When it comes to marketing, marketers are always trying to get their target audience to take the next step. This could be signing up for a subscription, buying a product or enrolling in training. The point of conversion is basically getting someone else to buy what you’re selling.
One way to garner more conversion (and more traffic on your website) is through lead magnets.
A lead magnet is a tool that incentivizes the user to fill in their contact information and take further steps on your landing page in order to find out more information about your product.
The best lead magnets can take on many forms. In this article, we’ll look at what a lead magnet is and how you can go about creating lead magnets for your business.
Read on and learn how one small marketing idea can function in multiple different ways to generate genuine leads for you!
What is a Lead Magnet?
One of the most effective ways to grow your online business is through lead magnets. A lead magnet essentially offers a free piece of content in exchange for contact information or other basic information from a potential customer.
This piece of information, known as a lead, is quite valuable to your business. Leads have a higher conversion potential. Generally, they take the form of contact info or account data.
A lead magnet itself can take on several forms, and as the term itself suggests, it is meant to generate leads. Great lead magnets are important in marketing lead generation and are meant to engage potential customers to guide them to fruitful conversion.
Read also: Traditional VS Online Marketing
The main characteristics of a lead magnet are as follows:
- A lead magnet offers something free to visitors in exchange for leads in the form of contact information.
- A lead magnet is content that is related to the nature of your business.
- A lead magnet offers high value to the potential client and will attract them to access it.
Creating a great lead magnet takes some effort. A lead magnet will be able to help in your sales funnel, whereby the additional leads generated will enhance the effectiveness of your funnel in achieving conversions.
We will be discussing some lead magnet examples later on. For now, let’s go through what makes a good lead magnet.
What Makes a Good and Effective Lead Magnet?
Now that we know the lead magnet definition, it’s time to learn what a good lead magnet entails. In essence, these are the main characteristics that you should keep in mind when crafting a lead magnet.
They Must Offer Great Value for Your Potential Customers
No one will provide their contact details if they feel your lead magnet isn’t worth it. Therefore, you have to ensure that the content you offer is unique, and can’t be easily found elsewhere on the internet.
A good lead magnet solves specific problems for people, and this solution is offered in an effective and concise manner. If your content does not have much perceived value, and it can be easily accessed elsewhere, then it is almost a guarantee that you won’t attract much leads from your magnet.
They Should Attract Relevant Leads
The best lead magnet should be of quality. Your lead magnets should attract potential customers who are interested in your services and products and not just those who are window shopping.
You don’t want to end up with a large number of leads but none of them actually want to subscribe to your products or services.
Therefore, the lead generation magnet should be relevant to your business and stick closely related to what you’re offering. This way, you can ensure that the leads your lead magnet attracts are of high quality, and not just quantity.
They Build Brand Authority
When crafting different types of lead magnets for your business, they should serve your business interests too. This means having a lead magnet that delivers on the content that you promised.
A general rule of thumb is to avoid click-bait advertising when putting your lead magnet out there. You have to be able to deliver the standard of content that you promise.
Read also: Link Bait SEO Guide
Being able to fulfill promises and deliver quality content is vital for your business, as it builds a good brand reputation. Doing so ensures you have the opportunity to become the authority in the types of lead magnets you offer.
In the long run, this will contribute positively to your brand reputation and encourage even more website conversion.
They Are Easy to Access
It’s good to provide a lead magnet that people don’t feel they need to work hard for. This means you shouldn’t make people jump through hoops or go through too many extra steps to access it.
If potential customers feel that they have to make too much of an effort to reach your lead magnet, they may feel discouraged and fall off. You want them to be able to download, listen, or watch your lead magnet without having to feel burdened in any way.
Examples of Good Lead Magnets
If you’re looking for great lead magnet ideas and examples, here’s where you can start. These examples of lead magnet ideas will give you a clearer picture of what they should look like.
1. Templates
Templates are one of the most sought-after types of lead magnet ideas, as long as you offer one that’s pretty niched.
