#124 - Lead Magnet smackdown - Which one is best?

You probably don't have the budget to waste on a list builder that's going to get you sales in 90 days. You need something that's going to get you sales like as soon as possible. And again, it comes back to why it's so important to choose that right list builder for what you're trying to achieve right out of the gate.

This is the Doing It Online podcast with your host, serial entrepreneur, 6 and 7 figure funnel strategist and super nerd Kate McKibben. Where every week we're here talking nerdy and sharing the things that actually work to help you do what you do online. But better, easier and with a ton more profit too. Are you ready? Let's do it.

Hello. Hello guys, it is Kate here from hellofunnels Co and Welcome to episode 124 of the Doing It Online podcast. Today we are going to be talking all things lead magnets or opt in bright, which is what we prefer to call them because hey, let's call a spade a spade. That's exactly what they are doing. And we're really going to be diving into which one of the very many options is best and what are sort of really the pros and the cons of each. Just to help you to make sure that when you are planning out your list building activities, whether you are doing it for a funnel or for a launch, that you are making the best decision that's going to get you the best possible outcome, the best results, the most sales because it can make a big difference and you're not the amount of sales that you get and the success of everything that you're doing post this action can actually have be really impacted by the type of list builder, the type of lead magnet that you have. Let's dive on in. First of all, let's start covering the basics for those of you who have just jumped on here for SMGs and are kind of like, what is lead magnet? What even is this? Oh, so I will briefly give you the breakdown. A lead magnet, or as I said we call them an opt in bribe, is when you know when you land on someone's website or you probably see Facebook ads and people like, hey, get this cool template, this PDF, this audio, this whatever, this cool thing and it's free. All you need to do is put in your email address. And I think we're all smart enough, and I think the world is smart enough to realize that what they are doing is they are coming up with something that is very valuable but to their ideal client to get that ideal client to get onto their email list. They can then continue to email them and send them more information about their, you know, their leads, their offers are not their leads about their offers, their promotions, their products, and hopefully end up converting that brand new person into a customer down the line. That's what a lead magnet does. But not all lead magnets are created equal, and I think not everybody is aware of this, is that different types of lead magnets actually will attract different types of customers or different types of potential customers. And the fact of the matter is that for every market, every niche, like if you think about it in terms of like Facebook audiences, like if just say you, you ran an ad to a couple hundred thousand people, a certain percentage of those people are going to be ready to buy. Now it's usually on the smaller side, maybe 5, 10%. A larger percentage is going to be people who are ready to buy, but not just yet. They're ready to buy later. And then there's another percentage of people who are never going to buy. It's either not the right thing for them or they're never, they're not in the mental place to ever invest in solving that problem. There's lots of reasons. They may not have the capacity, they may not have the time, they may not just value that, that problem enough to go about trying to solve it. The thing that we want to aim for here is to pick the type of opt in that is going to get as many of those first two categories as possible and as few of the last. You're always gonna get some of the last. You can't do anything about it. Well, actually you can do one thing. We'll talk about that later. But the type of freebie thing that you put out into the world is going to impact how many of each of those you actually get. You're always gonna get some. But obviously we want to tip the scales in our favor and get as many of the ready to buy now and the ready to buy later people and as few of the never gonna buy ever, ever, ever people as we can.

