Attract the right people with a Lead Magnet

Why do you need a Lead Magnet?

Visitors are on your website to learn something, so give them something they can use which is relevant to why they are there. Help them with something of great value, and in exchange they will give you their email address.

Don’t sell to early

This process is to gain trust and authority, and ‘selling’ at this point will ruin the moment in an instance. Give them your best stuff, it is a great opportunity to shine, and with their email address you have an open opportunity to stay in the game.

This is a great opportunity, just as it is when you meet someone face-to-face. If you help someone, they will engage with you, but don’t just give them something average, you must blow them away with the quality of the gift, plus it must hit their pain right between the eyes.

Once you give them something of value, and if you don’t ask for anything else in return, the trust level rises. Once they realise the quality of your gift, and how personal it is to their problem, they will see you as the authority in your space.

This is a great opportunity to get people excited about what you do by blowing them away with a fantastic taster specifically aimed at what they are interested in.

What about soft leads or procrastinators?

I have heard people say that their website does all the work for them, and if visitors don’t want to engage with them, then they are not right for them anyway. Well that ‘could’ be partially true, but what about the large number of people who are not ready to engage yet, and want to think about it.

How many website visitors are not quite ready for your sales process? I would bet on a large percentage, so if you don’t capture those leads and stay in touch with them you have missed a great opportunity.

Visitors who want to ‘think about it’ are not bad, they just aren’t ready to buy right now, soft (or warm) leads, not hard (or hot) leads. If you don’t treat them well and get them to engage with you, all you have done is warmed them up for a competitor.

It typically takes 7 contacts with a prospect before they are ready to buy. If they only have 3 or 4 with you and you let them go, then all you have done is warm them up for a competitor to have them as a client.

Also, a magnet attracts as well as repels, that’s what a magnet is meant to do. So this process is also used for qualifying a prospect. Assuming you know your Avatar, and your Lead Magnet addresses their biggest issue, if they don’t want it, they are probably not right for you in the first place. So you don’t have to waste any more time on them.

What is your Lead Magnet?

Do you have a Lead Magnet? Asking people to sign up to your newsletter just isn’t going to cut it. Offering a discount used to work a few years ago, but even that doesn’t work much now.

So what is it that your Avatar wants from you? What can you give them that will address an issue they need to solve? It could be information, a quiz, cheat sheet, webinar, video, small course, etc. Whatever format you choose must help the Avatar to address their biggest problem.

Spend time on this, think about your Avatar, and create something special, something you can be proud of. Do it well, don’t sell, and you will stand out from the crowd as someone of authority who can be trusted.

Download our ‘Small Business Guide to Capturing Leads’ guide, as part of our toolkit

This PDF gives you 19 different types of Lead Magnet, and ways to create them.

Giving the Gift of a Lead Magnet

Like any relationship that you want to grow, it has to go to the next level.  For that to happen there needs to be action – take the next step, take this gift.  If you offer someone a gift face-to-face, and they take it, that creates a special moment for both of you, and takes you deeper into the relationship.

But what if they refuse the gift?  Why would they do that?…

Maybe they don’t like you at all, and they know that accepting a gift from you will take them to a place where they don’t want to go.  If that happens you would evaluate everything about yourself and the relationship you thought you were building.  Are you attracting the wrong type of person?  In marketing terms, you don’t have the right Avatar, so go back to that point and start again.

Perhaps you have presented it at the wrong time, or in the wrong place.  Your gift delivery system needs looking at.  It has to be compelling, and timed for when they are ready to get to that next stage with you.  Again look at your Avatar notes.

Or what if they are on the wrong page, and what they really want is on a different, but similar page.  Internal links to other pages are crucial for those who are not sure what they want from you, so make it easy for them.  They may want a different gift from you that is waiting for them on the next page.

In conclusion, create lead magnets of real value to build trust and authority with your website visitors. Avoid early selling and focus on delivering, high-quality content your avatar will download so you can launch to them later.