Hook, Line and Sinker: Creating Lead Magnets That Reel in Clients!

You'll often find me discussing the sales funnel and how to move people from just discovering who you and your agency are right the way through to the point where they buy from you. Now, one of the key mistakes I see agencies making is not focusing on building that know, like and trust. Because let's face it, no one is going to ever buy from you until they know you, they like you, and they trust you. Instead, they go from, for example, connecting with someone on LinkedIn to asking them to buy from them. And of course this isn't going to work. All it's going to do is actually harm your brand and get people to disconnect from you and stop following you. This isn't going to work. So in today's episode of the podcast, I want to share with you one strategy that builds credibility, shows your audience that you know what on earth you're talking about and helps you nurture them. And that is by using a lead magnet. So in today's episode we're going to talk about what exactly it is, how to create one, and how to use it in the best way as a significant part of your sales process. So, lots to discuss. So let's get started. I'm Rob Da Costa and this is the Agency Accelerator Podcast. As someone who has stood in your shoes, having started, grown and sold my own agency, I know just how it feels in the ups and downs of agency life. So this podcast aims to ease your journey just a little by sharing mine and my guests experiences and advice as you navigate your way to growing a profitable, sustainable and enjoyable business. So let's kick things off by defining exactly what a lead magnet is. So basically it's a free offer, a resource of some kind, a PDF or a guide or a quiz or a video, or a free podcast indeed that is used to entice people to subscribe or opt in to your email list. And so it's a really useful tool for generating leads and building up your audience. And of course once you have got them in your email list, then you can then follow them up and nurture them to the point where they're ready to buy. Now I've spoken many times about why it's really important to build your email list, much more so than building your social media following, mainly because you own your list, whereas you don't own your social media following you. You're renting it if you like. And the owners of that social media platform can change the terms and conditions or something else, or close down. Indeed. And then suddenly you've lost that massive audience that you've built. Whereas if you are building an email list, you own that list and you get a chance to build a one to one relationship. So I'm not going to go into too much detail about why email marketing is so important, but I have a lead magnet for you which I'll put in the show notes all about email marketing. So that will teach you about how to go about building your list. But the lead magnet is a great way to build that list. It's kind of like a transaction that says I'm going to give you something of value and in return you are going to pay for it with your email address. Now, the key here is to genuinely give something of value. I think a lot of times people feel very reticent about giving a lot of their value away for free because that's what they hold back for their paying clients. But trust me, you want to put your best foot forward when someone first learns about you. So you want to put some really detailed value into your lead magnet. I always feel like the lead magnet is explaining the why and a bit of the what. And then when clients buy from you, they're learning the rest of the what on the how. So don't be afraid about giving value away because that's going to keep people engaged with the emails that you send after they've downloaded your lead magnet. So just to go kind of summarize those benefits, it helps you grow your email list and it builds your audience of potential customers. It allows you to collect that contact information from those interested prospects. And it enables you to provide some value upfront and build trust, that important part of the know like and trust journey. And once you've got them in your email list, you can then segment that list based on the lead magnet they requested or the behavior that they've done after the lead magnet, or indeed some of the information they gave you when they requested the lead magnet. So I hope that gives you clarity around the benefits of producing a lead magnet. And I'll talk in a moment a little bit more about what that lead magnet could be. But first let me share some misconceptions about creating a lead magnet. And the first one I want to share with you is that it doesn't have to be long. No one is judging the quality of your lead magnet by how many pages it is. Indeed, you want to make sure that your lead magnet delivers value really quickly because most people are time poor. So first of all, it doesn't have to be long. And the second misconception that I want to share with you is that you don't need lots of lead magnets. In fact, if I could go back and give my younger self 17 years ago, just starting out in this business, this is the advice I would say, which is, Rob, you don't need loads of lead magnets. You just need one really good one. And really double down on focusing on promoting that far and wide to get as many downloads as possible. Don't think of it like a campaign to launch the lead magnet and market it and then move on to the next one, but rather think about how you can continually market your lead magnet. So now let's talk about creating an effective lead magnet. First of all, you need to really understand your audience and some of the problems that your audience has that you can write about in your lead magnet. And you also need to understand your audience in terms of the best way they like to consume information. Would they want to download a PDF? Would they want to watch a video? Would they want to listen to a podcast? So understand your audience and identify the problem that your lead magnet is going to tackle. Now, obviously the, the lead magnet you create also has to tie back into the service that your agency offers. For example, there's no point creating a PDF on how to get cheap stationery, which is a really silly idea if you're a marketing agency, because that doesn't connect back into you. So the lead magnet not only has to tie into one of the problems that your audience has, but it also has to tie into the services that your agency offers. So there is a logical pathway for them to read the lead magnet to ultimately buy from you. Now, when it comes to types of lead magnets, well, I've already alluded to a few. I think often people think they are just very long in depth ebooks, but they don't have to be. They could be an ebook. They could be a one page cheat sheet or a one page template. They could be an audiobook or a podcast. They could be a free training video or indeed a free training course. It could be a quiz that people take and then you provide the answer via an email. So it's a whole bunch of things. So pick one that is going to be consumed by your audience and one that you feel comfortable writing as well. So that's sort of tying those two things together. The key thing about whatever you do in your lead magnet is that it needs to provide excellent value. It needs to give a really quick win to your audience, and it of course needs to solve a problem that keeps your audience Awake at night. Now, once you've decided on your lead magnet theme and you've decided on a topic, you want to make sure that you're