Why Every Business Needs a Lead Magnet for Sales Growth

by | Sep 7, 2017 | Blog, Digital Agency, Digital Marketing, Lead Generation, SEO

Why Every Business Needs a Lead Magnet | Mixed Media Ventures

Why Every Business Needs a Lead Magnet for Sales Growth

I want to frame this so you know where it fits in your greater marketing strategy.  Having a Lead Magnet to generate prospective clients is going to help you accomplish a major goal toward launching a customized online marketing funnel for your business. The whole premise of this document is to give you an understanding that you need a one page marketing funnel that’s customized for your business model and virtually every single type of business owner should be using a Lead Magnet.

There are several types of businesses when it comes to Lead Magnets; there are those who don’t have one in place at all. No way to capture leads on autopilot. There are those who have an ineffective magnet giving away webinars e-books or Leave Magnets that simply don’t advance the sale. Then there are the very few who have a lead magnet set up the right way that solves one problem in minutes. It’s highly desirable, easy to consume, and most importantly paves the way or stretches that gap for the rest of your sales process. Now I know that might seem foreign.

Why You Need a Lead Magnet

Lead Magnets are the most important part of your marketing funnel. Why? Because it’s the first part of your marketing funnel. This is that single piece of educational material that you use to turn a subscriber into a prospect. It’s how you get started off on the right foot and make a great first impression. If you get this right you can do transformational things with your business, scaling from two to 10x more quickly than you ever have before. There’s a very specific strategy you should use, where the Lead Magnet fits into your funnel creation, and is something that most business owners just don’t understand. If you’re offering things like e-books, free consultations or webinars as a first part of your funnel you’re probably going to spend too much and not be able to scale.

Let’s zoom out and make sure we know where the Lead Magnet lives in your greater strategy, and more specifically within your marketing funnel. The ultimate Lead Magnet is all about attraction and capturing data. In the attract phase, we’re talking about the first strategy or step you’re going to use to actually turn a subscriber into a qualified lead that you can nurture into a paying customer. I also want to take a moment and outline where the Lead Magnet falls in your greater sales funnel as well. Every funnel regardless of your industry has three core components.

  1. There’s a capture page where you have to get the lead in the first place, and then create some authority with an authority amplifier.  An authority amplifier is the hook you’re using to create authority for yourself by solving a single problem for the prospect.
  2. There’s the thank you page.
  3. Then you have a conversion event. Now for some of you that could be a phone call if you’ve been coaching or consulting, it could be somebody coming into your office, it could be a webinar, or could be a multi-part video series.  And finally, for some of you, you may have a closing sequence where you might take an application or set up to an order form and actually get money to change hands.

The Lead Magnet, again, is the first part of your sales funnel is the most critical because you can’t close a prospect that you never acquired in the first place. So if you can master setting the stage and getting leads at a much lower cost than your competitors using this strategy, then everything downstream is going to be more profitable. If you did nothing else but add a lead magnet, you have the ability to 10x the effectiveness of your lead generation, then arguably you 10x your sales, because you are going to amplify the effectiveness of your prospect marketing. So the Lead Magnet is the first and most important part of your funnel. This applies to any type of business whether your specific conversion event might be a seminar in person , webinar, a launch series, a launch sequence, etc.

Formatting Your Lead Magnet for Effectiveness

Formatting your Lead Magnet is important… Knowing what information to include can make or break the first impression with your prospect. Most business owners ask before giving. What I mean, is there’s an ask in the first part of their funnel before solving a problem. They’re asking for a consultation, they’re asking you to come in and shop, and they’re asking you to buy their products or services before helping you. These things actually push away and they repel potential clients because you’re asking before providing value in advance. These actions are typical things you want them to do.  Instead you need to use education based material to give them what they want first, provide value in advance, and then show them how you can help them even more with your conversion of it.

Even those businesses who do use a Lead Magnet in their sales funnel by advertising webinars, e-books or consultations, those can be saturated and totally boring to the prospect if they don’t solve a problem.   Most Lead Magnets that you see out there are difficult to consume. They end up in the downloads folder of prospects with every intention of reading it later, and if it’s too long, doesn’t have enough information, etc, it never gets finished. Prospects rarely finish reading Lead Magnets, and may never know who you are. But hey, you got them in your database, but this is another post for later. If the prospect does not finish, attend, or consume your Lead Magnet, this results in a dead-end street; because you created really great content, you advertised it on Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Adwords, or other mediums that got you the lead and no one may advance to your sales process. The dead-end street occurs when you’re giving somebody a piece of content that is difficult to consume.

If your Lead Magnet doesn’t make them think it’s the most important thing for them to consume right now, your funnel will not advance to the next step and stretch the gap to revenue for your business. I routinely download Lead Magnets for the educational value. Checklists, guides, statistics, etc. If the content isn’t what I feel it should be for my business, I am not picking up the phone when a sales rep calls me nor am I returning the email they sent to me. The content MUST be valuable for your prospect. You may find you need to develop several lead magnets and landing pages in order to appeal to a wider range of prospect.

Let’s focus more deeply on the Lead Magnet and then really emphasize where it lives in your funnel. I’m telling you first-hand that getting this one piece right can result in explosive growth and I’m talking about getting five, 10, or even a hundred times more qualified leads at a fraction of the cost automatically. The right Lead Magnet and the right message together correctly will do the suspect to prospect selling for you. The cost per lead goes down and the conversion rate of your funnel goes up. I’m talking about getting Leads for less than a dollar, sometimes $.20 cents and generating hundreds or thousands of leads depending on your business and model. Think about the power of that in your business. Explosive growth should be the expectation because the Lead Magnet, coupled with the ad campaign does the heavy lifting and selling for you.

