A quick Google search for "what is a lead magnet" will give you a bunch of overly complicated answers. Here at Enji, we like to keep things simple and say a lead magnet is giving away something helpful in exchange for an email. The bottom line? You’re using a lead magnet to grow your email list or generate sales leads—and here's how to do it.
What is a lead magnet?
Lead magnets, sometimes called sign-up incentives or opt-ins, can be a number of different things, including:
Tip sheets
Interactive PDFs
Brochures
eBooks
Videos
Training guides
Gated content
Industry stats/insights/reports
A discount or coupon
Mini-courses or trainings
The key is that whatever you decide on should be something a potential customer can't find elsewhere on your website, social channels or anywhere else you are marketing your business. It should be informative, helpful, and provide value that is related to the product or service you ultimately want them to buy. After all, you’re asking for their email to add to your lead list, so you want to start off earning the trust of your future customer.
Want to make sure what you're giving away is compelling? Ask yourself these questions:
Does your audience care about what you’re providing?
Is there value to the offer?
Does it solve a customer problem or answer their common questions?
If you can’t answer at least 1 or 2 of these questions with a confident yes, reconsider the lead magnet you thinking about creating.
Setting up your email capture
Once you’ve decided what your lead magnet will be (and have created it), you will need to create an email capture field/form so you can get their contact information for your sales leads. This requires an email marketing platform (think Flodesk or Mailchimp as examples) that allows you to:
Create an email sign-up form
Build a landing page and/or thank you page
Design an automated email to deliver the lead magnet once they’ve provided their contact information
How your lead magnet fits in your marketing funnel
The idea here is to use your lead magnet as the entry point to your marketing funnel. It generally starts with the reader signing up for your email list (because they wanted your lead magnet) and ends with the person making a purchase—and hopefully becoming a customer for life!
The overall goal is to make the most of the email address you just captured from your first lead magnet and then use other emails to move the customer towards a purchase.
There are several important steps to doing this, so if you’re ready to create a marketing funnel check out this helpful guide. You'll learn how to craft a funnel that helps your business become at rusted resource of knowledge for your industry. Let’s GO!