In digital marketing, no piece of information is as coveted as the email address. Getting this data is comparable to discovering gold or striking oil in the old days, but in the information age, collecting the email address is the first step in the customer journey. With the proper strategy in place, you can start collecting email addresses through what we call a Lead Magnet. It is a marketing strategy that’s used when offering a free item or service for the purpose of acquiring an email address and other contact details like a phone number or even a mailing address.
It’s ideal to acquire as many email addresses as possible and move them down your funnel to go from prospects to leads, and eventually to paying customers. Pairing a lead magnet with a great popup is one of the most effective ways to start capturing email addresses today.
What Sets A Great Lead Magnet Apart From The Others?
Your lead magnet should have, in your customers’ view, High Perceived Value, and High Actual Value.
The promise of the lead magnet of something valuable and which can impact the quenching of needs of the customer should be authentic and sincere. Your lead magnet will work best if you can deliver it right away. Clients just love instant gratification, as long as you make them also feel that you, the marketer, has high in his or her priorities, their satisfaction in the end. The Actual Value should equate or even exceed the Perceived Value of the Lead Magnet, and eventually, the actual product or service purchased.
This is the ideal marketing cycle that ends in a purchase. Lead magnets should still be pursued as follow up strategies for this specific customer (who have made a purchase) to be able to retain his loyalty. These new lead magnets should also give him awareness about other products and services you are offering. This is an opportune time because you have already gained the customer’s trust, so he or she will listen to you for your new recommendations through lead magnets.
Create The Content For Your Lead Magnets
When you are trying to attract your prospects through your lead magnets, and they show interest, do you already have Ready and Immediately Available Lead Magnets at your disposal? If you still don’t have content, you don’t have ammunition. Here are tips on how to create them:
- Be specific: The content of your lead magnet should be able to give relief to the customer that you can help him solve his problem. Make it easy for the prospect to comprehend your content.
- Uniqueness is key: Be irresistible and use words and sentences that no marketer has used before. It should be a lead magnet which when googled, should not appear easily online. This means, your prospect really needs to get in touch with you through your unique lead magnet.
- Edit Available Content According to What the Prospect Needs: If in case you have already relevant email drafts or blog posts that need to be edited to be tailored for the prospective clients, then do it so you will be prepared to send these materials anytime.
- Write in a professional and authoritative tone: Be credible with your lead magnets. Be knowledgeable enough about what Lead Magnets you are offering because the prospective client will always shoot back questions to you which you need to answer knowingly.
What Are The Steps In Using A Lead Magnet?
With the customer’s email address as your instrument to send your lead magnets, you can begin the nurturing and courting process. Send relevant, targeted, and focused content to the prospective client. You lead the recipient through a series of stages through your marketing funnel. This is now all up to you on how to make them “give it up”, meaning part with their money. They may still be in the undecided (awareness) stage, where one small nudge or one magical phrase in your lead magnet makes them go all out and make a purchase.
- Identify your Target Customer: What is the specific niche that your product or service is targeting to be sold to. If you offer a lead magnet of free samples of newly launched perfume scents to people who are allergic, you are wasting your energy on the wrong individuals to market to.
- Create A Compelling Offer: This is your Value Proposition. Know what they need or want or what tickles their fancy because this is where you will base what lead magnet you will attract them with.
The Three Stages Of The Customer Journey
1) Awareness Stage
The prospective clients are experiencing a problem that needs to be solved and they are on the lookout for probable solutions. You might just have entered at the right time when you offer them your lead magnet which might attract them. This stage is all about informing the clients about your company and your products/services. Lead magnets that convert well are short lead capture types where the prospects don’t need to share too much personal information. The common lead magnets in this stage are:
- List of Tips
- Reports
- Ebooks
- Blog Subscriptions
- Gated Blog Posts
2) Consideration Stage
Aside from you, there are other marketers luring the prospect clients with their own Lead Magnets. Let’s say, you land in the final list of 3 marketers who are being considered by the prospect client, we are now elevated into the Consideration Stage where the prospect has finally narrowed down his or her final decision to 3 marketers, including you. In this stage, there is an attempt by the marketers to go beyond just requesting the email address. They also ask for additional details like phone number and social media messaging accounts. Types of Lead Magnets in the Consideration Stage are:
- White Papers
- Case Studies
- Podcasts
- Webinars – Allow customers a more detailed look at how the marketer is trying to solve the prospect’s problem.
- Video
- Free Samples
3) Decision Stage
Customers are evaluating their options and are already looking to purchase. The marketers give it all they’ve got for one last push before the customer decides on what final Lead Magnets to utilize before making the final decision. At this point, marketers will be asking for more detailed information from the client. The Lead Magnets for this final push in the Decision Stage are:
- Coupons and Discounts
- Consultations
- Demos
- Free Trials
Promote Your Lead Magnet
You’re already prepared with your Lead Magnet Content. They will be of use to you only if you know where to position them on the internet. How do you place your lead magnets directly in the path of where your potential clients are walking through? Here are suggested online pathways :
- Your website: The lead magnet could be right up front on the Homepage through a sidebar, a pop-up or on the footer. You can also place them on blog posts that are relevant to your lead magnet offer.
- A General Resource Page: If you have multiple lead magnets, you can bunch them all here. It’s up to the prospective client what he clicks.
- Thank You Page: You write in your gratitude to people for converting and subscribing, but at the same time, you add in another Lead Magnet offer that’s irresistible not to click.
- Through Social Media: There are so many features in Social Media that you can utilize to make your Lead Magnets successful in capturing prospective clients.
How To Use Your Lead Magnet On Social Media
1) Status Updates: You could explain briefly then add an image. Then finally, a link to your post-click landing page.
2) Utilize memberships on your Groups on Facebook, Google, and LinkedIn and also in Group Chats. Participate in discussions and conversations, and whenever topics are relevant to what lead magnet you have to offer, pop in a link on the conversation. Now you got their attention.
3) Paid Ads: If you analyze that paying for online ads that could boost your Lead Magnet exposure exponentially will be worth the price, then do it. Examples are Facebook Ads, Twitter Ads, Vimeo Ads, Instagram Ads, etc.
4) Posts about Scheduled Webinars. Prospective clients who are really interested will click on Lead Magnets that lead them to a sign-up page for Webinars. If the prospect feels they need more information, they will be willing to sit for 1 hour or more to listen to the webinar which might just solve a problem that’s been bugging them.
5) Content Hubs are the newest stars on the internet where you can strategically expose your Lead Magnet Offers. Examples are :
- Q & A sites where a large community of users ask questions or give answers to questions on anything under the sun. Once you have signed in, and you are actively answering and questioning, you can just pop in the link of your lead magnet offer anytime you feel it would be relevant to people accessing the site. Examples are Quora, Yahoo Answers, etc.
- Aggregator Sites. Users submit news and content. They are ranked by users with a voting system. Examples are Reddit, Inbound.org, etc.
- Forums where people interact through Threads. In the course of the discussion, links of your lead magnets could be inserted whenever possible.
Use Lead Magnets To Grow Your Business
Now you know the ins and outs of using Lead Magnets. You might be confused before why when you promote something on the web, you don’t get the number of inquiries, likes, or follows that you desire them to have.
If you’re not using them already, lead magnets are the missing key in your online strategy. Our easy-to-use popup builder is specially designed to help you build popups that promote your new lead magnets.
Try PopUpDomination today!