet into that which is a downloadable.

Now what do you put into a lead magnet I hear you ask?

The answer is up to you, well up to your clients really.

You see the best lead magnets contain the answer or answers to your clients most pressing issues.

Think about the top 5 things that you get asked all the time, or think about a cheat sheet that you could create to help your potential clients. I would recommend that you also consult google keywords tool or other websites that can give you an insight into what people are searching for.

Perhaps you could give them a quick audio to help them with one particular issue, maybe there’s some hints and tips you could offer on how to save money when considering your product or service. It could be a swipe file that you’ve pulled together or a checklist or even a spreadsheet template…basically anything that will add value and provide a short cut for your clients.

So your first job is to stop and think about that right now… insert thinking music here:)

I hope you’ve come up with a few things.

If not ask yourself these 5 questions and record your answers:

These are the 5 questions:

1. What am I known for or what do other people think I’m an expert in?
2. What are 5 things that I know about my specific industry or niche?
3. What is keeping my clients up at night?
4. What is stopping my prospective clients from spending money with me right now?
5. What is a quick win that I could leave my potential clients with?

Great, now that you have an outline you are well on your way to creating your lead magnet.

Keep it short, brevity is one of the most important things. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve downloaded a lead magnet or an ebook and it’s just under 100 pages! That’s a short story not a valuable piece of content that I can easily digest.

The other issue I see and I’m guilty of this one myself is putting too much value into your lead magnet, so once you have some ideas run them by someone close to you in your target market… hopefully they will tell you if you have bamboozled them or given them so much value that they don’t need you anymore. Neither of these outcomes is what we are aiming for here!

It’s also easy to assume people know as much as you do about your topic, well guess what? They don’t and that’s why they are coming to you in the first place. So yes you do need to teach your prospective clients the absolute basics most of the time – I know it seems like it’s not the right thing to do and of course you can preface it by saying if you’re a beginner you may not know that …(blah, blah, blah)

I can tell you though, you can’t assume that your prospective client has even the first clue in how to do what you do, so break it down into bite sized pieces for them.

Once you’ve sat down and really thought this through, you should start thinking about a snazzy title for your lead magnet. Anything with numbers usually converts well as people want something measurable.

So think along these lines:

3 tips to..

The 5 things you didn’t know about…

How to save money in 5 easy steps…

The 20 point 1 page checklist to teach you…

Then once you’ve worked all that out, you will need to put pen to paper.

Ideally, by the time you’re done, you will have something that you can read whilst having a cup of tea or coffee (without it going cold).

Ideally, it has plenty of value. It should leave your reader thinking wow this person really knows their stuff and it should have a logical next step – this is called a CTA or Call To Action.

A good Call To Action should be a very simple instruction, just one clear instruction –  not 2 or 3! Just ask your reader to do one thing now that they’ve read your report. So what would you like that Call To Action to be?

Is it to download something else? Is it to give your office a call? Is it to opt in for a 15-minute consult? Is it to sign up for a webinar? Is it to catch up for a coffee over Skype? Is it to click and join a community on Facebook?

Depending on the type of business that you have and how scalable it currently is, you need to choose wisely here. At the end of the day we live in a share economy, so if I get something cool then I’ll share it with my friends and I’m sure you’re just the same.

So what happens if you offer a 15-minute consult and get inundated with responses? Could you manage that? I write about that in one of my other blog posts so I won’t go into detail here.

So by now you, have a title, a call to action that makes sense for where you are in your business journey and you have an idea as to what you are going to offer your prospective clients.

Now comes the fun part, well it’s fun for me – for you maybe not so much.

You will need to have the content proofread, I can’t tell you the number of typo’s I’ve found in lead magnets and it instantly makes me think a little less of the company…that’s probably very judgemental but it’s what happens for me at least. On the flip side when I call them to let them know, they are usually very grateful and it is a wonderful way to open a conversation with a potential partner.

Anyway, once it’s been proofread, you need to either hire a graphic designer to lay it out for you into a PDF, if you’re going with the document style or you can attempt to do this yourself using free software like canva.com (believe me this sounds much easier than it actually is. I’ve definitely lost more than a few days in Canva attempting to create a report) or you could shell out up to $600 hundred dollars for a piece of software that can make this easier for you, but let’s face it do you really want to a)Pay for a new piece of software and B) Spend your time learning a new piece of software?

For me I try to limit my software purchases, otherwise, they can become a very costly distraction in terms of both money but more importantly my time.

The best place to kick off your Lead Magnet creation is by downloading my Lead Magnet Mind Map Below