You can’t talk about conversion rates without talking about lead magnets, can you?
A lead magnet is a piece of content that draws the interest of a potential buyer into taking action and buying your product or service, typically a free download, report, or other type of resource that is valuable to a potential buyer.
The lead magnet is the first thing a potential buyer sees when they visit your site. It is the first thing that will catch their attention. And, if you’ve ever read the excellent blog post by Brian Collins on the topic of lead magnets, you’ll know that focusing on building a strong lead magnet is one of the most essential parts of a successful content strategy.
Why are Lead Magnets so important?
You might be wondering why lead magnets are so important to your copywriting strategy, and here’s a good example of why you should care.
As a copywriter myself, I work with a ton of different businesses and brands from around the world. And one of the most important things I’ve noticed is how many businesses don’t focus on lead magnets enough.
In some cases, they think that blogging will do the trick and they’ll attract lots of prospective customers. But in many other cases, they believe that they’ll just attract casual visitors and maybe a few high-quality leads.
There’s a big difference between attracting visitors and leads, though. To attract visitors, you’ll want to use free tools like Google’s free visitor tool, Google Analytics, and other digital marketing platforms. These tools can give you a good view into how people are landing on your site and whether or not they’re interested in your product or service.
To attract leads, you’ll want to consider using a lead magnet.
Why? Let’s say you have a blog post about how to choose a patio set. You’ve written a great piece, and people are benefiting from it, especially those who purchased patio sets previously. But, you know what, I hate to tell you, most people who come to your site are not there because they’re interested in purchasing a patio set. They’re there because they’re looking for general information about gardens or patio sets or both.
In other words, they’re not exactly your ideal customer.
Now, you could certainly use this particular blog post to encourage potential customers to reach out to you with their email addresses. But, you’ll lose out on a lot of potential buyers if you do that. Why? Because there’s a very good chance that they’re not interested in what you have to say, at all.
Instead, you should consider using a lead magnet to attract more qualified leads. And what does that mean? Well, it means that you’re going to capture someone’s attention and keep it there with an interesting piece of content, ideally content that is valuable to them.
In our example, maybe you can think of a landscaping company that provides great service in your area. By creating a lead magnet that is specifically designed to draw in and retain this type of customer, you’re guaranteed to see an improvement in your conversion rates.
What makes a good lead magnet?
So, you want to create a lead magnet that will compel your audience to take some sort of action. What makes a good lead magnet? There are a few things you should keep in mind.
Interesting
Your lead magnet should be interesting enough to keep a reader’s attention for a few minutes, at the very least. One way to test this is to read through your lead magnet and see whether or not it holds up. Can you keep your attention?
If you notice, even the most fascinating articles lose their luster after a while. And this is why it’s a good idea to create lead magnets that are short and sweet, with the goal of compelling your audience to take some sort of action. The better your lead magnet, the more effective it will be.
Valuable
Your lead magnet should be valuable in some way. What is the value to the reader? It could be a free report, a book, or some other type of resource that is of value to the reader. Think of something that would be useful to your audience and make sure that you include it in your lead magnet.
For example, if you’re writing about fashion, you can include an excellent fashion blog that is well-known for its affordable and trendy luxury goods. Or if you’re an e-commerce store owner, you can create a lead magnet that is a free cheat sheet to help your customers feel confident enough to shop online.
Action-oriented
Your lead magnet should push your audience to take some sort of action. One of the best ways to do this is to include a call to action, such as a contact form, a coupon code, or a link to a limited-time deal. The better your call to action, the more effective your lead magnet will be.
However, one of the biggest mistakes you can make is to put a call to action at the end of your lead magnet. The problem with this is that people scan and then they scroll until they find what they’re looking for. If you put the call to action at the end of your lead magnet, you’re losing out on the chance to catch the reader’s attention right off the bat. And that, in turn, could mean losing out on a sale.
Short and sweet
When you have a lot on your website, it’s easy for the reader to get overwhelmed. One way to make sure that your website is easy to navigate is by creating short and sweet lead magnets. Ideally, your short lead magnets should be no more than three paragraphs in length. And make sure that each paragraph is short and sweet, building on the previous one.
You want to keep your audience’s attention, so you need to keep everything interesting and short. Longer articles tend to lose their interest quickly. Ensure that the information that is relevant to your audience is short and sweet. Think of the last time you read an entire book. Chances are, it wasn’t an easy read.
Also, make sure that each paragraph within your lead magnet is related to the next one. In other words, you want to make sure that the information builds on itself. A lot of times, people will read an entire book and only realize later that there was a lot of information that they didn’t remember due to lack of organization. You want to avoid that by creating a cohesive unit of information that the reader will want to remember.
Focused on a single topic
Your lead magnet should be focused on one topic. You’re better off writing one article and calling it a day than you are if you try to include everything under the sun. A good lead magnet should be able to hold the reader’s attention and keep them wanting more. In our example, we talked about creating a lead magnet for landscaping companies. But, if you’re trying to attract investors for your startup, you can create a lead magnet that is all about how to manage a successful startup. Or if you’re a sales exec, you can write a lead magnet on marketing analytics that can help you find the right prospects for your sales team.
You want to be sure that each part of your lead magnet is relevant to the overall topic. In other words, you don’t want to throw in a lot of unnecessary detail just for the sake of including more content.
Attracting, engaging, and converting your ideal customer
Now that you have a solid understanding of what makes a good lead magnet, let’s talk about how we can use this knowledge to improve our own work.
To begin with, you want to create an attractive and engaging lead magnet. If you read through the excellent blog post by Brian Collins on lead magnets, you’ll see that he suggests testing out different styles and content to find what works best for your particular type of business. And, since we’re on the topic of testing, let’s talk about an efficient way to test out different lead magnets.
First off, find a quiet place in your house where you won’t be disturbed by others. Now, separate from your desk or work space, you have a choice here. You can either separate this area into different spaces for different types of work or you can put everything in one room. Well, in our case, we have the latter. So, we have a family area, a guest room, and an office area. We used three separate rooms for this blog post.