Lead magnets for lead generation

Ask any business owner and they will tell you the importance of generating leads. After all, most sales processes start with a lead and ultimately end with a paying client. Whether you have a business that specialises in business to business (B2B) or business to customer (B2C) interaction, lead generation is a crucial component.

However, in most cases, before you can secure leads you need some type of compelling offer or value that you can provide to a potential client. With the increase in online advertising, such as social media ads, lead generation has actually never been easier.

In this week's blog, we wanted to take a step back and examine the role of lead magnets in the lead generation process.

What is a lead magnet?
A lead magnet can be defined as a piece of content that is provided to potential clients in exchange for their contact details such as their email address or phone number. You have probably seen countless examples online when you are searching for various topics and you are presented with an enquiry form to enter your details in exchange for more information.

Lead magnets have grown in popularity over the years as marketers and businesses have embraced online marketing methods such as paid ads. Lead magnets are frequently used on landing pages and this is a topic we will discuss in more detail during a future blog.

Why are lead magnets important?
Lead magnets are very important for modern day businesses that are engaging in online advertising. For example, lead magnets help provide the prospect with further insights into the topics of their choice. This is really important in building a long term relationship with potential buyers who are interested in finding out more and taking their knowledge further.

In addition, it helps the owner of the lead magnet position themselves as an expert or authority in their field. Think about your own experiences browsing online and researching a particular topic. If you come across a website or resource that can help educate you and provide vital answers to the questions that matter to you, you will most likely trust the content source.

As a result, businesses can differentiate themselves from their competitors and gain an edge in virtually any industry sector.

Common type of lead magnets
There are lots of different types of lead magnets that can be used to entice prospects to share their contact details. For instance, lead magnets can include videos, whitepapers, reports, checklists, PDF’s or even an E-Book. In our opinion, it is always good practice to test different examples to see what resonates with the intended audience.

The different types of lead magnets all have their use cases and advantages. For example, if you are selling a physical product, a video lead magnet that shows someone how to complete a task using your product could be very useful.

In contrast, if you are selling a service such as social media management, you may want to create a lead magnet that helps educate your audience on best practice when posting content on Facebook. The key to an effective lead magnet is creating content that is valuable for the recipient and will actually help them solve a specific question.

How to create lead magnets?
When most people think about lead magnets they assume it will be difficult, time-consuming and expensive. It is for this reason that the internet is littered with low quality lead magnets that have been prepared without careful planning. However, good quality lead magnets don’t need to take months to create or cost too much. The actual skill in creating lead magnets is focused on the research you do before you start creating.

The starting point should always be a consideration of the problem you are trying to solve for the recipient? Are you trying to educate them on a particular topic? Maybe you want to show them how to complete a certain task? If you don’t know what you are trying to solve, you won’t be able to create a lead magnet that is useful.

Next, you need to research your subject and find relevant resources that will help you create a unique piece of content, either written or in video format. Once you have your resources, it’s time to start getting creative and compiling your lead magnet for your audience.

A lead magnet doesn’t need to be very long but we do recommend 4-5 pages if it is written content and around 10-15 minutes if it’s video content. Once your lead magnet is created, always get it proofed by others to make sure it is free or errors and crucially, it answers the original question.

A good lead magnet will always nurture the prospect into wanting to find out more. This is where your product/service or company steps in to be the next point of call.

Following up with prospects
So you’ve done all the hard work, you’ve created a great lead magnet and you’ve made it available on a landing page. You drive traffic, either paid or organic, to your landing page and people start to supply their details in exchange for downloading your content.

This is where you need to step in as a company and start to provide additional value to your prospect either over the phone or via email. At this point, your prospect has expressed an interest in your content and you can now start the relationship building process of educating your buyers on why they should do business with you.

Conclusion
Lead magnets are an effective and ever green piece of content that all companies and individuals should invest in. When created with the audience in mind, it can really help to boost the number of quality leads that a business captures.

Here at iOB Business, we passionately believe in helping our partners develop scalable Digital Agencies with our technology, training, support and resources. To find out more about how we help each partner with all aspects of their Digital Agency, please contact a member of our team.

Until next time, take care.