Guest Article
Leads magnets are undeniably one of the most efficient and gainful ways to collect contact information from your website. By offering something valuable to potential customers in exchange for their email address or cell phone number, you create a mutually beneficial scenario – making internet users more likely to trust you with their contact information. Unfortunately, however, it requires a significant amount of trial and error, to lock down a lead magnet that works. The best lead magnets focus on what their target market wants, what motivates them, and approaches them in a way that seems genuine and good-natured. Here are five top lead magnets formats and tips for making them work.
- THE CHEAT SHEET
Inside information on how to perform better and tips for making things easier are always valuable. This is particularly so in today’s society, where people are constantly pressured to keep up with rising demands of business to generate better results faster. The key to a compelling cheat sheet is to keep your content short, concise, and jam-packed with little known facts that have practical, real-life benefits.
For example: If you own a golf equipment store, a cheat sheet entitled “How to Pick the Best Golf Irons For Your Unique Needs” would be relevant and appealing to golf enthusiasts.
How to make it work: Touch on your ideal customer pain points when pitching your cheat sheet to them as an offer. Be sure to keep the following questions in mind when writing your landing page content:
- What are the most common reasons why a potential customer would want to read this cheat sheet?
- How can I make the information as easy-to-understand as possible?
- What problems will my cheat sheet resolve for the reader?
- Why should my target customer act on this offer as quickly as possible?
- What can I say within my introductory content to make this cheat sheet enticing to my readers?
- THE FREE TRIAL
If you are in the software industry, offering a free trial is always an impressive lead magnet. After all, everyone loves getting something for free! Even if it is for a limited amount of time. In fact, ;60% of the time free trials convert to paid subscriptions. The most common type of free trial is the “30-day access at no cost”, with credit card details collected up-front.
For example: Netflix has a user-friendly free trial sign-up page that takes customers through an effortless three-step process.
How to make it work: When it comes to free trial lead magnets, simplicity of sign up is paramount. If your target customer clicks “Start Your Free Trial Today!” only to be faced with an extensive sign up form, the likelihood of conversion immediately drops. You want to make the sign up process as straightforward and easy as possible, requiring the user to fill out short pieces of information only.
- THE E-BOOK
This is perhaps the most challenging lead magnet on our list. But don’t be discouraged, because when done correctly, e-books can be highly converting. The secret to a successful ebook offer is writing a book that clearly benefits the reader. This is essential because finding the time to read a lengthy publication is difficult for many, making it imperative that your target customer immediately understands what they will gain if they dedicate the time to reading your book.
For example: Flywheel’s Recurring Revenue Ebook You’ll notice in the example above that FlyWheel created a ebook with a title that clearly states how readers will benefit from their publication.
How to make it work: To generate tangible results from your ebook lead magnet, give your publication a concise title that establishes its benefits. Also market your ebook to people who match your ideal customer profile.
- THE FREE TICKET
If you are hosting an event, offering the chance to win free tickets. Its an excellent way to collect contact information from your ideal demographic. Be sure to highlight what your customer would pay, if they were to purchase the tickets. To sweeten your deal, offer the chance to win VIP tickets, limited edition products, a swag bag, or other incentives.
For example: Music concert website JamBase offers the chance to win free tickets to various festivals in exchange for email signups.
How to make it work: Marketing to your target audience, specifically, is key for making a free ticket lead magnet work. Social media advertising can be beneficial for this type of opt-in magnet, since businesses are able to target their ads based on interests and other behaviors. You may also want to use the element of scarcity to increase conversions. By making it clear that a minimal number of tickets are available to be won, you will create a sense of urgency that will boost sign ups.
- THE EARLY BIRD DISCOUNT
The facts speak for themselves, and it’s a fact that customers love saving money. To be more precise, 70 percent of email readers open emails from a brand or company in search of a deal, discount, or coupon. Therefore, it’s only logical that offering an early bird discount to your target audience is a surefire way to boost your opt-in rate. But offering discounts won’t just benefit your subscriber list, it’ll also benefit your bottom line.
For example: Groupon is evidence that people are always on the hunt for a discount or a deal.
How to make it work: Segmenting your subscriber list is crucial to creating a discount campaign that will produce maximum results. Instead of sending out a general 15 percent discount code to your entire database, try offering a discount to a specific subset of your email list. Try offering a discount code to customers who have abandoned their online shopping cart. It’s much easier to close a customer who has already spent time shopping on your website than to try and convince cold leads to buy from you.
And there you have it! Everything you need to harness the full potential of lead magnets and generate sales results for your business.
About the author:
Michelle O’Riordan is a Marketing Associate at Design Wizard. She’s delighted to work with such an exciting design software company and is eager to help the company continue to grow.
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