It doesn’t matter what type of template you offer as long as you make it relatively unique and specific. Some of the types of templates you can offer include emails, designs, presentations, social media posts, blog posts, and more.
For example, if you’re offering a presentation template, make sure that you’re not offering just a general one for everyday meetings. Instead, offer a template for the presentation of a project for big name clients, marketing presentations for B2B, and the like.
2. Checklists
There can be a to-do list for everything. Checklists can function as a type of guide to complete certain tasks within a stipulated time. An essential checklist will function as a guide for your potential clients.
Checklists have some of the highest number of leads generated because they are considered very easy to consume. Many are attracted to it because it provides guidance without the need to read long walls of texts.
Additionally, checklists are also pretty easy for you to prepare. Just make sure that they’re not generic and that it’s something you can offer from your own expertise.
3. Hacks and Cheat Sheets
Here’s another set of lead magnets that everyone loves. Cheats and hacks make it easier to accomplish something easier. This type of content is effective because you’re helping people save time, resources, and effort.
Everyone loves it when there’s a way to do things quicker and easier, but with the same outcome. With hacks and cheat sheets, you can offer shortcuts to a solution and help save the day. At the end of the day, you too, are a hero!
Usually, hacks and cheat sheets can be used repeatedly by the public, making them even more attractive.
4. Whitepapers
As a business owner, you would have some unique insights into your business operations. A whitepaper is basically a document detailing a specific challenge, usually in the business and corporate world, as well as specific ways on how to solve these problems.
Very often, the challenges and solutions that are discussed in a whitepaper are more complex and niche. This lead magnet should therefore be targeted at others in the same field as yourself.
Whitepapers are usually very popular with your fellow entrepreneurs or business owners. If you’re a B2B company, offering a whitepaper will attract fellow business owners who will benefit from your unique insight into mutually-shared challenges.
5. Webinars
A live webinar is one of the lead magnet ideas that lets you engage with others in the same field as yourself. For example, if you’re in oil and gas, you may want to organize a webinar on the challenges of diminishing resources and what it means for those employed here.
Webinars pose several pros and cons. On one hand, it tends to attract a good number of participants due to its exclusive and limited nature. You can use the marketing lead magnet of limited time to get people to register for the planned event.
However, on the other hand, it also has limited use. This means you can only use it for a short period of time each round as compared to other forms of lead magnets.
6. E-books or Mini Books
E-books are easily downloadable in PDF formats, which means that they’re very easily accessible. This is one of the lead magnet ideas out there that end up helping you attract the most amount of traffic. It is usually a lot longer than your average blog post.
E-books are also a lot simpler and less technical than whitepapers. However, they still address important challenges and offer solutions to them. This version, however, is much lighter to consume and does not contain too much heavy data and technical information.
Instead, the tone is more conversational and casual, like that of a blog post. It also appeals to a wider audience. It is good to keep your ebook niche and targeted at a specific field rather than making it too general.
7. Evaluation and Calculation Systems
Imagine needing to calculate and evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. As someone invested in digital marketing, you may want to find out if a specific call to action on your website is having its intended effect.
Your task would be made very much easier if there was a free automatic online evaluator as a lead magnet.
As a business, this is one the best examples of lead magnets that you can offer. It’s very valuable and appeals to a wide audience. What more, this service is instant, automated, and free-of-charge.
You can also offer evaluations and calculations on an individual level. For example, you can offer automatic evaluators to measure motivation, workplace attitudes, and more.
8. Case Studies
Real world case studies are write-ups that document specific ways in which certain circumstances affect a real company. More importantly, it documents how the corporation or body overcame this challenge.
Such case studies are invaluable to business owners and those working in management. People appreciate the fact that a case study involves real-world approaches that have been tried and tested, rather than just theoretical presentations.
You may also want to provide a case study based on your own experience, or something your company has previously experienced firsthand. This way, it will be even more attractive and convincing for potential leads.
