5 Keys to Creating an Irresistible Lead Magnet

Welcome to the Author Audience show, the podcast that helps you reach more people with your message. Create a book, connect with your audience, change lives. Here's your host, Shelly Hitz.

I have five keys to creating an irresistible lead magnet that I want to share with you today. Hi, my name is Shelli Hitz. I'm the podcast host of Author Audience. I'm the best selling author of over 40 books. I'm working on my next one. I'm the creator of authoraudienceacademy.com I'm excited to share with you these tips on creating a lead magnet. I find so many authors resist creating an email list or creating a lead magnet and growing their email subscriber list. I'm not sure why, but so many of you do, because if so, you're not alone. I've been coaching authors since 2010, and I coached authors very closely and in my Author Audience Academy group now, they tell me what they're struggling with, what they're dealing with. And so many of them do not have this system set up. So that's why I'm walking you step by step through that process inside my academy. But I also wanted to share some of this training with you as well because it is so important. So if you didn't catch my last training, I explained what is a lead magnet and why you need one. If you're not even sure what a lead magnet is, go back and watch my most recent training and you'll be able to know all about that. But let's go ahead and just dive in to these five keys. So a lead magnet is something free, a digital gift you're giving away. In order to grow your email subscriber list, people have to enter their name and email address, or at least their email address in order to get that free download, in order to get the free training. And it can be many, many, many things. But what I find people doing is, and I've done it too, is just creating lead magnets without really thinking about these five things. So the first thing that I want to share with you, the first key is knowing your target audience. How well do you know your target audience? This is a work in progress. I'm still narrowing and defining and learning and asking questions and, and surveying and doing all these things on an ongoing basis to continue to get to know my target audience better. The better you know your target audience, the better you're gonna know what to create for them. That's gonna want to bring them in, it's gonna attract them, it's gonna make Them want to enter their email address for that free gift. There's so much noise, there's so much other stuff going on that you really need to have something valuable. And the only way to do that is to know your target audience. And so I taught an entire training on how to really narrow in your target audience in my platform challenge. So if you have not taken that challenge yet, it's free, it's a five day author platform challenge and it's at shellyhits.com platformchallenge and so that is the first key, knowing your target audience. The second key is having a hungry market. I've heard someone say before, does your lead magnet or your product or your book, whatever content you're creating, does it pass the cry test? What is the cry test? The cry test is what are your target customers, your target audience? What are they up at night crying about or what's keeping them up at night? What is a problem that they're just like, oh, it's an intense issue, it's a problem, It's a pain point. It would pass the cry test. You want to make sure it solves a problem and it addresses a pain point. You've heard me say this before, but people will buy aspirin a lot quicker than they will vitamins or whatever, pain reliever, you know, ibuprofen or Tylenol or whatever it is. But when you're in intense pain, you want out of that pain. I worked as a physical therapist for 12 years and I worked with people in chronic pain. And so I dealt day in and day out with those in pain. And not just acute pain, but chronic pain. They would have given anything to be out of that pain. So what is the pain point for your audience? You know, if you write Christian devotionals, you know what is a pain point? A pain point could be worry. Your audience could be overcome with worry. And they really just want to learn how to break free from that and live in faith. What is the pain point you'll address with your lead magnet? Key number three is that it's easy to consume. It used to be in the early Internet days, you could put up a hundred page ebook or a 60 page ebook as a lead magnet, as a free gift. And people were like, yes, I want that, that's valuable. But now there's so much noise, there's so much stuff going on, there's so much bombarding us. We're an information overload. We're on information overload. And so you want to make it easy to consume. You want it to be short and sweet. So for example, I have a lead magnet I created. It's five tools I use to self publish my books. Five tools, simple PDF, one page, I think one or two pages, short, sweet, to the point. Something like that is a great, like the toolbox, like maybe a list of tools that you use for your niche or your genre. So it could be something else. It could be a short video, it could be a checklist. Checklists are really good, you know, and a great way to have something easy to consume. I am not always following this to a T because I love to teach and I just can't help myself sometimes. But in my writingweek.com challenge, it's a seven day challenge. Every day you have a short video, a few minutes, you have some text, then you have some action steps. Then there's a place to enter comments for accountability. Now in some of my recent live video challenges, some of those