creating a really compelling title and description. And ChatGPT or Claude or one of the other AI writing tools is definitely your friend here because you can go into the writing tools, you can say, I'm writing this for this audience, tackling this problem. Can you give me some titles? And it's definitely going to help you with that. I, I believe that, as I said in previous episode recently, that AI tools are a great way of getting you from 0 to 50 and then you, you go from 50 to 100. And I think creating a lead magnet is true for using AI as well. So there you go. That's what a lead magnet is and how to decide what theme you're going to write about and what format it's going to be in what. And I want to pause here and say you need to knock out the way as many barriers as possible to stopping you from getting this lead magnet created and then marketed. Because if you're thinking, well, I need to wait till I can afford to send it to a designer to get it, making it look pretty. Well, you don't just use Canva and use a free version of Canva. There's lots of great templates in there that you can use. Get a VA to do it for you, but you don't need to spend lots of money and as I said earlier, it doesn't need to be really long and you don't need lots of them. So remove as many barriers and roadblocks for you getting this thing created because, because once you've created it, we need to then move on to promoting your lead magnet. Now I'm not going to get too technical here, but you need to make sure that you have sign up forms on your websites, on pop ups and you need to have a link to that page in your marketing. So you basically want to have a landing page. This is a page that people will arrive on when you're promoting your lead magnet. And this landing page will be specific to your lead magnet. And on there there will be a form where they have to put at the very least their name and their email address. And then in return for that, you will send the lead magnet over to them. And obviously once you've got that landing page and you've created the form, and that form will pipe the information into your email marketing system such as Mailchimp or Active Campaign or ConvertKit or Mailerlite and then that will trigger an automation because you've tagged that lead to say they've downloaded Lead Magnet X and that will trigger a sequence of emails to send them to follow up. And I'll talk more about follow up in a moment. But obviously once you've done that, you want to promote it on social media, you want to promote it to your existing email list. You want to consider whether you've got a partner that can promote this for you. You also will consider things like paid ads and so on. So you want to think about how can I consistently promote this far? And why do you might put a link in your signature in your email so that every time someone gets an email from you, you're promoting that lead magnet to them as well. And often a great way to promote Lead Magnet is by working with a partner who has a larger audience than you and is targeting the same audience as you with a different offer. So if you have partners like that, you can offer this Lead Magnet as a value add. They might send an email to their list or you might be a guest on their podcast. But you just want to find as many ways as you possibly can to promote your lead magnet. Now, once you've got that set up so you've written your lead Magnet, you know it solves the pain, you understand your audience, you've decided what the right format is, you've designed it so it looks fairly nice. You've created a landing page, which is a page specific to that lead magnet, talking about some of the benefits of why they should read or consume the Lead Magnet. You've connected that form on the landing page to your email automation system and you have been promoting your lead magnet far and wide. You now need to make sure that you are following up these leads because it definitely isn't good enough just to have them download the lead magnet, maybe get one email from you saying here's the lead magnet, and then just sitting back and hoping that they will contact you. So you need to create a sequence of emails over the next few weeks that dig into aspects of that lead magnet in more detail and offer the next logical step that you want them to make on that journey. What's the next step on the buyer's journey that they will take once they've read the Lead Magnet? It might be that you then invite them to a workshop or it might be that you offer them a one to one call to understand more about the specific challenge that the lead magnet is talking about. And then of course that leads on to a conversation about working together. So don't make the mistake of doing all of that hard work in the first part to create your lead magnet and promote it and then not do a good job in following up. Now I teach a bunch of different sequences in my program to my members or on how to nurture your leads. So your first email is going to be like a welcome email saying, hey, welcome into our world. Here is the lead magnet you've requested. And then after a while you're going to go into a nurturing sequence of emails where you are reminding them about the lead magnet, checking in with them, asking them questions and giving them the next what I call the next micro commitment that you want them to make on the buyer's journey. So there you go. In 12 minutes I've covered an awful lot of ground that would normally take a lot longer than that. But I hope you you buy into the value of creating a lead magnet. I hope you understand exactly what it is. I hope you understand how to match the pains that your audience has with what you do. And your lead magnet sits in the middle. Remember, it doesn't have to be long, but it does have to deliver value very quickly. I hope you then understand about creating the landing page which is specific to that lead magnet and embedding your email form onto that page so that people have a way of giving you their email address in return for getting the lead magnet. And then I hope you understand about the concept of delivering the email and a nurturing follow on sequence of emails that digs into aspects of the lead magnet in more detail and moves your buyer to the next stage on the buyer's journey. Now in the show notes, I'm going to put a couple of lead magnets that you can download that A will show you exactly what I'm talking about, but B, perhaps more importantly, will give you more insights into creating this automated lead generation system and also understanding more about your email marketing. So I'll put those two links in the show notes. I also want to remind you about my fortnightly Agency Accelerator Live workshops where we spend 45 minutes live chewing the fat on a topic. And one of those forthcoming topics is around email marketing. So make sure you have signed up to attend them. They happen at 9am UK time every second Wednesday and we are tackling 13 different themes of challenges that I know you as an agency owner has. So make sure you've signed up to save your seats for them and I will either see you there or I will see you on the next episode of the Agency Accelerator podcast. And of course, if you've enjoyed this episode, please, please, please do consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts. And of course, share this episode far and wide with your friends so I can reach as many people as possible. But other than that, I hope you have a great rest of your week and I will see you next Thursday for the next episode of the Agency Accelerator Pod. Sam.