If you’re a blogger, content marketer, or run an online business, then you know how important it is to drive traffic to your content. One of the ways to do that is to create a killer lead magnet.
If you’re new to online marketing, a lead magnet is a freebie that you give people who visit your website in exchange for an email address. Once you’ve acquired their email, you can build a relationship with the prospect until they’re ready to become a customer.
Most people believe that a lead magnet is simply a way to get people to join your email list. But if done right, it could be a valuable tool that gains attention on its own, driving even more traffic to your site. Win win.
In the world of online marketing, nothing changes your fortune faster than an engaged email list. Your email list can drive significant traffic to your blog and the key to building an engaged email list is a high converting lead magnet.
Here are the components of a great lead magnet:
Offer A Solution
Let’s face it. You can have the most creative copywriting, the coolest software or the best product ever, but if the lead magnet doesn’t solve a problem, your email list will never grow. Why? Because they won’t believe that you can help them. They won’t see the value in giving you access to their inbox.
One of my favorite ways to identify a core problem that my audience has is to simply ask them:
“What is the greatest challenge you’re facing right now?”
You can either set up a Skype call, or simply ask in an email survey, or set up a chat bot on your site using a tool like Drift and ask them. You can ask people on Facebook, scan through Quora or simply cold call.
Once you have a consensus of what your audience’s greatest challenge is, then you can work on how to solve it.
Create a Tool
Your lead magnet doesn’t have to be complicated, but it should be useful. You must create something with utility. So many marketers create things like ebooks and white papers. But how many of us have read one of those in the past 5 years? I know I haven’t.
After surveying Greg's audience, he found out that a large majority of them were having trouble getting traffic to their blog. So instead of just creating an ebook showing people 10 ways to get more traffic to their blog, he created a swipe file of emails they can use for an outreach program.
A swipe file is a kind of tool that someone can put to use to see results in their business. Other types of tools that work great are checklists and ROI calculators.
Create a Great Headline
Now that you have your tool, you need to create a great headline that will be enticing enough for someone to download or use. One of my favorite headline formulas is: Primary Benefit + Time Frame + Objection.
For example:
So, the entire headline would be “Double blog traffic in 1 hour per day without spending money on ads.” It’s a simple, but powerful headline that makes my lead magnet super clear and high-converting. The best part about this headline formula is that it works in every niche with every single type of lead magnet.
Make it Easy to Consume
157 page ebooks as lead magnets are so 2008. If your lead magnet takes more than 10 minutes to consume, then chances are people aren’t going to read it. People are so inundated with information that your free massive ebook will most definitely get put on the back burner. They just don’t have the time or attention span to read an entire book online… no matter how great it is.
They simply want an answer to their problem in the most concise way possible. So cull down your tool to the easiest, most effective way possible.
Instant Gratification
Finally, readers want instant gratification. The thing that made Greg's swipe file so effective is that a person didn’t have to give much thought into putting it to work for themselves. They simply take the email script he provided, tweak it, and put it to work. It takes 10 minutes to implement and they can see results in an hour or two.
The quicker you can get someone to see a result, the better chance you will have converting them into a customer down the road.
The lead magnet is a powerful tool that can help you build your email list and traffic to your blog. By implementing these five keys, you’ll be able to build a highly effective and high converting lead magnet that will transform your online business.