videos are longer. But I have checklists in those challenges and that's one of the things that I provide. It can be different for every person. I'm not saying it always has to be this way, but if they never consume your free content, they'll never get to know you better. You want to think about this lead magnet, the free gift you're giving away to grow your subscriber list. Kind of like a first date. It's like, hey, you want to go on a date? And if they say yes, they put their email address in there. And then if they never consume what you've given them, they never listen to the audio, they never watch the video, they never go through the challenge, they never download the PDF, they never read the ebook, whatever you've given them for free. Almost like it's a dead end, you know, it's like you want them to say, yes, I want to go on a second date with you, I want to go on a third date with you. And eventually you want to ask them to commit to you. I'm not saying like it's marriage or anything, but you're not going to ask someone on the first date to marry you. You're going to allow them to get to know you, like you and trust you and see if you're a good fit to work together. It's the same thing we do with our lead magnets. They are an opportunity for someone to get to know you, to date you, so to speak, and see if they want to commit their money and their finances to you and to be able to go that next step with you to buy your Books, buy your products. A lead magnet does not have to be a video. It can just simply be a PDF. Like I said, my self publishing tools. That's a lead magnet all on itself. It's like a one page PDF. It has five tools. The five top tools I use. Can you make a PDF? Yes. You can give away a checklist. You can create the checklist in Word. I like to use a little square bullet icon. Create that little checklist, save it as a PDF, boom, done. You know, I think we over complicate it so many times. Like we think we have to have this major amazing, big training. And yeah, I mean, sometimes we do want to provide certain values, but it doesn't have to be more complicated than just something as simple as a PDF. If you're giving really good value, if you're solving a pain point, remember you know your target audience. You have a hungry market, you're solving a pain point or a problem. So number three was easy to consume. Number four is it gets them results. So I work with nonfiction authors and typically, whether it's inspirational, motivational, it's a teaching type book, whatever kind of nonfiction book you have, typically you can have your lead magnet be something that helps them get results. You can have some sort of action step, some sort of journaling prompt, some sort of prayer of commitment, whatever it is, you know that you're helping them to get a result. In mywritingweek.com challenge, it's a free challenge. It's a lead magnet and people will sign up for free. They get access to seven days, they get a $27 software, they get downloads of all the different tracking sheets, Excel, PDF, word and so forth. And they get a ton of really good value. But people actually get results. Like some people finish the first draft of their book in seven days. Oh my goodness. If you apply what I teach you in writing week and you set aside a week and you do it, you're going to get results. You just will. And so that is a lead magnet that people get results and then they're thinking, oh, what else does she have? How else can she help me in this process of writing my book? What else? So then they can join my author audience academy if that's a good fit for them, if it's the right time for them. But try to think, what is something that can be easy to consume and that can give them some results that they'll remember you and that they'll be like, ooh, what else do they have? What other books do they have? What other products do they offer coaching. Like, oh, are they a speaker? Maybe I could invite them to come to our next event. You want them to get starting to thinking, like, the next step with you. And that's number five. Number five is your lead magnet should lead them to the next step with you. So in writingweek.com I'm using that as an example because it's my example. You know, you sign up for writing week and then I have an automated email system. And after a certain amount of time, I think it's 10 days and it may change. You know, I'm always tweaking things, but after like 10 days. So you go through the writing challenge, you get an invitation to my webinar. Three proven book writing formulas every nonfiction author needs to know. And so then you get invited to that next step and it all correlates. You sign up for the writing challenge, then it's like, ooh, what's the next step? The next step is the book writing formulas webinar. You can come to the webinar, and then when you get them on the webinar, I give you tons of value. We figure out your book topic. You outline your book, you figure out how you're going to write it. You set a date to write it. The next step is writing your book and publishing it, which is what I can help you do in authoraudienceacademy.com so then the webinar leads them to the next step of my paid product. So you see how that can work. I'm not saying you have to have that extensive of a system. I'm just saying think ahead. When you're creating a lead magnet, think what is the next step? And try to keep leading them to the next step. And you know what, you guys, a lot of my process is, guess what? Automated. I want you to work smarter and not harder. And that's why I'm creating the Author Automation. So system. It's inside Author Audience Academy right now. We already have