How will you bring a new customer to your business?
This a very big and important question that every business asks.
To draw in new customers, you have to generate leads that can convert into your customers in the future.
But, what is a lead?
A lead is a person who could be interested in your product and who has given their contact details to you willingly.
Or ask yourself “why will someone give my business their contact details if they are not interested in my offers?
There are thousands of businesses that are offering the same products as you, so why did they decide to give their details to you and not the others?
Here comes the idea behind a lead magnet.
A lead magnet could be an E-Book, video series, email sequence, checklist, and many other things that can be offered to draw in people who may be interested in your products.
A lead magnet is an important tool in the hands of any company that wants to boost its sales and maintain a healthy sales pipeline. It ensures that there are enough interested people for a company to work with and convert into customers.
What is a Lead Magnet?
A lead magnet is a special offer that you promote to your prospects in exchange for their email address. The results of an effective lead magnet are typically an email list with the addresses of the existing and prospects.
Any quality content that brands may offer for free in return for a prospect’s contact information is referred to as a lead magnet.
To put it differently, a lead magnet is a freebie that companies offer as an incentive in exchange for information from their website visitors.
To understand better, some most common examples of lead magnets are eBooks, toolkits or resource lists, cheat sheets, promo codes, case studies, PDFs even free email courses.
What Are The Benefits Of Using a Lead Magnet for Companies?
#1. Attract Qualified Prospects
A visitor’s contact information is the most valuable thing they have, and they won’t give it away for anything.
If a business offers them a valuable piece of content in exchange for their contact information, they will be more willing to give this information out.
#2. Increases Trust and Authority
Prospects have one key question: “How would this benefit me?” Nevertheless, how does a brand respond to this question?
Furthermore, how do you deal with people who haven’t developed enough confidence in you to spend money with your brand?
Lead magnets are the way out. Creating niche-specific content and being up to date on industry developments are important for boosting online authority.
Building online authority is more than having followers or articles on your website; it is also about having engaged and committed followers that advocate for your business.
When companies offer a great lead magnet that sticks out from the crowd and delivers value, it automatically boosts online authority.
#3. Help you to Niche Your Audience
If an individual is familiar with your business, visits your site, or follows you on social media, there is a good chance they are interested in your products.
For example, your audience as a business coach may include aspiring entrepreneurs or established business owners.
Your follower is interested in fitness if you are a personal trainer.
#4. Position yourself as the guide to solving defined challenges
Your customers are not looking for another hero; they are looking for the support of a guide to help them find the easiest way to accomplish their goals.
In your lead magnet, your business should take the position of a guide to help customers solve specific challenges.
With this approach, you will not only get more audience to listen to you but you will also be perceived as an authority that clients will turn to whenever they need your solutions.
#5. Continue the relationship with your customers
With a lead magnet, you will gain information that ordinarily, you would not have obtained. With this approach, you will be able to find potential customers who are genuinely interested in your company`s product, earn their trust, and build a relationship with them.
Once the prospective customer receives the lead magnet, you will have to stay in touch and keep them interested.
This can be achieved with an automated email marketing campaign that can work for you to bring in new leads 24/7 even while you sleep. Having this system in place will increase productivity and improve conversion rates for your company.
Types of Lead Magnet
#1. Whitepaper
A whitepaper is an in-depth thought leadership piece that shares distinctive data, perspective, or advice with your followers.
It helps your audience understand a complex issue and exactly what steps they need to take to iron it out. They are particularly useful in B2B marketing, where customers often have a longer sales cycle and need more additional information to make a purchasing decision.
#2. Webinar
Webinars offer your audience a chance to dig into engaging video content and, usually, to ask questions in a Q&A session.
And if you offer on-demand after the initial live event, webinars can deliver leads for months and even many years to come.
Keep each webinar narrowly focused on a defined problem or pain point.
#3. Free shipping
This is a great lead magnet type for e-commerce businesses.
Free shipping is one of the top reasons that customers decide to buy online, so it makes sense to try this benefit to attract more leads.
#4. Contest
Everybody loves a chance to win an amazing prize.
That is why many people participate in contests and it makes another great lead magnet type to utilize by businesses. If the prize is valuable enough for your clients, then you should generate a ton of leads.
#5. Discount
Everybody loves discounts, and every marketer knows that.
“You want to save money? Sign up and get 30% off!”
You have surely seen this lead magnet example a lot because marketers send it to fly in the faces of their target audiences daily.
That’s because it works. Buyers like discounts because they want the best deals possible at affordable prices. This makes discount codes an obvious and great lead magnet type.
#6. Online Course
An online course is the structured delivery of educational content hosted on your website. It often contains individual lessons designed to be consumed in a defined sequence to help candidates successfully gain a new skill.
Online courses are often supplemented with lesson summaries, study guides, worksheets, and quizzes to check for learning.
Offering training videos or online courses can be a perfect way of starting a relationship with your ideal audience.
#7. Checklist
Checklists are powerful lead magnets because they are quickly consumed, succinct and actionable.
And simple to create, usually 1-2 pages only.
You can summarize a blog article as a checklist by simplifying it into a series of bullet points or numbered steps in assisting candidates to create a better resume, nail that job interview, boost their LinkedIn profiles, and more.
Providing a printable checklist can inspire candidates to tick -off each bit on their list as they complete it.
#8. EBook or Mini Guide
Like a whitepaper, eBooks and other guides find a solution to a specific problem. And like whitepapers, they range in length from a few pages to 100+ pages.
However, dissimilar to whitepapers, eBooks tend not to be data-heavy; they are easy to read and often conversational guides that help readers fully comprehend a topic.
EBooks can be educational and entertaining
#9. Bundle offer
Sometimes, discounts are not enough to entice website visitors to convert into customers.
That is where the bundle offers come in. They have numerous benefits to customers as a package deal, which can be a more powerful lead generation technique.
#10. Free Trial
Throughout my eventful career as a digital marketer, I have used free trials as lead magnets countless times and I have used it that much because it works.
It is a way of saying:
“You are welcome to use our basic software for free (in exchange for your email).”
Free trials are a popular lead magnet, and for good reason, they are very effective. Consumers appreciate a chance to try a product for free, so they are often willing to share their information to do so. Free trials aren’t time-intensive for businesses, either.
Conclusion
Want a way to grow your email database and build trust and authority with your online marketing campaign? You need a lead magnet.
This article has explained what a lead magnet is and how it can benefit your business and 10 irresistible lead magnets to leverage and draw customers to the doorsteps of your online store.
A lead magnet is a powerful and efficient way to grow your email list. When a contact signs up for your lead magnet and shares their email, it confirms they are interested in what you have to offer and see value in your product and services.
From there, you can start and build a relationship with that contact and convert them into loyal customers.
