In the digital age, it’s impossible to grow as a B2B business without effective lead magnets. In this article, we’ll go over what they are, the different types, why they’re important for lead generation, and how to create a lead magnet that converts online visitors.
What Is a Lead Magnet?
A lead magnet is a free resource or service you offer on your website in exchange for visitors’ contact information (usually their name and email address). It allows you to attract new leads and enter them into your sales funnel.
But not all are equally effective. Some may try to trick visitors into sharing their contact information (e.g., by offering a clickbait resource that lacks real value) only to disappoint them. In contrast, effective lead magnets provide real value that the visitor will find useful. They’re also easily shared and closely aligned with your business’s services. As a result, they tend to boost your brand’s credibility and raise interest in your offerings.
Types of Lead Magnets
Landing Pages
Lead magnet landing pages are often used for social media marketing and Google ads. If a potential buyer sees the value your company has to offer them, they can submit their info to learn more about your product or service.
Sell Sheets
This is an authoritative report that provides in-depth information and proposals on a particular industry issue. For example, it could be a step-by-step checklist that explains why email click-through rates suffer on mobile and offers strategies to address the issue.
Case Studies
This is a report that demonstrates how your product or service was used in a specific use case (e.g. with a past customer). Typically written in a narrative style, case studies aim to show how well your product works and how it could deliver similar results for leads.
Newsletters
This is an ongoing series of emails that you send to subscribers in order to share industry news, blog posts, or educational content. For example, a newsletter could be a weekly email course, in which you teach subscribers how to gain more web traffic through SEO.
Here’s an example newsletter signup form on the Superside website:
E-books
This is a short digital “book” that educates, entertains, or inspires prospects on a certain industry topic and demonstrates your expertise in that area. For example, an ebook could be a beginner’s guide to running an online ad campaign.
Here’s an example of a Hubspot e-book download:
Templates
This is a sample document that users can customize to fit their needs. It’s designed to save time and effort. For example, a template could be a budget spreadsheet or a quality assurance (QA) grading rubric that helps leads optimize their workflows.
Webinars
This is an online seminar conducted in real time. You can use it to share valuable research, conduct a question and answer (Q&A) session, or train prospects on a particular topic. Webinars help position you as an expert. Once complete, you can also offer the recorded session as an ongoing lead magnet.
Here’s an example of a Cognism webinar registration form:
Product Trials or Samples
These are limited versions of a product. For example, if you sell software, you could offer free access to it for 14 days as a trial. This way, leads can try out your product to see if they like it without taking on any risk.
Quizzes, Surveys, or Polls
These are interactive activities that allow users to gain custom insights about themselves or their business. For example, you could offer a quiz that assesses leads’ email open rates compared to competitors in their industry. Such data could be useful to everyone involved.
Why Lead Magnets Are Important for Lead Generation
Now that you know what a lead magnet is and the different types of lead magnets out there, let’s discuss why they are so important for lead generation.
First, it’s important to recognize that most people are reluctant to give out their email addresses on the internet. This is because over 45% of all emails were deemed spam, as of December 2021. In addition, most people don’t buy a product or service the first time they learn about it. Instead, it usually takes many interactions with a brand for a lead to actually make a purchase.
With lead magnets, you can entice prospects with a free resource. If you’re offering them something that’s valuable to use in their future endeavors, giving up their email address will seem like less of a commitment.
For example, let’s say that you’re a commercial HVAC company that writes a blog article about the importance of preventative maintenance. At the end of the blog, rather than encouraging readers to reach out to your business or sign up for a newsletter, consider offering them a free guide on how they can maintain their heating and cooling systems year-round. If they enter their contact information to download the guide, you can implement them into your sales pipeline. From there, your sales development representatives (SDRs) can reach out to let them know that if they need help maintaining their units, you can be their go-to HVAC partner.
Over time, lead magnets allow you to build up your email lists, develop long-lasting relationships, and nurture leads toward making a purchase.
