What is a Lead Magnet? Ideas, Examples, & Creative Solutions
Generating conversions have become increasingly difficult over the last few years. With more available to visitors every day, the bounce rate for many companies is increasing.
One of the core methods for converting and keeping users is through list building. List building involves collecting qualified emails that you can continually use to promote your business through the process of providing valuable content.
Today, we’re going to talk about what is a lead magnet and how it can help you convince users to give your business their contact information. We’ve even compiled a lead magnet cheat sheet to help you once you’re ready to get started!
What is a Lead Magnet?
Understanding what is a lead magnet is fairly straightforward. The best lead magnets provide potential clients with valuable content in exchange for personal information.
Lead magnet marketing can take a variety of forms. Usually, you see lead magnet ideas in the areas of ebooks, checklists, and other PDF documents. However, there are innumerable types of lead magnets, as it only has to be something of value that the potential user wants.
The only criteria that a good lead magnet needs to meet is that it can successfully convert the most amount of potential leads. If you notice that your metrics are underperforming, then you may need to do some lead magnet service.
Different Types of Lead Magnets
As stated above, there are several ways you can go about constructing a lead magnet. Meaning, that as long as the lead magnet abides by the following criteria it can be successful.
- Has perceived value, and hopefully, it does
- Solves a pain-point instantaneously, as clients are looking for immediate answers
- Displays your competitive advantage, as your lead magnet should convenience your audience that your solutions are optimal to your competitors
The most common types of lead magnets, outside of the diminishing returns of a newsletter, include:
- Ebooks
- Checklists, toolkits, and cheat sheets
- Video guides
- Free trails/discounts
- Quizzes/surveys
- Reports/Studies
Why Lead Magnets Work
Lead magnets have several functions that can help you build your business. Outside of its primary purpose of converting leads, it’s an excellent way to spread brand awareness. Additionally, it can be a useful tool for vetting potential clients as you can ensure they’re qualified for your services.
By properly monitoring the metrics behind your lead magnets, you can determine if your brand is successfully conveying the message you want your visitors to receive.
If you find that many users make their way to the bottom of your page (typically the location of your lead magnet) and fail to capture them, it might be time to revisit the content on your page.
How to Create a Lead Magnet: A Step-by-Step Guide
So, now you know what is a lead magnet. Here, we’re going to show you how to build an instant lead magnet.
1. Create a Buyer Persona
One of the main tenets of marketing is that you don’t want to target everyone. You want to have a particular niche demographic. This will help you narrow down your focus, saving you time, money, and headaches when setting up any marketing campaign.
If you create a lead magnet with the hopes of claiming every demographic, you’ll quickly find out that you’re not capturing anyone.
Even if you’ve set up multiple personas, you will want to construct separate landing pages with a unique lead magnet on each in an attempt to appeal directly to that niche demographic’s needs.
2. Target the Personas Pain-Point
When creating a buyer persona, it should include a specific need for why they may want your service. This need should be blatantly addressed to provide them with content to ease that pain-point instantly.
3. Choose a Lead Magnet
Whether you’re going for an ebook that will highlight how to effectively develop a budget or a video tutorial on how to calculate monthly expenses, your lead magnet needs to be easily consumed and provide a sense of value.
You also want to spend time on choosing an appropriate name for your lead magnet. A clear and catchy name is half the battle of getting a visitor to exchange their information for your lead magnet.
4. Put Your Lead Magnet into Action and Monitor the Results
The construction of a lead magnet is only a portion of the work.
After you’ve created and developed the lead magnet’s content and title, you then have to monitor the activity it’s generating and make sure that it’s performing.
If it’s struggling to capture leads, you have to determine where you’re losing potential clients.
Lead Magnet Examples
To help you craft your own, here are some lead magnet examples:
Modular eBook
If you’ve developed a blog and you have several articles about a particular subject, you can easily create an eBook from the content.
This allows your potential client a single point of access to a wealth of knowledge you’ve already accumulated without them having to scour through your blog.
Guide/Checklist
Developing content for a guide is beneficial if your industry is overly saturated with online sources. Opposed to a modular eBook that takes content from your blog, you're compiling information that can be found across the web with links back to the source material.
Ensure that you're not plagiarizing the material, but writing original content that can be linked to the external sites.
As a bonus, you can also give your audience a handy checklist as a companion to the guide, or you can offer the checklist separately.
Workbook
A workbook is a useful lead magnet, as it allows your visitors to put your knowledge into practical use. If you’ve provided articles on how to get out of debt, then a workbook will help the user stay on track.
Start Your Own Lead Magnet Marketing
Leads are critical to financial planning marketing, and having properly formulated lead magnets is crucial to any successful campaign. At LeadJig, we focus on marketing tools that financial advisors need to grow their business. Request a demo and let’s get started today!
