Having lead magnets is one of the best ways to increase customers and potential business buyers. It’s a game-changer.
With all of the new fancy marketing tools out there, it can be confusing to work out the best way to engage with potential customers. Lenny Richardson, the co-founder at Affinity Agency, shares tips to create lead magnets for your business, collect those leads, and follow up with them consistently.
What Is a Lead Magnet
What is a lead magnet for anyone out there who doesn’t know?
Lenny: If you want leads, you need something to draw them in the best way possible. Some people refer to it as a bribe, I frame it to be more like a gift.
You want to figure out exactly what your potential prospect wants and to give it to them for free to add value to them. You don’t want to make it without any value at all; you want to give them some value. You don’t have to give your entire playbook of ideas. Give them a taste, and get them satisfied. Whatever that might be, that is your lead magnet.
How to Create a Lead Magnet
Depending on the industry, you might have something that lets your potential customers dip their toes in your business to show that you are professional in the type of work that you’re doing. How would you go about making a lead magnet?
Lenny: It’ll vary from industry to industry, but you want to know exactly what you want to figure out what it is that they’re looking for. Think about why they are coming to you for help, and try to give them a taste of what they might want.
I have a few friends in the dating industry. Their lead magnet was 5 or 10 text messages that men can send to a woman during the COVID pandemic. To me, it’s a good lead magnet because a lot of men are at home. They can’t go outside, and they’re thinking the only way to get in contact with a woman is to send a text. The lead magnet tells them what to say when they aren’t sure. They get a taste and then they funnel them into their program.
Don’t Overthink and Overcomplicate It
I was in a long-term relationship and then became single. I didn’t know what to do. I found that the process was nearly identical to that of just sales and marketing. You’re just selling yourself instead of a product. A lead magnet is all about just getting people to that next stage in the funnel to collect leads into a database. Is that right?
Lenny: One thing I want to mention is that I’ve seen people overthink it and overcomplicate it. I think one of the best lead magnets out there right now are ebooks. They are fantastic, very easy to make, and pretty digestible.
You have to really understand your audience and understand who your target demographic is. If you have your lead magnet and it looks like a very detailed and heavy read, they probably won’t download it.
I’m not that familiar with the tech industry, but if you’re a company looking to help people fix their computers, your lead magnet could just be “5 Easy Steps to Fix Common Computer Problems.” Just something basic that someone will come across and say:
• This solves an immediate problem I have.
• I can probably do this.
• This person added value to my life.
Your company is now in your potential customer’s head. He or she can come back to you in the future.
You are right. It doesn’t have to be overly complicated, and it’s very dependent on your industry. If you’re trying to sell something to a university or something like that, you need to have whitepapers where you’re going into heavy detail. Some people only want to stick to video, and anyone that’s reading this on our website is clearly into text. You need to know your audience and find their pain point.
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Solve Your Potential Customer’s Problems
Lenny: Do some research and try your best to get to your prospect or potential customer. Ultimately, if you have a business, it’s likely that your main objective is to solve a problem. At some point, you are probably aware of what problem they might have but it helps to kind of get a little bit deeper and figure out exactly what ails them, and what keeps them up at night.
I have an active real estate license. Although I don’t actively pursue leads now, what I did in the past is I have a small book called “Don’t Buy a Home Until You Read This.” As a real estate agent, I get asked by people a bunch of questions. I put the five most common questions in that book and I self-published it.
It’s a tiny physical book and that’s my lead magnet. When people are interested in the book, they can just get it and then I get their information.
How to Convert Your Lead Magnets
Let’s say you’ve got an audience or you hope to have an audience and you created a lead magnet. I’ve heard many times that the number one goal is to get people off of the socials and into your database. So how do you go about doing that?
Lenny: Once you have the lead magnet, you want to use a landing page or some way to get them into a database. Landing pages are simple and are very easy to make, but you can also get creative. For example, on Instagram, people are leaving their phone number in their bio and people can text it. After people text that number, it saves their details on a database so you get their information. There’s a lot of ways to capture it. The key thing is to make sure you get the contact information.
Products to Manage Your Database
Once you’ve got the contact information, it can be as simple as using an Excel spreadsheet or getting more organised by using something like Active Campaign. Are there any particular tools you would suggest people check out?
Lenny: One of my favourites is MailChimp. For me, it has everything I need. If you do the free version, you can build landing pages, it has a CRM built into it, and you can create campaigns. Once you pay for it, you can get a little bit fancy and do automation and behavioural campaigns.