How to Create a High-Converting Lead Magnet
Attracting visitors to your website is only half the battle of marketing. After that, you must also get them to convert so you can enroll them into your sales funnel. Creating high-value content for visitors to download, also known as lead magnets, is the most effective way to convert more of your website visitors. To convert visitors into potential sales opportunities, it’s important that you follow these lead magnet best practices:
Understand Your Customer’s Pain Points
Before you do anything, you need to understand your customers’ pain points, which is an essential step in defining the buyer. You can identify these pain points by conducting in-depth research, customer surveys, or listening to sales calls.
Since not all of your prospects experience the same issues, you also want to split them into different buyer personas, based on demographics like age, gender, location, etc., how aware they are of the problem that your service helps solve, and their current stage in the buyer’s journey.. That way, you can create content that caters to the pain points of each buyer persona.
Build Valuable Content That Addresses Pain Points
The next step is to start creating content that helps solve the paint points you’ve identified. This may require keyword research and careful planning.
To build credibility and trust, the content you produce should be high-quality. If the content contains outdated information, doesn’t deliver on what it promises, or is just like anything else you could find on the internet, it may not be very effective. The content should also be easily shareable and repurposed for different marketing channels (social media, email, website, etc.).
Above all, your content needs to be considered valuable enough to online visitors so they’re willing to give you their contact information for it. The more relevant the content is to their specific pain points, the more likely it is that they will engage.
Create an Enticing Conversion Point
On top of creating quality content, you need to create an enticing conversion point that encourages leads to enter their contact information. Usually, it is some sort of a lead capture form that collects contact and demographic information from visitors in exchange for the content offer.
Make sure your conversion form is as frictionless as possible. If the form is asking for too much information, visitors will be less likely to fill it out. There should be an equal value exchange between the form and its respective content offer. For example, a form for a case study may ask for more prospect information compared to an e-book download, which should ask for the bare minimum. Additionally, don’t forget to include a clear call to action (CTA) as well (e.g., “Book More Sales Meetings With Our Exclusive Guide”).
You can then place your conversion points on your home page, landing pages, and blog posts.
A/B Test Different Lead Magnets
At this point, you need to test your lead magnet to see how effective it is. This is an often overlooked yet crucial step.
The best way to evaluate is to subject it to an A/B test. Basically, it involves creating two slightly different versions of the same lead magnet and seeing which performs better in terms of conversion rate. You can test all sorts of variables—placement, size, font, color, etc.—as long as you only test one at a time to narrow down what affects performance. Then use whichever lead magnet wins.
Make a habit of regularly conducting A/B tests so you can gradually improve over time.
Promote Your Lead Magnets Through Digital Ads
To help maximize the return on your lead magnets, share them across various marketing channels. That means your website, your social media accounts, and anywhere else you have an online presence. This can help stretch your marketing budget further.
Segment Captured Leads to Personalize Their Experience
Lastly, as you start capturing leads through your lead magnet, you’ll need to segment them. Similar to creating buyer personas, segmenting your leads involves grouping them into different audiences based on shared or similar traits. For example, you could create segments based on location, job role, or industry.
This allows you to personalize their marketing journey. Instead of emailing all of your leads the same content, you can tailor your marketing campaigns to their interests, persona, and stage in the buyers journey. Segmenting your inbound leads is critical to ensure you deliver relevant content at the right time. This increases the likelihood that they’ll convert into an actual customer.
Key Takeaways
At the end of the day, lead magnets are a powerful tool for generating a consistent stream of inbound leads for your sales pipeline, and building trust among your prospective buyers. Knowing the different types of content offers to choose from and how to turn them into a compelling lead magnet can help you maximize your inbound marketing efforts.
At Abstrakt Marketing Group, we pride ourselves on helping small to medium-sized B2B businesses create effective lead magnets and strategically implement them into their digital marketing strategy. Interested in learning how we can help you create and implement lead magnets that generate results? Contact us today to get started!
