God us marketers love a buzzword. If we can’t obfuscate, acronymise (And no, I don’t think that’s a word either), or abbreviate, we simply won’t give it the time of day, but this one’s worth finding out more about, because lead magnets are actually pretty important.
Lead magnets are those little lumps of value you give your prospective customers in exchange for their contact details. Consider them the amuse bouches of the sales cycle, the starter before the (sales) main course.
Let me give you an example.
Campbell Property offer unique and affordable boutique style student accommodation. They’re a world away from the accommodation you probably remember from your Uni days, and in order to convey the value of their proposition, they need an opening gambit to get their message in front of prospective customers (the students).
No one likes a hard sell and people rightly place value on their contact details, so by way of an incentive Campbell Property have launched a competition for students to win tickets to the Leeds Festival (this is the lead magnet, or should I say Leeds magnet?).
During sign up to the competition, entrants are asked if they’re actively looking for accommodation, and if they are, then they’re appropriately scored and passed over to the customer support team to follow up.
Not got Leeds Festival tickets to give away? How’s about a offering a free 20 minute consultation, a white paper (I know, very passe, but they still work), a 20% discount code, a free trial, top 10 tips for XXX, a life size animatronic model of a giraffe (okay, maybe not good for ROI that last one), who knows what your customers find of value? Oh, hang on. You do.
And that’s my point. You know your customers better than anyone, and you know their frustrations and pains. If you can offer them something that will help alleviate these challenges, and make their lives better, even in a small way, why wouldn’t you? And if you receive their contact details and permission to market to them as part of that transaction, then that’s an awesome bonus, right?
Your lead magnet doesn’t need to be hugely expensive, but it should have a high perceived value (the higher the perceived value, the greater the lure), and it needs to deliver on the promise of value. Don’t be tempted into knocking something up on the down and dirty in order to trick customers into giving you something of value (their details) in exchange for something with no value (that “whitepaper” you got the intern to knock up one afternoon).
Not only does this create resentment from the potential customer, it tarnishes your business reputation and damages sales.
So, let’s give you a real life example of a lead magnet journey….
I’ve just connected with a digital marketing manager on Linkedin. Let’s call him Bob. Linkedin is great for developing superficial relationships, but I want to take this one a little further as I know this Bob’s business would benefit from using Kulea marketing automation.
How do I go about taking this relationship to the next level?
Well, as it happens, we’re hosting a webinar on digital marketing best practice (our lead magnet) next week, and I know that Bob would really benefit from attending, so I’ll send him an invitation to sign up via one of our Kulea landing pages.
As part of the sign up process, we require Bob to part with his business email address and phone number, and he’ll now be entered into a lead nurturing journey where we provide additional valuable advice on digital marketing via our blog.
Once he’s attended the webinar (there’s some fantastic advice on optimising webinar attendance and engagement courtesy of Neil Patel here), gained significant value from his relationship with Kulea, and seen a teaser about what Kulea.ma has to offer, a member of our sales team will drop Bob a line to sign him up to a free one to one demo.
And once our customers see a demo of Kulea in action, they always convert!
So spend a little time thinking about what you can provide to your customers that gives them value without costing you an arm and a leg and start using your communications channels to create a compelling magnetic field around your products and services!
