Want to attract more leads for your business? Solving a problem for your ideal customer makes your business irresistible to new leads.
What is a Lead Magnet?
A lead magnet is an enticing incentive for a prospective customer to leave you with their information.
A good lead magnet attracts not just anyone in your market, but your ideal customer. It does this by addressing a specific problem that your ideal customer commonly needs to address.
Why Include a Lead Magnet on Your Website?
Whether we’re making a small decision like choosing a spot for happy hour, or making a major purchase like buying a car, we all do a hefty amount of research online before we’re ready to make a purchase.
The same is true of your audience. A great fit for your product or service may visit your website to do preliminary research. But, they may not be ready to buy. Offering up a resource they can use now, without making a commitment to buy, is a great way to capture their contact info.
For example, Less Accounting is accounting software for business owners. One of their lead magnets is to sign up to receive a weekly article about becoming a less stressed business owner.
So, while Less Accounting’s ideal customer – a business owner – may not be interested in buying accounting software right now, they can always use tips on reducing the stress that comes with running a business. With this lead magnet, Less Accounting can capture potential prospect information and stay in touch with them until they’re ready to take a closer look at accounting software.
Hooking a new prospect early in the buying journey gives you advantages like:
- Follow-up Opportunity. A lead magnet allows you to capture the name and email address of the contact, so you can send a follow-up email and stay top-of-mind until they’re ready to buy.
- Trust. If you can deliver value early in the sales process, you’ve indicated that you’ll be just as helpful after the sale.
- Prospect’s Interest. The type of resource your prospect downloads indicates their area of interest and helps you send more targeted messaging to them in the future. So, if you’re an insurance agent and a prospect downloads a guide on choosing the right auto coverage, you know to follow-up with more information on auto insurance – not homeowners or life insurance.
6 Lead Magnets to Try
Ready to create a lead magnet for your site to start hooking more great prospects? Try one of these:
Email Opt-In: Entice visitors to your website to subscribe to your email list. Offer an example of your latest email newsletter so that subscribers know what they’re signing up for.
Checklist: Help your ideal buyer stay organized and tackle a problem with a helpful checklist. This can work well whether your business is B2B or B2C and both for top of funnel awareness and bottom of the funnel conversion.
White paper: A white paper explores a major pain-point for your ideal customer. A good white paper should explain the challenge, and provide a solution.
Guide: A guide is a step-by-step, in depth how-to for your ideal buyer. A good guide should give actionable steps that your ideal customer can complete to reach a specific goal.
Video: It always makes a greater impact to show rather than tell. Do a video series of thought leaders in your industry, a video how-to course, a video testimonial from one of your best customers, or an animated “explainer” video of your product or service.
Podcast: Not everyone is interested in reading a lengthy white paper or guide. Interview a thought leader in your industry for a podcast your audience can download or subscribe to and listen to on the go.
There are a lot of distractions online, and just because the perfect prospect hits your website now doesn’t mean that he’ll be back when he’s ready to buy.
Don’t let potential customers hit your website just to bounce. Even just one great resource on your website can help you attract and hook new leads, helping your list to grow.