Yesterday I spoke about how, if you want to get more leads, you need to focus on potential clients just becoming aware of their problems and challenges rather than people who are already ready to buy.

And I promised that today I'd talk about how you can do that.

You might have already guessed that I'm going to talk about the principle of Value In Advance and using a “Lead Magnet”. After all, I've been banging on about them for almost 10 years :)

But there's a twist.

While the concept of giving away something of value to attract potential clients is now pretty commonplace, it's usually done pretty badly.

A lot of the lead magnets you see being used – even by so-called experts – end up attracting the wrong sort of person entirely. They get a big email list they can show off about, but very few actual clients.

Here are 3 things you must do with your lead magnet to attract the right leads.

Firstly, your lead magnet must deliver real value. 

Sounds obvious, but how often have you signed up for a free report or checklist, read it, then thought “meh”.

Doing what I do, I obviously sign up for and download a ton of free reports and other lead magnets and honestly, I'd say about two-thirds or more of them are just a waste of space. They offer no new or insightful information at all. Just the same old stuff repackaged.

It's like they spent more time on a fancy headline and landing page than they spent on the lead magnet itself.

So now they have my email address, but they've lost all credibility. The chances of me buying from them are nil because I'm going to assume that anything they have to sell is going to be equally as mediocre.

So rule #1: make your lead magnet super high value. Make sure it leads to quick results or progress on a tricky problem your clients face.

Secondly, your lead magnet must qualify your ideal clients.

What I mean by that is your lead magnet shouldn't just be valuable to everyone in your market. It should be especially valuable (ideally only valuable) to your ideal clients.

An example: my online training is for consultants, coaches and other professional service providers. And the majority of my folks are sole practitioners or run small firms. That means they don't have a ton of free time to spend on marketing. 

So while I love playing around with advanced marketing techniques myself, there's no point in me creating a lead magnet that shows you how to set up a complex marketing funnel, for example, as my ideal clients just won't have the time to do it. That kind of lead magnet will attract full-time professional marketers and geeks rather than the busy professionals I create my products for.

Instead, my lead magnet needs to focus on marketing techniques that don't take a ton of time to do, work for service businesses and, ideally, leverage the expertise and experience my folks have.

Create your lead magnet so that it's especially attractive to your ideal clients, and less attractive to others.

Thirdly,  your lead magnet should trigger a “lightbulb moment”.

In some ways, this is an extension of the principle of making your lead magnet truly valuable. But it goes further.

One of the biggest challenges we face, especially if we deliver high-value products and services, isn't that we lose out to better competitors.

It's that our clients choose to do nothing at all. Even though they know you're an expert and that what you do has great benefit, they're happy with what they've got. Or they're comfortable making minor improvements.

If your lead magnet is valuable but doesn't challenge their perception that what they've got is good enough or just needs minor improvement, then they're not going to shell out for a major piece of work with you.

So a lead magnet that teaches people a better way of doing something they already knew about won't have anywhere near the impact of a lead magnet that introduces something completely new to them or gets them to reframe their way of thinking.

Don't get me wrong: this isn't easy. You don't have to nail it to have a good lead magnet. But if you do, the impact can be so much higher. 

In my “21 Word Email” for example, I don't just give people a better template for emailing the contacts they're already speaking to. I show them that there's a group of people who are great prospects that they're completely overlooking.

For many people that triggers a lightbulb to go off in their brain. They begin to think “woah – I'd never thought of that but he's absolutely right”. It highlights something they've been doing wrong in their marketing for a long, long time and opens them to the idea that they might need to change.

Of course, they're unlikely to immediately spend a fortune just after reading a lead magnet or even after implementing it and getting results. But it has begun to open their mind to the idea that maybe what they're doing today isn't enough. Maybe there are some things they could do that would get them much better results.

And so their journey begins with a more open mind…

That's it from me today. It's been a long email but these tips will make a big difference to the effectiveness of your lead magnet.