All businesses, big or small, are obsessed with this one big idea: finding and attracting the ideal customer.
It may seem like you need to stand on your head or find the latest marketing gimmick to get people’s attention and stand out in a competitive marketplace. And if you blindly follow all the trends, you may waste a lot of time and money.
You don’t want to be chasing down new clients or networking yourself to death. That’s exhausting — and honestly, it can become a little demoralizing after a while.
What you want is to grow your business with a steady stream of new and repeat customers. You want a system that works for you, not a system that works you.
So this is where attraction marketing comes in. It’s where you’re not going out in the world to find your ideal customers. Your ideal customers are drawn to you because you’re offering them some information that they need (e.g., an informative blog post).
By using this method, you’ll get people into your sales funnel much more easily.
And one great way to make attraction marketing work for you is to create a powerful lead magnet.
Every business uses them in some form or another, yet so very few are actually effective.
So you may be thinking, “Well, what exactly IS a proper lead magnet?”
A lead magnet is an ethical bribe.
I know the word bribe may put you off a bit, but hear me out.
A lead magnet is a valuable piece of information that you offer to people in exchange for their name, email address, or phone number.
Your lead magnet can be any number of things: a free report, a checklist, a free consultation, a how-to guide, or a valuable coupon.
A lead magnet is simple and powerful — but, you’ve got to do it right.
First and foremost, a lead magnet needs to solve a specific problem for a specific client. So it’s imperative that you know your ideal client and what their needs are.
The lead magnet also needs to be easy to understand and easy to implement. It should bring some easy wins for your prospect.
It should also adhere to 3 fundamental keys.
So let’s lay out the 3 keys that you can use to create (or check your existing) lead magnet:
The 3 Steps to Creating an Effective Lead Magnet
1. Value
2. Effectiveness
3. Sale Consistency
Let’s dive into this a little bit more…
1. Value
Your lead magnet obviously has to have some sort of value to your prospect. For example, if you offer a free consultation or assessment, you have to provide some real value to your prospect.
Are you going to give them some expertise that they’re seeking? Will your consultation help them get a quick win?
The higher the perceived value, the more likely they are to engage with your business further.
Good Example: Johnny’s Accounting Firm offers a Free Report. He creates that report giving tips and tricks to his leads about how they can save money on tax season. He gives them info that is valuable to the prospect because it will save them money.
Bad Example: Johnny uses the whole report to talk about how great his firm is and why they should hire him, but gives no value to the lead. No information they can use, and nothing that builds value, trust and credibility.
It’s clear that Good Johnny is going to be more successful than Bad Johnny. Always lead with value and you will come out ahead.
2. Effectiveness
While perceived value is the first and foremost tool in your arsenal – your value has to have some effectiveness (some meat on the bones!)
If your information is valuable to the prospect AND effective for their specific needs, then you’ve completed 2 out of your 3 lead magnet qualifications!
Good Example: Johnny recommends that his prospect starts keeping track of mileage for business trips as an expense write-off, and shows him exactly what to do to start this process. Johnny clarifies the laws around personal and business travel, so the customer can maximize their mileage.
He even gives them access to a free piece of software that will track their mileage through an app on their phone. The prospect didn’t know he could do this and ends up doubling their mileage tracking within the week, saving over $200.
Bad Example: Johnny recommends that his free report prospect keeps track of expenses, but he doesn’t say what constitutes as an expense or how to keep track of it. The prospect knows the value of tracking expenses (to save money) but doesn’t know how to get there. This lead magnet is a little too vague and general to be effective in the prospect’s life.
An effective lead magnet is actionable. The customer can do something right away to get an immediate benefit.
3. Sale Consistency
This is a major one that many people overlook. Many businesses don’t look at how a lead magnet will transfer into a sale.
Just because you’re giving away free information, doesn’t mean the prospect will magically love you and want to buy things from you.
This goes back to the lead magnet being an ethical bribe. You may see yourself as a generous person, but you’re not giving out this free information for purely altruistic reasons. You’re providing your lead magnet to eventually bring on a new customer.
There needs to be a natural progression between the lead magnet and when you make the sale.
If you do NOT do this, then you have implanted in the prospect’s mind they are getting information for free. And then it will come as a slap in the face when you try to make a sale. You won’t have properly primed them to be interested in learning more about your services or products.
Good Example: Johnny consistently reminds during the free report that these are all some of the tips and tricks he implements with his paying customers, and he has a whole slew of other tricks under his sleeve for his full package. Even though he is giving free information, he is tying a consistency between the free information into his end pitch.
Bad Example: Johnny promotes his free report as giving away all of the tax secrets the “other” accounting firms don’t want you to know about for absolutely no cost. Prospects come in expecting all of his information for free, he gives them valuable and actionable information, and then at the end tries to sell his service. But all Johnny has done is drawn in tire kickers looking for free information.
Remember: your lead magnet ultimately should give prospects just a taste of what it’s like to work with you. This is a marketing strategy, not charity or a giveaway.
There are plenty of other pieces that go into creating an effective lead magnet – but these are the 3 most essential pieces that we use every single day to structure lead magnets for our customers.