9. Planner and Calendars
Planners and calendars can be offered to help your subscribers reach a certain goal.
For example, you can offer a content calendar full of content suggestions for social media marketing. If you’re in the health industry, you can offer calendars to help potential leads achieve a healthier lifestyle by scheduling their daily meal plans.
Planners have the same function in that they offer a planned strategy to achieve a goal. The difference is that they’re not attached to a specific timeline.
Additionally, you can also offer empty or semi-empty planners and calendars so that subscribers can fill in their own plans within your recommendations. This allows some room for creativity and self expression.
10. Training Videos or Tutorials
When you have complex technical knowledge that will empower others, you can offer it up for free to those who register or subscribe. These videos should be made available at the click of a button once someone has successfully submitted their contact information.
Training videos offer something that e-books cannot, and that is the human element. Many people absorb better when they see and listen to someone explaining a concept it to them.
Sharing training videos targeted at a niche audience is also a very good customer driven marketing strategy. This is because videos like these establish your reputation as being an authority figure in the knowledge area.
11. Product Trials
Product trials are especially useful if you have a product or service that is effective in a short period of time. They are also effective for businesses who can give out product samples in a small packaging.
For example, if you run a cosmetics business, you can offer to courier a free sample of your products to subscribers or members.
On the other hand, if you offer services of a software or app, you can give out free trials with limited time offers. Free trials like these help build confidence in your product and will also lead to conversion when there are happy customers!
12. Surveys, Quizzes, and Polls
Interactive elements are another way of inserting a lead magnet that engages with potential customers. Having these types of feedback will help build a firmer picture of your target market. This means you’ll be able to learn more about their preferences, demands, and more.
User input will allow you to strategize your marketing efforts more effectively, including integrating their feedback with your current CRM to manipulate CTRs for more clicks.
With more user-centric feedback, you’ll also be able to reduce your marketing costs by focusing only on the effective strategies with the highest ROI.
How to Create a Lead Magnet for Your Business?
Creating a great lead magnet is not complicated. However, it does take some patience and effort to try several of these before you find the one that works well for your business.
Don’t be discouraged if your first few attempts don’t work as well as you want them to. Different lead magnets will work differently for various business types. Here’s how you can get started:
Define Your Target Audience and Goal
The first step is to ask yourself who your target audience is. You need to be clear who you’re targeting because the next question involves determining what they need.
Once you define these two questions, you can start going about fulfilling that need. As such, having empathy and taking cues from previous customer engagements will be key.
Craft an Attractive Offer
Make sure your offer has a copy that’s easy to understand, along with a design that draws attention to it. Avoid large and complex words. Present your offer in simple terms and invite users to decide if they want it or not.
Additionally, you should also avoid busy designs. Keep things simple and minimalistic, with a focus on the call to action and link button.
Direct Visitors to Your Landing Page
Once a potential customer has clicked on the offer, you should bring them to a form where they can fill in their information.
This information will eventually become your lead, so don’t make it too lengthy. You don’t want to discourage people from reaching your lead magnet, which is behind this form. If you need to confirm email addresses, make it a one-step process from the person’s inbox.
Once they’ve completed the form, make it easy to access the content that you’ve promised. It shouldn’t take longer than a few minutes to load.
Wrapping Up on Lead Magnets
Lead magnets are not meant to stay up forever. This means that you should refresh your lead magnet every half a year or less. Additionally, you should also feature multiple and various lead magnets on your website or social media pages.
This way, you’ll be able to figure out which lead magnet works best for you. If you would like some professional help in creating the best lead magnets for your business, why not consider One Search Pro Digital Marketing?
We are a digital marketing agency in Malaysia with years of successful lead generation experience to back us up. In that time, we’ve helped clients come up with plenty of great lead magnet ideas to cater to a wide variety of audience.
We’ll be walking you through the process of finding lead magnet ideas and turning them into successful marketing campaigns that generate leads for your business. Chat us up for a FREE consultation!
