Create Irresistible Lead Magnets That Make Your Prospects Eager to Buy From You

Create Irresistible Lead Magnets That Make Your Prospects Eager to Buy From You

Introduction... 1 Chapter 1 What Is a Lead Magnet?... 1 Chapter 2 Find the One Thing They're Hungry For... 3 Chapter 3 Give Them Your Best... 4 Chapter 4 Making the Most of Your Lead Magnet... 6

If there were a way to get potential clients to come to you, asking you to sell to them, would you use it? Of course you would. That's exactly what lead magnets are a way to get prospects to volunteer to be sold your services. By offering them something of value in return for giving you their contact information, you can cultivate an audience of eager, willing potential customers who are already convinced of the value of your services and ready to hear your pitch before it even begins. Many people think business transactions only begin at the point when money is first exchanged. However, before a customer agrees to give you their money, they first have to agree to give you their time. The first thing you need to get from a potential customer isn't their payment information, but the minutes of their day that they could be spending somewhere else. Lead magnets are a great way to get customers to agree to spend their time with you. If you offer prospects something that they want, they are much more likely to agree to give you their precious time. Getting potential customers to initiate that first transaction is the first step in converting them into a new client. A lead magnet is an object or service that you give customers in exchange for their contact information. In a sense, lead magnets are a form of ethical bribery. You give prospects something that has value to them, and in exchange they agree to let you sell to them. In this way, a lead magnet becomes the first transaction between you and a potential new client. How do you get prospects to accept the offer you are making them? It helps to look at your potential customers as mice. A mouse will chew through a three foot thick wall to get to a piece of cheese, but the second it sees a cat's whiskers it runs away.

In this example (which is often used by marketing experts like Perry Belcher and Dean Jackson), your lead magnet is the cheese. When your prospective client (mouse) smells something she wants (cheese), she will be eager enough to chew through walls to get it. However, even the hint of a marketing ploy (the whiskers) will send her scurrying away. Potential customers don't want to feel like accepting your lead magnet is walking into a trap where a hungry salesperson is waiting to devour them. They want to feel that what you're offering them is a treat. Do your prospects look at your marketing and see an invitation to help themselves to something they'll enjoy, or a threat hovering over their heads? The first question you need to ask yourself is: does this smell like cheese, or look like whiskers? In addition to making potential clients feel welcomed and at ease, a good lead magnet can be consumed quickly. To continue the cheese metaphor, you don't want to offer something so heavy and cumbersome that the mouse thinks carrying it back to its den isn't worth the effort. Instead, you want them to eat what you've given them and still be hungry for more. Lead magnets should be something that can be processed and used quickly, and with little effort. Remember, this is your first transaction with the prospect. If doing business with you feels like a burden from the beginning, they will go looking somewhere else.

As such, the best lead magnets are small, but still feel substantial. Small products or services are the best kind. If you have software or apps that can be given away, these make great offers. Even offering free downloadable ebooks for Kindle or other e-reader services can be enough to get a potential customer's attention. The product or service you offer doesn't have to be anything too time consuming or commitment-heavy on your part. However, you still want your offer to feel substantial enough that it has value. To do this, you can send them any reports in hard copy form, and any software on CD. Making your lead magnet a physical product is a great way to make it seem more valuable, and make the customer feel they getting more from you for their time. If you don't have services or products that can be exchanged for leads, you can still find something of value to exchange. Offering a short report full of tips, tricks, and advice for your prospects to take advantage of can still be of enough value to convince them to give you their contact info. Other lead magnets you can offer include: Trial memberships or product demos Assessments or tests Online seminars/webinars An RSS feed of helpful blogs, articles, and/or podcasts Loyalty Programs The key to a good lead magnet is giving your new clients something that they value that also demonstrates that you are a trustworthy, authoritative source. Find a creative, eye-catching way to give your customers what they want while also demonstrating why coming back to you will give them even more of what they need. In order to be effective, a lead magnet needs to offer prospective clients one thing that they are eager to have. By cutting straight to the point and demonstrating that you can offer them that one piece of essential information they are looking for, you will build trust and credibility in potential customers' eyes.

How do you find the one thing to offer your future clients that they will find irresistible? What is the one flavor of cheese that will get the mice chewing through the wall faster than any other? This is where your personal knowledge of your industry comes in handy. Think hard about the market you work in, and what that market wants. Ask yourself questions like: What problems in their industry are your clients most often looking to overcome? What are the most common questions your clients ask you? What are the things that your target clients want the most to know that you can do for them? What is the one question that everyone interested in your specialty wants to know the answer to? Once you've come up with a list of answers to these questions, figure out the juiciest tidbit of information within them. A good lead magnet is a micro-point of irresistibly helpful information. It's the free sample that tempts mice to come to the deli and sample the whole selection. Once you've found the irresistible thing you have to offer, it's imperative that you give it in full. Potential clients don't want to be teased. They want to know that you gave them exactly what you promised them. The product or information you provide to them should make them want to keep doing business with you before they even finish consuming it. If you promise to give your prospects an answer to an important question, your lead magnet should actually give them that answer. If you offer to help them solve a problem, you need to give them a solution. Taking the time to participate in your offer should lead potential clients to a moment of epiphany. The thing you offer your future customer should be a short, quick blast of knowledge and insight that has actual value to them. When they find what you have to offer helpful and informative, they will come away from it believing that you are helpful and informative as well.