If you need assistance with your automation, talk to a dork. Book a free discovery session.
How to Follow Up With Your Leads
How do you make sure you’re following up with your leads, and at the same time, how do you make sure that you’re not pestering people once they are in your database?
Lenny: Keep it simple. A lot of times, when people follow up, they do it with the intent to sell. So every time they follow up, they’re kind of saying “buy my stuff, buy my stuff, buy my stuff.” I think that is where it gets annoying. When you get four emails in a row and all four emails from Monday to Thursday are all trying to make sales.
Along with keeping it simple, you can use humour to add value. I got an email yesterday and it said something like, “You didn’t register. You didn’t read the following ebook. You abandoned me. I thought you were special.” It basically made it sound like I was about to break up with them. It was just so funny. That was a good email because it’s funny, and it put me in a good mood. They’re still kind of selling, but at the same time, they’re not forcing it down my throat. To me, that’s a good follow up. Be funny and you don’t have to spam people with 1,000 emails.
Statistically speaking, in most sales, I think it takes about four to five contacts before you’re usually able to convert a prospect into a customer or client. For the most part, you’re not going to close the one on the first sale so be patient and just add value with your emails.
It’s always the elephant in the room. I know that the end goal is not just giving away lots of free information but for them to convert and become a customer. I call it a P-for-P or product-for-prospects, and lead magnets are very much the same thing.
For Dorks Delivered I have a whitepaper that I send out to different people. It’s very specific to their industry and discusses the common pain points for their industry. We try and think of something that’s a little bit bigger than we can help them out with. The end goal is that we’re looking to help them out with their support.
Does the Concept of Scarcity Help Convert Leads?
You have to have that balance. You don’t want to be emailing them every day. Do you have any scarcity involved with your processes or do you just keep nurturing them until they’re ready?
Lenny: Both can work, and the most simple thing would be to just nurture them until they’re ready. Personally, I do like using the strategy of scarcity marketing, but only when it’s legitimate scarcity. A good example is that I’m trying to run a case study for restaurants and gyms. I’m offering to do their Facebook ads for free to use a certain type of funnel. I’m being optimistic. I don’t want too many people to be a part of this case study just because it consumes time, so that’s real scarcity.
I think some people try to go a little bit above and beyond the scarcity. I’ve seen some landing pages where it has the timer that is five seconds away from ending, but I think a lot of people realise that they can still refresh the page once the timer hits zero. It’s not real scarcity, because I know that it’s not limited. I love scarcity when it’s legitimate scarcity.
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Be Authentic
You want to have authenticity in all the marketing materials that you’re doing. You want to make sure that people become able to know, like, and trust you throughout the journey you’ve carried them through. Sometimes you’re going to have people that just want a lead magnet and then disappear off and have no interest in doing anything else with you. As long as you are authentic and your genuine message is presented correctly, you will find customers.
Expected Conversion Rates
What would you say are some of your normal sort of conversion rates from sending out opportunities for people to fill in a form to get a lead magnet?
Lenny: A lot of the time, it comes down to why they aren’t converting as well as they could be, and part of it could be the funnel. It could just be the funnel itself, it could be the copy, it could be even the image. It’s a good idea to look at where people are dropping off. Try to identify wherever they’re dropping off and then fix it.
Personally, I’m looking at a 10% to 20% conversion rate as a great success. I know that if you get about 10% open rates in email marketing, you’re doing pretty good.
I have heard some people convert a lot higher, but it depends on your secondary and tertiary influences. If you only told everyone in your family about your business and they all use your product or service, you’re going to convert quite highly in that pond.
Free Resources Around Creating Lead Magnets
If anyone does want some more information from you on creating lead magnets what can you help them with?
Lenny: I have a free eBook that goes over what we talked about here in a little bit more detail. I know they sound very simple and very basic, especially if you’re in the marketing or business world, but from what I’ve seen, a lot of people do not do these things. It gives some examples to really illustrate what I’m talking about.
I’m looking forward to giving it a bit of a read myself. Is there anything else you would like to go through?
Lenny: A lot of people think email marketing is dead. I personally do not believe that. I think email marketing works well when it’s done well.
Be mindful of the analytics. When doing email marketing, experiment and check your analytics. If you’re sending emails out, and you see a lot of people unsubscribing in hordes, you might be doing it too much or you’re probably making people angry. If you see a pretty good open rate, you’re probably doing it right so don’t change it up.
If you’re looking to get more information from Lenny, you can jump across to Affinity Agency. Stay good!
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