How to Create Lead Magnets that Actually Convert?

• admin
• Mar, 10 2022

Almost all B2B businesses use lead magnets for generating leads. However, unfortunately, very often a big chunk of the leads generated this way are irrelevant and never convert into paying customers. And the primary reason behind that is not following the right steps while creating a lead magnet.

Wondering what those right steps are? Well, read along to find out. This blog discusses everything from lead magnet definition, why businesses need them, and how you can create lead magnets that convert big, step by step. Just follow the process, and get the results you seek.

What is a Lead Magnet?

A lead magnet is a downloadable resource (free) or content piece meant to attract prospects belonging to the target market segment. Common lead magnet examples include an e-book, a YouTube video, or a guide your target audience wants to download in exchange for their contact information – usually email.

Think of a lead magnet as a barter system. You provide your prospects with some free value, and in exchange, they offer you their contact information. And you can use this information to launch marketing campaigns and thus convert them into customers.

Why Do Businesses Need Lead Magnets?

The primary reason why lead magnets are important for businesses is that they help generate quality leads. Such leads are more likely to purchase your product/service and are relatively easier to convert. Because only the ones who can truly relate to the lead magnet will download it, and not everyone, right?

Example

Let’s say you have an SEO consulting company, and your target customers are the businesses that are struggling with their SEO. Now, keeping your target audience in mind, you can create a lead magnet, let’s say, a short 1-page guide with the title “How to Instantly Boost your SEO for Free.”

Who is more likely to share their email and download this lead magnet or guide? Businesses struggling with SEO (your target audience) or random individuals browsing the Internet? Of course, businesses that are struggling with SEO, because the guide is only useful for them.

Now, you have the contact information of your target audience (quality leads), which are more likely to convert, than random email subscribers. Also, relevant leads tend to spend more, which means better customer lifetime value.

However, to be able to generate relevant and high-quality leads, your lead magnet should be high quality too. Let’s learn how you can achieve that.

5 Steps for Creating Quality Lead Magnets that Convert Big

1. Understand Your Buyers and Their Needs

Always remember that your lead magnets are meant to be ultra-specific, i.e., precisely for your target audience. Otherwise, the information you collect or the leads you generate won’t be useful.

So, create your buyer persona or your ideal customer profile. It should explicitly indicate the needs and pain points of your ideal customers. The motive here is to understand your potential customers and their needs and offer them a quick solution for free in exchange for their contact information.

Pro Tip: While creating buyer personas, you might end up creating more than one, which is fine. Multiple buyer personas can exist. However, make sure to keep your lead magnet specific to one buyer persona at a time, for effective results.

2. Identify the Value You’re Offering (Value Proposition)

Once you’ve figured out your buyer persona, it’s time to offer your target audience something valuable. It’s not just about the final product; your lead magnet should be valuable enough to attract your target audience to want to download it instantly, and share their contact information.

However, you need to be really careful with this. Don’t offer them something you think would be valuable. Study your prospects, find a common thing they’re struggling with (research from the previous step would help), and then identify your value proposition.

For instance, if you offer SEO services and your target audience is struggling with their on-Page SEO (for example), a short “5-step guide to Boost your on-Page SEO” would be something your target audience would like to get their hands on.

3. Choose the Right Type of Lead Magnet

By now, you must have a vague idea of what lead magnet you will use. However, it’s better to explore all the available options. Who knows, you might find a better or perhaps a more impactful one.

Here are some common types of lead magnets to choose from:

– Gated content such as white paper, eBook, sample template, a checklist, etc.

– A discount code to encourage signups

– A free consultation

– Free sample of your product or a free trial

– Free membership to an online community

– Premium access to a live webinar or a recorded video

– Newsletter

To choose the right lead magnet, you must consider the following:

– Your target audience: what they’d find useful and digestible

– Your industry: what’s relevant to your industry

– And if the lead magnet justifies the value you’re trying to create

However, if you need help deciding, you can explore some Lead magnet ideas and lead magnet examples from HubSpot.

4. Try Using Different Lead Magnets Based on Buyer Journey

You must know that prospects at different stages of the buying journey will have unique needs, and you’d need different lead magnets to cater to those needs.

For instance, at the awareness stage, the buyers are defining their problems. At this time, you can offer them a blog or a short e-book that educates them on their problem. A case study or white paper might not be useful at this stage.

When the buyer enters the consideration stage, they’ve defined their problem and are looking for possible solutions. At this time, you can offer case studies and white papers explaining how your product can solve their problem.

Therefore, when you’re targeting different prospects at different stages in the buying journey, use different lead magnets.

5. Design your Lead Magnet

This is perhaps the most crucial step of all. After all, no matter how well-researched or targeted your lead magnet is, it’s no use if it’s not designed or presented right. So, here’s what makes a good lead magnet:

– A High-Quality Design: You need to use high-quality images and graphics and optimize your lead magnet for all platforms (mobile and web). If it’s a content-based lead magnet, ensure that the content is spotless and has no errors. Also, the title of the lead magnet should be well-thought and catchy.

A quality design also includes the proper placement of CTA on the top left, where the readers will look first naturally.

– Clear Display of Value Proposition: Your lead magnet should have an attractive title or catchphrase that conveys the true value. Only then your target audience will click on your lead magnet.

– True Informational Value: No matter how brief your lead magnet is, it should always be valuable for your target audience. They should be able to accomplish something with it. Keeping this in mind will help you gain their trust. However, if you aren’t good at designing effective lead magnets, you can check out these downloadable lead magnet examples. Or you can hire a design company to design a lead magnet on your behalf.

Need Help Generating High-Quality Leads?

While lead magnets can help you generate quality leads, creating one can be a resource-intensive process as it involves a lot of in-depth research. And if you can’t spare enough time and resources, you may not be able to get the results you desire. So, what to do?

You can reach out to a lead generation service provider such as DAT-A-CCURATE. Experts at DAT-A-CCURATE will help you create ideal customer profiles using firmographic, technographic, and buyer intent data, i.e., generate high-quality leads that have an intent to buy. With all this data at hand, you can strategize your sales and marketing campaigns and convert your leads like never before.