MODULE 2 – START WITH THE END IN MIND: DEFINE YOUR GOAL

To create an effective lead magnet, it’s important to know what your goal is for those email addresses that you’ll collect. Some potential goals for creating a lead magnet are general list building, product promotion (your own products or affiliate ones), service promotion, relationship building, and reputation building. Defining a specific goal is critical so that you don’t just generate leads, but so that you generate targeted leads who are hungry for your products and services.

Let’s take a look now at 3 different types of goals for lead magnets and what a relevant lead magnet might be.

1. General List Building

If your business is relatively new, you may not have a specific goal right now other than to start building a relevant list of leads for your business. To capture email addresses for these leads, you can market through social media channels, message boards, blog posts (guest and on your own blog) and more. However, you still need to have a very good idea of who your ideal market is. Then you’ll need to create content that will attract them.

When seeking to capture prospects who you can nurture into future customers, you’ll need to target your audience in multiple channels using a lead magnet that is both specific to what you’ll eventually be promoting, as well as useful to your ideal audience.

• Example: If you’re just trying to build your list in general, you could use social media to distribute a survey asking the audience two or three questions. For thanks, you could offer a guide that provides a list of your favorite resources for doing ‘X’ (with ‘X’ being something your target market is eager to achieve.) .

2. Sales Generation for Products

If you have products to sell, it’s important to determine if you’re promoting a specific product or all of your products in general before you create your lead magnet. Some ideas for your lead magnet are free samples, a demo, a discount, or free shipping for physical products.

• Example: You want to sell your 12-week video course on how to use WordPress. Your lead magnet could be a short excerpt from the course on how to do something that takes less than five minutes from start to finish.

3. Sales Generation for Services

When seeking to build a list to promote services you also need to be clear about whether you’re promoting a specific service or all your services in general. Consider providing a template, a consultation, or an assessment to gain prospects or leads. In this case, the goal is likely to build appointment requests so that you can move the lead toward being a customer.

• Example: You want to sell your social media management services. You could promote a free Instagram post checklist as your lead magnet.

Turning Leads into Customers

Once you know what your goal is, it will be much easier to determine the ideal lead magnet. However, the ultimate goal will always be to turn a lead into a customer.

A well-made lead magnet serves three functions.

1. Gives Leads a Sample — When people see your lead magnet, they need to feel thankful for receiving it. More importantly, they need to get a good idea of what they can expect from you in the future from any products or services you offer. You need to deliver value so high that they’ll be wowed and more than satisfied when they actually spend money on your offers.
2. Builds Relationships – Your lead magnet will trigger the start of your follow-up email series. This email series must be directly relevant to the lead magnet itself and should start building your relationships with leads. The perfect lead magnet is designed at the same time as your follow-up email series so that the two work together to provide value. Ideally, your email series will ensure that subscribers are getting the value and results that you promised to them.
3. Weeds Out Freebie Seekers – By creating a lead magnet that is laser focused on your audience’s needs and desires, you automatically weed out people who will never buy anything from you.

Here’s a simple series of steps you can follow now to help you determine the goal for your lead magnet.

1. Determine whether you have a product or service to promote right now.
2. Determine whether you want to build your list in general or promote a specific product or service.

Action Steps:

1. Think about your business. In planning a lead magnet, what is your goal or purpose?