Creating an Effective Lead Magnet

We already know what lead magnets are and how important they are to generating leads and getting potential customers into our marketing funnel. But, how do we create an effective lead magnet? How do we take an idea or piece of information and turn it into an attention grabbing lead magnet? Believe it or not, doing this is easier than it sounds. Whether you’re doing a simple lead magnet or a more intricate one, there are a few simple steps you can follow to create an effective lead magnet.

Step One: Figure out What kind of lead magnet you’re going to offer
In our last blog we went over a few types of good lead magnets. Choose from one of these and decide what information you’re going to offer. If you’re going to do a white paper, what topic will it cover? If you’re going to offer an assessment or quiz, what will this tell people they need? Remember that a good lead magnet needs to:

• Be attention grabbing
• Have good information that potential clients will want to have
• Be full of valuable information that will benefit your client
• Relate directly to your company, services, or products
• Be simple enough that your people will understand it, but difficult enough that they’ll want some further explanation or information from you
• Tell them something they need, teach them something they can do themselves, explain why they need a product or service of yours

Step Two: Create content for your lead magnet
Once you’ve decided what kind of lead magnet you’re going to offer you need to create content for it. Some lead magnets require more content than others, but they all need content. If you’re doing something like a white paper, you’ll need to create content for the lead magnet itself, but if you’re doing something like a blog or RSS feed you’ll just need content to supplement the lead magnet. Once you’ve got your lead magnet written or chosen you’??ll need a few things:

• A landing page for your lead magnet: This should consist of a paragraph or two explaining what the lead magnet is and what information it will provide potential customers. This page will also include your download button.
• A form page: This page should be pretty simple. This is where you will ask your potential customer to fill out a form before receiving their download. You can decide what information you want them to provide. Generally email address, phone number, name, website, and business/company/profession is adequate for this kind of form. You should also provide at least one sentence explaining that they need to fill out the form and that once it’s submitted they will receive their download. The submit button at the bottom of the form should send them an email with the download for or a link to your lead magnet.
• A thank you page: This is where your potential customer will be directed after hitting submit on the form page. This is where you thank them for downloading your lead magnet and explain to them that they can find their download or link in their inbox. This is one of the most important content pages in the lead magnet process. This is where you will track downloads of your lead magnet, that’s how you’ll know how many potential leads you have.

Step Three: Setting up your lead magnet
Now that your lead magnet is created and you have content for it, it’s time to get it set up on your website. Many companies have a ‘resourceâ? page on their website. If this is the case with yours, you’ll want to put it on there first. It’s good idea to have a simple, eye-catching graphic that people will click on to opt-in to your lead magnet. Clicking on this graphic should take them to the landing page you created in step two.

In addition to your resources page, you’ll want to place a CTA for your lead magnet in various places on your website. In the sidebar of your services page, at the bottom of your home page, or in the sidebar of your blog are all great places for this to be. Again, this CTA should come with a clickable graphic and clicking on this graphic will lead a potential customer to your landing page.

Step Four: Tracking and Optimizing
Part of this process is seeing if the lead magnet you created works. Track how many downloads your lead magnet gets and how many of those downloads eventually turn into leads. If you’re getting a fair amount of downloads and conversions then your lead magnet is a success. If you aren’t getting very many or none at all, then you should think about why.

Does your lead magnet supply valuable information that’s directly related to your business?
• Is the content easy to understand?
• Does it leave the person wanting more?
• Does it show them why they need a service or product from you or get them thinking about it?
• Does it look neat? If your lead magnet is sloppy and unappealing, no one will want your services.
• Are all of your links and pages working?
• Do you have all the proper content pages to supplement your lead magnet?
• Are you properly tracking your lead magnet?
• Is the email with the link or download reaching those who request it?

After you answer these questions you’ll be able to optimize your lead magnet. Fix the issue or tweak the lead magnet to get everything working properly.

Lead magnets are effective and extremely valuable for any company when done right. If you’d like more information on creating an effective lead magnet, contact us!