The right lead magnet can have prospects lining up for you.
A lead magnet is used to entice someone to give you their name and their contact information in exchange for information they feel is valuable to them. I’m sure you’ve been on tons of sites where they say, “Hey, just enter your name and email address and we’ll send you this free thing.” That free thing is a lead magnet. And, just as a side note, a lead magnet can also be something people pay for. I’ll talk about that in another post.
A lead magnet can be an eBook, a guide or a blueprint. It can be a video or an audio training. It could be case studies or swipe files, a special report. It can even be—oh my gosh—the dreaded newsletter! (If that’s your current offer, don’t freak out. Your newsletter doesn’t have to be boring; we can fix that. In fact, it may not be boring at all. But the offer needs to be much more exciting.) Other great lead magnets are checklists, cheat sheets, infographics, contests, free trials, coupons, or mind maps. I don’t know what it is about mind maps, but people love them. So, if you offer one of those, you’re sure to get a lot of downloads.
How are lead magnets used?
This is very important because when you’re trying to find clients, you meet a lot of people, but not everyone you meet is a prospect for your business. You have to kiss a lot of frogs. A lead magnet can help you sift and sort through the people who come into your funnel, those people who come into your line of sight. You think, “Hmm, I wonder if they want to buy my stuff?” A lead magnet will help you gauge people’s interest.
First of all, it’s going to attract people that are interested, at some level, in whatever you’re talking about. You’re going to get a whole bunch of people who sign up for your lead magnet, aka leads. Then they’re going to read your lead magnet, or they’re going to watch the training or they’re going to get the check list. They’re either going to be a little bit more interested, or a little bit less interested. It’s a sifting and sorting thing. It’s kind of like speed dating, but you don’t have to meet (or kiss!) the frogs in person. You might find a few that are interesting to you and in truth, it’s a matter of them finding you and what you offer interesting. Once someone has opted in for your lead magnet, whether they have actually read through it or not, you have them on your email list, and you can market to them.
Now, you’re not going to jump all over them in the first email to “buy your stuff”—you’re still in the getting to know you stage. But you start your emails to them by giving them good content and making offers along the way, some free, some paid. Now, some people will jump off your list. That’s okay; they weren’t all that interested. But some people will stay, and some people will actually engage with you and buy, which is the whole point of the exercise. So, you start with a whole bunch of leads, you narrow it down to your prospects, and eventually those prospects become customers or they leave your email list.
Don’t freak out when people unsubscribe—it’s a natural and normal part of the business. I know when I first started in internet marketing, I used to feel so bad when somebody left my email list. I got a notification every time somebody unsubscribed. I would think, “Oh my God, they left! What did I do to upset them?” Nothing. They just weren’t interested. And that’s okay because every time somebody leaves your email list, your list improves just a bit. The people who are still on your list are into what you’re doing; they’re much better qualified people. When somebody leaves, don’t take it personally. But do turn off the notifications because nobody needs that kind of negativity in their life!
Lead magnets are an easy and effective tool for marketing your business. If you hate to sell, if you hate to go out prospecting, this gets you over that first hurdle of finding people. It helps fill your pipeline. It helps you get off the feast or famine rollercoaster. As business people, we want a nice stable income, preferably a nice, big stable income. Because lead magnets are used to attract ONLY the people who might be interested in you or your services, it reduces your sales cycle time—the time it takes to find, qualify, and close a prospect. And that keeps a steady stream of clients and revenue coming into your business.
This is an excerpt from my book, More Leads, Less Work. You can find it, along with other books from the Small Business Marketing Mastery Series on Amazon.