What to Solve for Your Prospect in a Lead Magnet

Your Lead Magnet must solve a problem.  If you solve one problem with your Lead Magnet for your customers in five to 10 minutes, while they are consuming your content, you can also impress upon them how you can improve their life with your products or services. You can then lead them down your sales journey. Without knowing it, you’ve begun establishing a relationship and building a business rapport with your prospect; and you haven’t even spoken to them yet. The result is, you’re going to lower buying resistance, and all the red flags that come up vs. just sounding like another person trying to pitch them something. You’re helping them quickly concisely and clearly, and you can establish a lot of goodwill and rapport in the process. But most importantly, if you do this right, you’re going have an evergreen resource. As I am typing this right now, there are people on Facebook or YouTube ads or LinkedIn consuming Lead Magnets and offers that hundreds or thousands of businesses have in place for days, weeks, months or years, doing the prospecting for them. Assuming these Lead Magnets convert, you’ll not have to touch them for an extended period of time and ,”if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” so to speak.

Solve Just One Problem

A solid Lead Magnet framework contains and satisfies several core concepts.

The first, is that your Lead Magnet has to solve one problem and has to do it quickly, in advance, and powerfully and has to solve one problem in five or 10 minutes. To do this you should have a short, specific process, using one sales page to take your customers from point A to Point B. So, if your personal trainer could be diet, fitness, and exercise, if you’re a Managed Service Provider it could be their network, security, and their metrics. It doesn’t matter, it should be three core steps and your solution. Now what we’re going to do with race solve one problem and advance. Pull out one of those and solve it and advance completely.

Position Your Company as a Leader

Once you’ve decided on what you are going to solve for in your Lead Magnet, you have to position yourself as a leader, an expert, a micro celebrity in your space. Oftentimes, this may be the only time to do so, right after the prospect consumes your Lead Magnet. You’re going to come on in and walk them through a process that will put you in a position of authority in a very short period of time.  But, if you don’t establish the proper positioning, all of the momentum you’re trying to generate is going to be for not, and you’re going have to start over with somebody else. The third, is that you have to solve one problem completely, but you have to do it in a short five to 10 minutes.  So if you use things like a checklist or a cheat sheet,  we can say hey you have one problem, and we can fix it ‘now.’

If we use the example of a personal trainer, and we use that analogy because everybody can relate to it, you might have a greater “system” or a greater solution that helps the prospect lose 30 pounds in the next 90 days. But right now, maybe you’re going to give them a cheat sheet of the top 10 recipes with negative caloric results that burn the most calories, or maybe you’re going to give them the top three exercises for burning body fat in less than 10 minutes a day. You’re going to solve one thing for your prospect, right now, in a very time friendly way.

Don’t Overdo Value

Now, that said, you can’t just dump a ton of value on your prospect up front and confuse them.  It’s easy to do.  I’m dumping a LOT of information on you right now.  And I know it’s not so easy to consume.

You solve one problem with your Lead Magnet but it has to be an incomplete part of a greater and longer discussion or signature solution that you have for the prospect. If you give them top five recipes you have to have an incomplete puzzle in the sense that you’re going to say, “recipes and diet are only one part of a three step process I have to help you lose up to 30 pounds of stubborn body fat in the next ninety days without giving up carbohydrates,” if that’s your million dollar message. So, you have to pave the way and stretch the gap and show them that the problem you can solve for them is one part of a greater journey and an incomplete piece of a greater puzzle.

Call to Action

Finally, you’re going to ask the prospect to take action… Like any advertising or marketing, we have to have a strong call to action. We have to solve their problem. We have to solve one problem at a time. We must position you as an expert, and do it in a time friendly way in five or 10 minutes of opting in to your Lead Magnet. You need to show them the short road show, and get them excited. Meaning, and to reiterate, the Lead Magnet solves one part of an incomplete puzzle. Then we have to give them a clear next step, what to do next. “Get on my calendar,” “come into my shop,” “make a sales appointment,” “sign up for the upcoming webinar” to pave the way and show them the clear next step.

You need to understand how important a Lead Magnet it is for your marketing funnel, as it is the first and most important aspect of your follow-up and sales process. If you don’t get this right nothing downstream could possibly matter because you cannot serve a lead that never opted in the first place.

The next step is to assess your lead generating efforts, and decide on how you will implement a Lead Magnet, and engage in the prospecting and sales process going forward. Now that you know you need a Lead Magnet to generate new and relevant leads for your business, what are you going to do?

Mixed Media Ventures a Business Growth Digital Marketing Agency - jack brandt

Jack Brandt is President of Mixed Media Ventures. In his 18 years in the online (Internet) space, he has worked with organizations of all sizes, with one employee to 50,000+ employees consulting them on how to grow their businesses and help their clients/customers achieve their online goals. He’s worked for some of the top Internet companies of their day, and some you’ve never heard of.  In every case, Jack has helped his clients to achieve their online goals with unique solutions that helped them generate new revenue streams.  He now leads Mixed Media Ventures and helps businesses with their Digital Marketing efforts, helping them generate leads, prospects, and clients.

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