some of the modules ready. I'm going to be teaching the next module this coming week on Tuesday and live. And it's going to be available ongoing in the academy because I just see the power in it for my own business. But then I see so many authors not doing some of these simple, simple things. All right? And then when I say that leads them to the next step. You should be closely related to the topic of your book, your products and everything. So your lead magnet and everything. It's like a puzzle and it should just fit together perfectly like a hand in a Glove. So many times we are caught in this hamster's wheel. Have you ever felt that way? Like you're just doing all these things, Doing, doing, doing, doing, doing, doing, doing, doing, doing. But you're not really getting the results you really want. And I'm not saying that I have the instant pill or the easy button that you just press and voila, all your target audience is going to come to you and start paying you. But what I'm saying is if you invest time into really setting up a system like what I've taught you today, with the strategies I've taught you today, you're going to start seeing results. And if you don't, you can tweak it. No sweat. I have things that don't work too, and I just tweak them. I try something else. Try again. I have been working really, really hard behind the scenes and in front of the scenes, I guess, the last year and a half on my rebrand. So I've been working with authors since 2010, but I rebranded into a personal brand about a year and a half ago and it has been a lot of work. I'm not going to lie to you. I just said the four letter word right, Work. I mean, it does take some time. It takes some sweat equity, it takes some energy. But once you have it in place, like I have people signing up now for writing week, buying my $10 product on my thank you page, signing up for my webinar and then joining Author Audience Academy. And the only thing that I'm doing is giving the live webinar. Everything else is happening behind the scenes because I've set it up and I know that it works. People are getting results. They like that lead magnet, they enjoy it and it really is working. And so what can you do? What can you have? What can you create as a lead magnet? And what can you offer as something of value to your target audience? As a recap, the five keys. Number one, know your target audience. Number two, solve a pain point or solve a problem. Number three, it's easy to consume. Number four, it gets your people results, gets your target audience results. Number five, it leads them to the next step with you. Last year, at the end of the year, I decided I need to write out a list of all my lead magnets. Because what I try to do is on live videos, send you to one of my free lead magnets. A lead magnet can be a webinar, like I said, it can be a checklist, it can be a challenge, it can be a video, an Audio, a printable. It can be a coloring book page. I mean, there's so many things that could be just a digital. Something digital that you're not having to pay to ship or anything. But I created lists of all my lead magnets. Now, I have been doing this for a while, been in business and coaching authors since 2010, and I've been in online marketing since 2004. So I have many different types of lead magnets. And you think about the spokes on a wheel, there's all these different ways that people can find me. What I did is I typed them out and I listed them out so that I would have a list of what are the lead magnets I offer and what is it that I could offer you today. Then I went another step. And I get a lot of people that are like, they're wanting to publish a book, they're wanting to write, market their books, but they just aren't at the place to be able to invest in Author Audience Academy. I totally get it. I've been there. We're still on a tight cash flow because I keep investing back into the business, keep investing into tools, into my team members, and sometimes we still have a tight cash flow. So I understand that. So I compiled all of my lead magnets on my website@shellyhits.com free. That's a great place you can go and just look and see all the different lead magnets I have, all the different types. Some of them are, like I said, webinars, some of them are PDFs, some of them are videos, some of them are challenges. There's a multitude of different things, checklists, tools, and so you can check out all the different free training I have@shellyhits.com free. All right, well, thank you guys so much for joining me. I hope that you found value. If you did, please share this training, if you, with an author that you know that could benefit from really, really wrapping their mind on how to create an irresistible lead magnet. And thank you, guys. Thank you for being here. Thank you for being part of my tribe. Thank you for being my lifers. Thank you for entering and being part of what I'm doing. I am cheering you on. I'm so excited to serve you, whether it's through my free content or I would love to serve you as well. In authoraudienceacademy.com I am 100% committed to that group and I love, love, love helping my members. So if you need someone to help you brainstorm or problem solve, I encourage you to check it out and I will see you next time. Bye Bye.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Author Audience Show. Connect with us online@authoraudience.com where you'll find all the resources mentioned in today's episode. While you're there, grab Shelley's free video training on how to write and publish your book using her Six Step Ascent method. Join us again next week to learn how to reach your audience with your message.