Many businesses make the mistake of asking their clients to opt-in to their contact list before providing them with the free service they're offering. Adding this extra hurdle between your potential clients and the thing they want is a great way to get them to walk away without giving you their information. Lead magnets are your way of demonstrating your value, and thus convincing prospects that it's in their best interest to take advantage of your service. Demanding their information before they get what you promised them is the equivalent of plopping a big, fat tabby in front of the plate of artisan cheese you've so carefully prepared. Don't look at the people taking you up on your offer as a list of future clients. Look at them as individual people whom you are in the first steps of forging an ongoing relationship with. Relationships rely on trust, and one of the best things you can do to establish trust with someone is to give them something they want without demanding anything in return. Make a prospect feel like handing over their contact information is a favor they're doing a new friend, not a toll they're required to pay for continued interaction. A good lead magnet not only gives information freely, but also inspires the prospect to come back for more. Use the opportunity to establish that you are a trustworthy authority on the subject that you're addressing. While your lead magnet should cover only one topic, make sure it includes everything about that topic that you have to give. It is better to err on the side of giving new clients too much than giving them too little. Your first transaction with them is the beginning of a business relationship, not a one-and-done deal. The more your prospect feels like they are getting out of your partnership, the more likely they are to continue it.

When a prospect has finished taking advantage of your lead magnet, they should have no doubt in their mind that you are an expert that they can trust. The best way to convince them of that is to give them as much proof of both your expertise and your trustworthiness as possible. Pick a subject, share as much information about it as you can, and encourage your future clients to make as much use of it as they can. Talk about how you found this information out, and the ways you've used it to help your clients and yourself. At first it may feel like you're giving away more than you are comfortable with, but the trust that you will build with your prospects will be worth more than the value of what you are giving away. You've found the perfect flavor of cheese, you've carefully measured and cut off just the right size chunk, and now you're ready to start attracting some mice. However, your job still isn't done. There are still steps you can take to get the most from your lead magnet.

Include a call to action in whatever material you provide your potential clients. Marketing initiatives that include an invitation for the client to come back for more attract more business. A call to action can be as simple as ending a report with the sentence: "Interested in learning more? Go to www.example.com and sign up for our free newsletter." While your call to action can ask for your new clients to spend money, it doesn't have to. Anything that gets them to spend more time with you is likely to get them to sign up for your services. Remember, taking a customer's time is just as much a business transaction as taking their money. If asking for money is still too forward, asking them to come back for more information can get the same results without alienating your prospects. This tip pertains specifically to email. If your lead magnet records your potential clients' email addresses, you want them to receive a response immediately after signup. Even just a simple response email thanking them for signing up is enough. The key point is that you want to establish a chain of communication with them as soon as possible. The moment a prospect gives you their email address is the moment they are most likely to be interested in hearing more from you. Don't make them wait. Strike while the iron is hot. If you can get your clients to give you their number, follow up with a phone call as soon as possible. Research done by Perry Belcher (he of the "cheese and whiskers" metaphor) has shown that a phone follow-up can quadruple a lead magnet's ROI. Just like with email, responding while the prospect's interest is high is essential. Speaking with them on the phone is also a great way to further build trust and establish a closer relationship between you and your future clients. Just like a good old-fashioned phone call can increase your ROI, using snail mail increases the chances of a lead magnet converting prospects into new customers. Perry Belcher has done some research into this topic as well, and found that using direct mail resulted in two to three times more conversions than email. Use this to

your advantage by sending your future clients their goodies in the mail. Remember, the more you give them, the more they value what you have to give. When convincing a prospect to take advantage of your lead magnet, brevity is a good thing. Once they've accepted your initial offer, however, you shouldn't be afraid to ask for more of them. If your lead magnet did its job, it has established trust between you and the client. Make use of that trust, and ask them for more of a commitment on their part. Don't be afraid to ask them to fill out more detailed forms or provide financial information. You've already done them a favor and started the new business relationship by doing them a favor. It's not out of bounds to ask them to reciprocate.

Whatever contact information you ask from your prospects, follow up with them as soon as possible. If it's possible, you can even contact them the same day they provide you with their information. They gave you their contact info because they want to hear more from you right now. Use that to your advantage by responding quickly. That way you will contact them while they're still most interested, and also further establish yourself as a trustworthy, reliable business partner. We've now gone over the basics of setting up a lead magnet program, from what makes a good offer to your potential clients to how to get the best responses from your new prospects. The most important thing to remember is this: the key to a lead magnet resulting in successful conversions is how well it creates value for the prospects to whom you are offering it. Do everything you can to make the offer as attractive as possible, while minimizing everything that might make them think twice. A lead magnet is your introduction to a future client, and you only get once chance at a first impression. Invest the time it takes to create the best presentation possible, and that investment will be rewarded. Check out the next page for a Special Done for You Offer from Content Divas!

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