More Clients TV
The Secret of Effective Lead Magnets
Lead Magnets are still the most effective way to get people to sign up to get regular emails from you so you can build a relationship with them online.
But what makes a good lead magnet? And how can you differentiate yours from all the other lead magnets out there.
In this video I show you a simple trick to make sure your lead magnet stands out and works to attract your ideal clients.
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Video Transcript
Hi – it's Ian here – welcome to another episode of More Clients TV and another Lead Generation Tip. Today we're looking at lead magnets. Do they still work? What's the best type of lead magnet? And in particular, I'm going to show you a little technique for improving the effectiveness and the results you get from all your lead magnets.
So you probably already know a lead magnet is anything you offer for free – like a report, a video, an email, a checklist – in order to motivate people to connect with you, usually in the form of signing up for regular emails from you so you can continue to build your relationship with them. Now 10 years ago if you'd offered a lead magnet you'd probably be one of the few people doing so and you would really stand out and you'd get a good conversion rate on people signing up for your newsletter. Today there are obviously a lot more lead magnets about…but there may not be as many as you think.
The reason for that is that you've always got to remember you are not your client.
If you're watching this video you're probably interested in improving your marketing which means you're probably being exposed to more stuff from marketing people then your clients are. And marketing people use a lot of lead magnets. So the first thing to do is to get a proper baseline and see what kind of lead magnets your clients are actually being exposed to. So go on to your competitors' websites and do some Google searches that your ideal clients would do. Look at the websites and the social media that they're active on and see what they're being offered. And make a note of what the promise of the lead magnet is: so what kind of problems it's talking about solving or what kind of results it's helping them get. The format of the lead magnet: is it a report, a video etc. And how it's being offered: is there's a tiny little box in the corner of the website, is it a pop-up, is it big and prominent on the home page, is there a dedicated landing page etc. So once you've got that you can then begin to think about how do I differentiate myself from what everyone else is doing.
The best way to do that is really to go back to first principles because a lead magnet really only has two jobs. Job number one is to attract your ideal clients so when they see the offer of your lead magnet on maybe a Facebook ad or someone might share it on social media or they might see it recommended in an email. When they see it they've got to go “oh I want that”. It's got to be top of mind and they've got a want it straight away. Then when they get to your website they have to want it enough that they're going to be willing to give over their email address in order to get hold of it. So it has to be attractive, it has to help them help solve a problem that's top of mind for them or achieve a goal at the top of mind for them.
The second thing it needs to do is it needs to deliver on the promise. So whatever it is your lead magnet said it was going to do it has to add value, it has to give insight, it has to help them get the results that you said. We've probably all signed up for lead magnets in the past where it's looked really attractive, we signed up for it, we've downloaded it we've looked at it, and we've gone “oh is that it?” And that doesn't help you at all because you want your lead magnet to take your potential clients closer to wanting to work with you. But if it lets them down, if it doesn't deliver on the promise, it's going to take them further away. You want your lead magnet to build credibility and trust so they're closer to wanting to buy from you and because of that lead magnet you want them to look forward to receiving your follow-up emails, anticipating the additional value they're going to get.
In order to do all that it's all about the content. A lot of people worry about what the right format for lead magnet is: should it be a PDF is that a bit old hat, do I need a video…but to be honest if you think about it in terms of if someone offered you the winning numbers to next month's lottery you wouldn't really care whether they send them to you on video or email or ina PDF report…you just want the numbers.
It's the value of the content and what it does for you that's important and it's the thing that differentiates. So don't worry about the format. I always advise just using whatever format you're comfortable with. If you like making videos, do a video, if you're good at writing do a PDF report or an email because that way it'll get done. What's important is what you put into it and the way to come up with what to put into it is to use insight.
So what you need as we said earlier is some kind of problem or goal that your clients want to achieve and you have to help them with that. You don't have to solve the whole problem. Just giving them some insight, getting them one step on the process is great because then they'll want to continue with you to achieve that goal or to solve that problem. But the chances are if you look at that competitor research you did – on the assumption that your competitors aren't stupid – they're probably also focusing on some of the big goals some of the big problems that your clients have. So their lead magnets are probably… you know if they're, if you're a leadership coach everybody's lead magnet is seven tips for improving your leadership, a framework for improving your leadership, some other method for improving your leadership. If you're in sales or marketing it's all about you know all the lead magnets are focused on how to win more clients: a blueprint for winning more clients, a method for winning more clients, seven tips for winning more clients. If you want to differentiate yourself you've got to do that basic: you still have to solve that important problem otherwise they won't be interested, but you need to do it in a slightly different way.
And a really good way of doing that is to use a “with or without”. What I mean by that is that I've had four lead magnets in the ten years or so that I've been in business since I left big consulting. I've had the Pain Fee Marketing Blueprint, the Twenty One Word Email that Can Get You More Clients, the Five Day Authority Challenge and my current one” the Thirty Minute Marketing Plan Checklist. And each of those is a “with or without” lead magnet.
So the Pain Free Marketing Blueprint taught people how to get more clients without the pain and expense of traditional marketing. The Twenty One Word Email told people how to get more clients but with a really fast templated way of doing it. The Five Day Authority Challenge told them how to get more clients by being seen as an Authority – another with an extra thing that they also wanted. And the Thirty Minute Marketing Plan teaches them how to get more clients without spending all their time on marketing because my people tend to be busy and work with clients themselves.
So by taking the basic need, the basic problem or the basic goal people want to achieve but adding something extra that they also want or taking away something that's normally associated with solving that problem that they don't want, you come up with a lead magnet that's different to what others are doing and is really attractive. Now the only way to get to those “withs and withouts” is with insight. You have to talk to your clients. You have to do surveys. You have to talk to them face-to-face or over the telephone and ask them about their problems, ask them about what else they need, what's associated with that ask them how when they've been trying to achieve that goal or solve that problem in the past what stood in their way, what have the barriers been. Ask all sorts of questions about those problems and those “withs and withouts” will come out from that. But you have to do the work, you have to do the research.
But by doing that in getting more insight into your ideal clients than your competitors are using you move away from the bland single solution of a problem approach and you move into something that's more attractive to people. So that not everyone will want it, so not everyone will look at my 30-Minute Marketing Plan Checklist and think “well I want more clients but I don't have much time to do my marketing so that's really attractive”. There will be some people who are full-time dedicated marketers who do have plenty of time to do marketing. But for the people who haven't, for the majority of my clients who don't have a lot of time to do their marketing that sounds really attractive and it draws them to me more than just seven ways of getting more clients which they can get from anywhere.
So that's the key tip for today, it's base your lead magnet on insight, differentiate based on a “with or without” that you can add on or take away from the core need that they have and you'll have a really attractive lead magnet.
Next week I'm going to do another video on lead magnets talking about a very different approach to coming up with a lead magnet that you might well find interesting and useful.
I'll see you then.
Ian Brodie
https://www.ianbrodie.comIan Brodie is the best-selling author of Email Persuasion and the creator of Unsnooze Your Inbox - *the* guide to crafting engaging emails and newsletters that captivate your audience, build authority and generate more sales.