Lead magnets are often used grow email marketing lists. As the adage goes, “The money is in the list.” The following guide should keep you focused on growing your list using lead magnets as the primary tool.
What Is a Lead Magnet?
In simple terms, a lead magnet is anything you offer to website visitors that may be of value to them so that you can obtain their email list for future market efforts.
In other words, a lead magnet is something valuable you offer as a trade in exchange for a prospect’s email address.
The key word is “valuable.” You must offer something of value in order to receive something else of value, but to win in this scenario your value offer must be so attractive that prospects are willing to part with essential contact information. The risk to them is that their information will be compromised. Your risk is considerably less, perhaps the loss of time and money to create your offer. Due to the imbalance in risk, it is imperative that overdeliver on the value promised. If you do it right, you’ll grow your email list and your business more rapidly.
10 Types of Valuable Lead Magnets
The type of lead magnet you offer to prospects should reflect the type of business you have and the benefits your prospect seeks from your type of business.
For instance, a travel agent may offer a large discount on a travel package. A computer consultant may offer a free anti-virus software. A graphic artist may offer a package of free logo or header templates. Design your lead magnet around the needs of your prospects and make it so attractive they can’t refuse.
The following list of lead magnets is not exhaustive, but these 10 types of lead magnets are popular and have proven effective over the years.
- Book or report – A book or report lead magnet can be published in many formats: A PDF file, a sample chapter from a book you’ve published, a special report, a business whitepaper, a workbook, or a bundle of articles.
- Audio/video – This type of lead magnet could be an audiobook, a lecture, an interview, an animated story, a demo, a music recording, or a bundle of podcast episodes.
- Graphics – Infographics, memes, wall art, illustrations, maps, and royalty-free images all fall into this category.
- Templates – A template could be for any common business asset your clients could encounter in their business or personal lives. These may be scripts, cheat sheets, worksheets, Excel or Word document templates, pre-designed PowerPoint slides, flyers, or business forms and letters.
- Consulting – Consultants, coaches, and counselors may offer a free, a slide deck from a previous event, a consulting or counseling session transcript, or access to group coaching.
- Coupons – If you manage a retail or e-commerce store, you may offer discount coupons, product bundles, free trials, early access to product launches, or similar deals.
- Activities – People love interactive lead magnets too. Quizzes, surveys, polls, games, self-assessments, calculators, calendars, and other such activities could be offered as free downloads.
- Events – Webinars, recordings from previous events, free tickets to an upcoming event, online concerts, live training courses, book launch parties, and other special events can make great lead magnets.
- Lists – Checklists, music playlists, recommendations, quotes, inspirational messages, reading lists, Top 10 or 20 podcast lists, and similar lists also make great lead magnets.
- Exclusive invitations – People love to have exclusive access to valuable information. This type of lead magnet could include private Facebook groups, exclusive access to training or entertainment videos, Masterminds, book clubs, discussion groups, support groups, and other exclusive deals.
If you get creative with your lead magnet ideas, you can offer your prospects something unique that they can’t get anywhere else. If it’s valuable to them, they will gladly give up their email address to obtain your lead magnet.
How to Structure Your Lead Magnet
The first step to creating a lead magnet that will entice website visitors to give up their email addresses is to understand their needs. The best way to do that is to simply ask them.
Once discovering what your audience wants and determining what type of lead magnet to offer, you’ll want to create your lead magnet. Follow these steps to create a lead magnet that will grow your email list quickly.
- Host your lead magnet securely – You’ll need a secure place to host your lead magnet that provides a seamless download for your prospects. If something goes wrong here, your hopes of closing any of your prospects at any point during the sales process will be severely diminished, so make sure you have a good place to host your lead magnet so that it is secure from hackers and away from public view but easy to access for your prospects.
- Create a landing page. The landing page is the specific page on your website where visitors will land to see your lead magnet offer. Make sure there is no other offer on your landing page other than the one you want them to accept.
- Create a workflow – Using an email list management solution, create a workflow series of emails that will be sent automatically to each person who downloads your lead magnet. These should not be sales letters. Rather, add value to your prospects beyond the value that you include in your lead magnet.
- Call to action – Your landing page, lead magnet, and follow-up emails should always contain a call to action. While follow-up emails aren’t sales letters, they are marketing collateral. For that reason, you want every piece of email correspondence to include a call to action that moves prospects to the next stage of your relationship with them.
Think the Email Marketing Process Through Before You Implement
To grow an email list and use it to market your business, you must think through the process from beginning to end. Answer the following questions before you begin.
- Who is my ideal customer?
- What information would be most valuable to him?
- How can I deliver that value without giving too much away?
- What type of lead magnet would entice my ideal customer to give up her email address?
- Once I have that email address, what should I do with it?
Growing an email list is hard, but it’s a worthwhile endeavor for any type of business and pays off dividends for years to come.