Lead Magnet Marketing 101: How To Get More Leads And Sales With Lead Magnets

Before we get into the specifics of what a lead magnet is, what a lead magnet is used for, or how to create a lead magnet.

It’s important to state the obvious.

Lead Magnet Marketing is just one component of your overall marketing strategy!

For example, once you have your lead magnet ready - driving traffic to your lead magnet using Facebook Ads could be the other component of your marketing strategy. How you manage FB Ads, your ad creatives and ad targeting has a whole other dimension to your overall marketing.

For others, LinkedIn Ads could be their other marketing strategy component. For some, organic search alone could be their other only marketing component.

What is important to realize is that the Lead Magnet or Magnets that you create for your offering become a critical part of your overall strategy and, depending on the type of lead magnet you create, your marketing strategy would need to be tailored for it.

Prerequisite of a Lead Magnet

Yep, these are some of the basic things you should have in place before you decide on building a lead magnet for your business.

1. What specifically are you selling?

2. Who you are selling to?

3. What is keeping your prospects awake at night?

Once you have the clarity on these questions about your customer avatar, their needs and desire’s. Only then, you can zoom in and address that pain point with a lead magnet strategy that has a higher chance of it being effective.

What this means is, you need to nail down these lead magnet prerequisites first so that you can create an effective marketing strategy for yourself. Otherwise, you will build lead magnets that are ineffective, that attract the wrong prospects and generate little or no sales.

So, What Is A Lead Magnet Strategy?

Every business needs sales/revenue to survive. This is usually the bottom line.

For all you non-profits out there, you need donors to keep going or you need to reach out to those you are looking to help. You can still use a lead magnet to find those users. So yes, lead magnet strategy is applied anywhere you need to grab the attention of those who you want to serve.

So, with that end goal in mind, we want to drive ‘prospects’ to our offering and show them we have the solution to their needs and desires.

So, how do you show value?

Simple really. In this digital age, by delivering VALUE.

In our case, this value is in the form of digital content that does not cost us anything more when delivering to 100 prospects or 1 Million prospects.

For this discussion, we will say Lead Magnets are basically “information” of some value that is given away in exchange for something other than “money” - usually an email id because you can deliver that information to that person’s email id.

Can you have lead magnets that are not informational?

Sure, if you have tried product sample such as food, cookies or drinks in your local grocery store, cafe or restaurant then you have tasted a lead magnet :)

The goal of that grocery store, cafe or restaurant was to have you taste that food - to show value. In return, they expect some will make a purchase right away and some would buy it in the future.

If you got $$ in credits for a free Uber ride after downloading their app, then you have used their service as a lead magnet.

Here are couple of examples of lead magnets that we are familiar with but now can put a name to that marketing technique.

This is direct mail marketing with a offer to 'sign up' and place and order.  Yes, this is a lead magnet where they are actually giving you $20 to shop online and create an account there.

Here is an in-app promotion with a lead magnet of $0 Delivery Fees to download another app.

 This offer is presented to a user who already has the Uber app for ride share, but the goal here is to get them to download the Uber Eats app.

As you can see lead magents are everywhere and play a significant role in most marketing campaigns.

 

The idea behind lead magnets is simple: you give away something of value for free, and in exchange, people give you their contact information.

When you think about it, it’s still a transaction.

The only difference is there is no money involved, but it’s a transaction, nevertheless.

Think about this a bit and ask yourself this question.

If you can’t convince someone to share their ‘email’, which they obviously value. How likely are you to convince them to part with their hard earned money?

Therefore a lead magnet strategy is so important to create more leads and sales for your business.

One goal of your lead magnet marketing strategy is to have metrics to measure how effective you are in giving away valuable information for free - I mean in exchange for an email id :)

This metric will validate your offering and understanding of your prospect’s pain point, and it will also take you one step closer to building that trust and authority you need to close that sale.

With that said, let’s recap our definition of a lead magnet in the context of digital information.

What is a lead magnet?

A lead magnet is something that a potential customer receives in exchange for providing their contact information (usually an email id).

What this means is by sharing and promoting your lead magnet, you are building an email list!

This email list is not any random list of emails. It is a list of very specific individuals who have taken action to solve a burning problem that they have, and they believe that your information will get them closer to solving that problem. Yes, this means they trust you have the solution. Now, it’s your job to prove you indeed have the solution and that you can truly help them.

If you do nothing with this list immediately, these action takers will most likely find another provider of services that claim to solve the same problem - yes, these actions takers will probably go to your competitors if you do nothing with your email list.

So, the next critical piece of your lead magnet marketing strategy now depends on what you do once you have the email id.

Lead Nurturing

Yep, before you create lead magnets, you should have the conversion path that turns these leads into customers and the role email marketing plays in this process because now you have their email id to communicate.

Lead magnets can take the form of ebooks, videos, templates, checklist and similar informational assets. What they all should have in common is a follow-up sequence of communication to further show your prospect that you have a clear path that they can take to solve their burning problem - this is called lead nurturing.

• Show your leads that the information they received from you was but one step toward solving the problem at hand.

• Show them it’s doable.

• Show them you know how to get them across to the finish line in the best way possible.

If you are successful at delivering that value and message, then in that process, you will likely close that sale and grow your business while actually helping your prospects get the results they want - a true win-win.

That in a nut-shell is what a lead magnet is, and the strategy used by many to get more leads and sales.

In sections below, we’ll cover

1. Types of lead magnets

2. Lead magnet tracking and KPI’s

3. How to create a lead magnet

4. Ideas for lead magnet topic

5. Lead magnet marketing tech

6. Lead magnet email nurturing templates

7. Lead magnet tools