One of the best ways to enjoy consistent sales growth is to ensure that your prospect list is also consistently growing. To make that happen, you need a lead magnet strategy.
A lead magnet is basically an enticing offer to somebody who visits your website. It usually appears in the form of a popup or a highlighted box in the middle of your content.
The visitor will pay for your offer, but not with money. Instead, you’ll receive the visitor’s email address as “payment.” Once the transaction is final, you’ll have a new contact to add to your list for email marketing purposes.
A lead magnet is one of the best ways to build your business without doing much of anything active. Once you put the lead magnet on your site, people who visit it from then on will see it and opt in. That’s why lead magnets are so valuable.
Here are a few ideas about how to develop a lead magnet strategy.
1. “But Wait, There’s More!”
Undoubtedly you’ve seen more than one commercial that uses classic marketing tactics to promote a great new gadget. At the end of the commercial, you’ll almost always hear the “But Wait, There’s More!” pitch.
Usually, the final pitch sounds something like: “If you order now, we’ll send you not just one, but two of our shiny new objects! That’s two for the price of one!”
It’s great old-school marketing. It’s also a tactic you can apply in your lead magnet strategy.
Here’s how you can do that: write some amazingly well-written content that helps people. Knock their socks off with awesome advice. Then, towards the middle of the content, show your visitors a box that reads something like: “Finding this helpful? How would you like 16 more ways to improve your productivity? Click here.”
The “Click here” in that scenario takes the visitor to a page where he or she fills out a form, including an email address. Then, you’ll email your additional content in PDF format to the prospect at that email address. Of course, you’ll also have the prospect’s email address for marketing purposes.
This is an especially great lead magnet option for people who love content marketing.
2. “How I Did It”
You’ve probably visited a few websites run by digital marketers. Those are some of the best places to get inspiration for lead magnet strategies because they’re run by professional marketers who’ve already tested different options.
At more than one of those sites, you’ve probably seen a popup or prominent ad with this type of text: “How We Increased Our Conversions By 900%!” That’s a lead magnet that’s especially attractive to other professional marketers.
Some of the best “How I Did It” options are the ones that put a large dollar amount in the ad copy. A good example usually reads something like: “How Our Marketing Strategy Earned Us $43,282 in 6 Days!” That kind of text is especially enticing to people who are just getting started in digital marketing.
The “How I Did It” option follows the pattern that we saw with the previous strategy. When a user clicks on the ad, he or she is taken to a sign-up form. Again, the user fills out a brief form that includes an email address. The visitor receives the “How I Did It” report in PDF format as an email attachment.
Obviously, you’ll need to have some type of success story that you can write about if you use the “How I Did It” option. Don’t worry, if you dedicate yourself to lead magnet strategies, you should eventually have plenty of them.
3. Free Trial
If you’re selling a service online, why not offer people a free trial to test out the service and see if they like it? That’s just good marketing.
Also, you can get contact information in return. Ask the people to fill out a brief form that includes their email address. You can make it clear that you need their email address to email them credentials or grant them access by using their email name as their user name.
Voila. You’ve got another email address.
Even better: the email addresses you get from giving away a free trial belong to people who’ve already shown an interest in your service. Now, you just need to practice some drip marketing to lead them down the sales funnel.
4. Free Shipping or Other Discount
If you’re selling products with an e-commerce site and you’d like to build some customer loyalty, use a lead magnet strategy to help you keep in touch with people who’ve already ordered products from your site.
Here’s how it works: when someone is in the shopping cart and about ready to check out, ask the customer if he or she would to join your “Bargain Hunters” club in exchange for free shipping or a discount on the product itself. If they’d like to join that club, they’ll simply follow a link that includes the form that’s totally familiar to you by now.
Once customers have completed the form, you’ll have their email address and they’ll feel like they’re members of an exclusive club at your e-commerce site while also saving money on their order. Everybody wins.
Get Your Lead Magnet Going Now
Now that you’ve got some great ideas for lead magnets, it’s time to pick the one that you think is best for your site and add it. Of course, the one that you think is best might not be the best. Do some split-testing with a few alternatives.
Once you’ve found the best option for your target audience, it’s time to start putting some great principles of email marketing to work. Then, watch your top line sales soar.