What can go wrong before we dive into different types of lead magnets? Let's think about like what, what are the common mistakes that people are making when it comes to choosing and then running and assessing their lead magnets, their opt in bribes, first of all, and this is a super easy mistake to make, is that they really just focus on the cheapest leads, not what actually ends up converting to a sale. Now everybody's business, everybody's topic, erase niche is going to have its own sort of buying rhythms, you know, everybody is going to have and it's something that you. I'm not going to really be able to guess right away. You're probably going to need a bit of time to figure this out. But over time, over running a business, you're going to notice that, hey, most people purchase my product in this amount of time. Sometime between here and here, we'll get a majority of people and then it might get another majority at another point. Like knowing how long does it take somebody to get from first hearing about you first getting on your list to being, to trusting you enough and having enough information and being ready to then take that next step. Like knowing that number is, is quite an important number, but one you can't guess at the start. You gotta learn that over time. The problem though is when we really focus on getting the highest number of cheap leads above all else and don't look at well, actually does though do those leads. And even though some of them might be more expensive, do more of those people actually end up purchasing and not just in the next couple of days, but down the track. It can mean that what you end up doing is spending maybe the same amount of money, but on a whole bunch of people who are never going to buy, but they are just the cheaper leads now, unfortunately. And it's only going to get harder. Facebook's made announcements recently that they're going to be getting rid of a lot of their analytics, which really sucks. Hopefully they're going to come up with a better option, although I don't really hold out high hopes for that. But without good proper tracking set up, it can be really difficult to actually know that. So it's one of the reasons why inside our Ecos Empire program we make sure that people set up where they're setting up for their funnels, for their list builders, that they actually set up some good tracking to be able to dive into that information and go actually hang on, most people, it's the people from this opt in who are buying, not the people from that opt in. Even if it's happening, you know, 60 days down the track. Yeah. Focusing on cheapest leads doesn't always end up with you getting more sales. The other thing I think a lot of people get wrong is they just forget, as I mentioned, that leads, that the value of a lead is not just what happens in those first seven days, 14 days, even 30 days, like most people go, oh, I got no sales from that, therefore it's turn it off. Whereas it could have been actually the thing that was going to make you the most sales, but it was just going to happen later on down the track. So again, so important to have that tracking. And I do understand that. I'm saying that with a certain level of privilege because when you are getting started, particularly getting started with ads and getting started with your sales, you probably don't have the budget to waste on a list builder that's going to get you sales in 90 days. You need something that's going to get you sales like as soon as possible. And again, it comes back to why it's so important to choose that right list builder for what you're trying to achieve right out of the gate. The other thing that's really, really common is that people give away too much or overwhelm with just way too much information right out of the gate. And it just means that people are going to be that much less likely to purchase because either a you've solved their problem and we're all here to help people. We sort of, particularly as you're getting when you're getting started or you just sort of finding your groove with these things. People tend to fall into one of two camps. One first camp is the more scarcity minded people that are like oh my gosh, I can't tell people anything that I know because then they'll never buy from me. And that's not right either. Or there's the people who are like oh, I don't believe that I can attract people. No one's gonna opt in for my thing so I'm gonna have to just give them everything to make it worthy of them to opt in. So usually both of those are mindset based problems to start with, but that's not what we're talking about here. But if you look down at actually the how this works and how this plays out when you do over deliver, what it means is one, because it's free, they usually don't value it that much. So they usually won't actually consume it. Just say you've given away a free mini course and it's got like eight videos in it. Like really gone above and beyond. It sounds so crazy valuable that people go oh my gosh, yes, of course I'll give you my opt in. I'll give you my email address in return for that. That's so valuable. Great. And they do that. But then they never watch it. Well, I watch like one video and they never get back to it because they don't have any skin in the game. They haven't invested themselves, all they've invested is their email address. So they don't value that content that you've given them. The problem with that though is for them mentally they still have a bunch of homework from you to complete. A bunch of things they haven't gone in and learned yet. A bunch of like, oh, I've got this resource that's possibly going to solve my problem. I haven't looked at it yet, so why would I go buy another resource that will possibly solve my problem from this person? Like why would I now spend money when I've got all this stuff for free and I haven't even watched that. It's kind of like you've created like a queue in front of unintentionally in front of them being able to of things they have to do first before they can then buy from you because you've given them all this stuff to consume. This is why we have a bit of a golden rule here at Equals Empire and hello Funnels and that is that your opt in bribes should take no more than 20 minutes to consume. So whatever it is that you give them after they that initial thing that they get no more than 20 minutes, whether it's watching a video, whatever it is. Now my again the where this is doesn't apply is if you're sending them perhaps to a webinar, but that webinar is get is a direct to sale thing. I'm talking about if when you're sending them to something that is purely for value, purely for education. No more than 20 minutes. Now we've got those common mistakes ironed out and hopefully you've maybe picked one up one or two of your own. Let's dive into some of the most common types of so many out there we can't go through all of them without this being like a three hour long episode. And I, as much as I'm sure you all love my nasal Aussie tones, I wouldn't want to do that to you. But let's start with some of the more popular ones. First of all is the quiz. A quiz has gotten really popular in the last four or five years. There's software dedicated to just doing quizzes and for good reason, like a quiz, particularly if you get the topic right. It has a lot of pros, one being it usually is very cheap leads. But as we've already mentioned, that's not necessarily the best thing. The second thing that can be really great with a quiz is that you can then offer a more customized experience after the quiz because through that quiz process you're going to be able to identify oh, this person is better suited for this offer and this person is better suited for that offer. And you can then potentially customize what they see after that quiz, which can help increase convergence. However, the big con of the quiz is that the kind of person who's going to complete a quiz is usually the kind of person who's in that really beginner buying stage, that information gathering stage, that not going to buy anytime soon sadly stage. So what I find a lot of people have find happen unless they have huge huge budgets. And so it doesn't matter that they're going to get a bunch of these non buyers on their list is that they can spend a bunch of money, get so excited about all these cheap leads and then those leads do not convert to sale even months down the track because they convert. They've all they've done is attract a bunch of non buyers. I'm not saying that everyone who comes in through a quiz is a non buyer, but it's usually a much higher percent. And if the money that you're spending right now is precious as it is for everybody, but you know, if you're very much need to get good sale, more sales versus more leads, that's like your priority right now, it's probably not going to be the right option for you. The next really common and really popular type of lead magnet is a good old fashioned free mini course or, or ebook. And I put these both into the same kind of category because the promise and the value is like hey, you can get all this information, you're going to learn a bunch of stuff. But as you probably already guessed, the big con of this is that it usually breaks that 20 minute rule for our non sales opt ins and that means that it's going to either one, not be even consumed in the first place or two, that you've just all you've done is given the mental homework that gets in the way of them taking that next step with you. Third, really popular type of lead magnet is the webinar. Whether it's done live or done. Evergreen. Now the webinar. This is one of the few instances where I say it's totally fine to break that 20 minute rule, but that's because the webinar is a sales tool. It's not just a value education tool, it's multipurpose. It gets the 20 minutes ish of giving that education as part of the actual webinar structure. And then the remainder of the webinar is Usually educating people and pitching to the people and giving them, showing them why your offer is amazing, right? So the pros of a webinar is that for the right market and for the right offer and there's definitely offers that work better for webinars than others. And that's one of the things we love to dive into inside Ecourse Empire is making sure like with all of this stuff we go, what is your offer? Who's your market? What's therefore going to be the right stack for you, the right lead magnet, the right funnel, all that kind of jazz. But for some markets, and I think more so since COVID is that people are finding that more and more people are not even watching the webinar. Now in some instances this doesn't matter, right? Like if the purpose of the webinar was to be a lead magnet, then just the same as it didn't matter that they didn't read your ebook or that they didn't download your PDF because it was a free thing and they never valued it in the first place. The goal was to get that right person onto your email list to then present them an offer and warm them up going forward. If you have a really strong funnel, really strong warm up sequence beyond that webinar, the fact that you watch the webinar isn't the end of the world. It served its purpose. It's got some good high quality people on your list and usually people who are looking to, who are going to opt in for a webinar, they're not normally the completely ready to buy. Like they're not, it's not normally a huge percentage, but there will be some percentage there. But, but it is getting close. It's definitely more on the right track than a quiz. So. And, but the con side of things is because people are mentally having to make a commitment in their head of not just giving an email address, but potentially committing a certain amount of time and they are aware that in that time they're going to be pitched to because people aren't stupid. They realize how the world works. Now usually the cost of the leads for the webinar is higher, but they're usually a higher quality of lead. Again, it's like it's, it's this whole balancing act and if you can see me right now, I'm making the scales kind of motion with my hands. Super cheap leads with the quiz, very low buying intent webinar, more expensive leads, higher buying intent. You know which one is going to be. Makes sense for you. The third type of list builder that I want to talk about. Like obviously you've got Things like checklists, PDFs, templates, cheat sheets, those ones. Again, if you can get them right, if you can make that small thing seem valuable enough, they can work really well. But it's the, the sort of, the caveat there is, is nailing that offer that making sure you have found a thing that you're going to be able to go, yep, this, this checklist is going to be actually useful to you. And if you do, you can get really good quality leads and inexpensively. But it can take a bit of trial and error because it is such a checklist. A single digital page is viewed generally as something less valuable than like your webinars or your free courses and stuff. Again, it's the balance. But the other one I really want to talk about today was their paid list builders, a paid workshop or any other type of mini but mighty offer or self liquidating offer. We call them any but mighty offers. Again, pros and cons. Right, pros you are these people have all paid, therefore they are buyers. They generally have. Again, as long as you've got the right initial offer, a much higher likelihood of purchase intent. They are going to, if you look at the statistics and we've been running ours for years now and we see it happens over and over again with our clients as well, is a much higher percentage of people who come through these offers will then go on to buy other offers. The downside however is they are a bit tricky to get set up in the first place. It's not like it's something you can just set up quickly. But again find it like, just like with the checklist in the PDF, finding something that ticks all the boxes of being valuable enough that someone who's completely cold, who has never heard of you will pay for it. But that's not going to over deliver and completely block the likelihood that they're going to buy something that's going to get the right people. Like it's, it's a bit of a balance and some people nail it first go. Some people takes a couple of goes. We only recommend that you even think about adding in paid list builders when you have a proven funnel and proven offer behind it. Because the purpose of them is not actually to make a whole bunch of $27 sales and then make profit from that. It's the purpose of them is that they will then pay for their own ads and their own marketing that you can spend more and grow faster. Yes. So the pros, the Pros is as I said good generally higher quality leads but that's only useful to you when you have a proven funnel set up behind them. Cons is tricky fiddly to get set up. And also the other con which is becoming more and more I think prominent is that with Facebook ads and other sort of paid media getting more expensive and making it harder for you to track the ongoing sales. If you don't have proper tracking set up then it's harder to know if there actually is bringing you in buyers. And because it gets more expensive you have less of a of a buffer there. Again lots of pros and cons but hopefully for each of those three the quiz, the free courses and ebooks and the self agreeing offers you kind of see and are able to choose like based on what's more important to you right now, where you are at with your business, to what else you have set up, what's going to be the best lead magnet for you, which one you choose? Let us know. We love to hear tag us @hellofunnels over on Instagram. Let us know if you're gonna go the quiz, the webinar, the free course on ebook or a self liquidating offer or if you've used them before. If you found that yes, one definitely attracts more of one type of person or one type of buyer than the other, let us know. We love nerding out with you on this stuff. And that's it for me for this week guys. I hope you've loved this episode. Please share it with any and everybody you think will be useful to if you have. And yeah, we'll chat to you next week. Bye.

Thanks so much for listening to the Doing It Online podcast. If you love this episode, don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review. And if you're ready to take your online course sales to the next level with your own six or seven figure funnel. Let Kate show you exactly how today@stealmyfunnel.com.

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