Lead Magnet Tutorial: Why you need a lead magnet and what mistakes to avoid!
You might have heard people talking about a “freebie” or a lead magnet but never thought it’s something you would need.
Or you are already too busy creating content for social media so you don’t have time for yet another thing to create
Or (this one is my favorite) you have created something but you don’t have an e-mail follow-up sequence in place.
Ok, so what’s a lead magnet exactly? It’s basically a piece of content that you give away for free in exchange for someone’s email address.
For example:
A free pdf
A free ebook
A free mini-course
A free challenge
etc.
Why would you need someone’s email address if they are already following you on social media?
The best explanation I’ve heard for that was this: “Social Media is the same as renting an apartment it’s not your space and it can go away at any time. Your email list (aka the email addresses you’ve collected) is like owning a house. No one can take that away from you”.
So ask yourself: If Instagram suddenly disappears tomorrow would you still have a business? Would you still have potential clients to whom you could reach out and sell your offers?
If you have an email list with let’s say 1’000 subscribers of your ideal client and you know you can expect a conversion rate between 1-2% then next time you want to launch that course or new offer you know that you will most likely get 10 clients out of it. Without having to dance on TikTok for it ;)
In order to achieve that you need to make sure that your subscribers are your ideal clients and that they would potentially buy your offer.
The biggest mistake I see happening is to create a random lead magnet that doesn’t really lead into your offer.
Let me explain with this example:
Let’s say you decided to create a free pdf or ebook about how to take the best iPhone photos (for this example you are a photographer) and you have written a few pages full of info and turned it into a nice-looking document in canva.
However, your main offer is a brand photoshoot with you.
There is a disconnect between your offer and your services. People who download your pdf will probably love your tips and now take more iPhone photos but now they are not interested in your paid offer because they are probably on a lower budget that’s why they were looking for your pdf.
So instead of creating that iPhone photo pdf you could create a pdf on “what are the best photo poses during a brand photoshoot when you are not a model”. Now the people who download your free guide are those who are most likely also going to be interested in your paid offer.
This example works for all industries, not just photographers ;)
Main Take-Away
Your lead magnet should have a connection to your main offer.
Have you ever read a 265-page free guide? Most likely not and neither will anyone else.
This leads to the next mistake: Overloading your lead magnet. Yes of course you want to provide as much value as possible and show people that it was worth downloading your freebie and that you are the expert in your field HOWEVER more content doesn’t equal more value.
Imagine you go shopping and I offer you a paper bag and tell you that you can put anything in that bag and walk out of the shop with it and take it home for free but only if it is in that paper bag.
What happens if you put too many things in there?
Yep, it explodes and your carefully selected goodies are now on the floor in front of you which means you don’t take home anything.
The same goes for your lead magnet. Don’t overload it!
Main Take-Away:
Your freebie should give your target audience a solution to ONE problem they have!
Once your potential client has downloaded your freebie you send them an email right away pitching your offer. WRONG
That’s salesy and turns people off (let’s be honest you would click that unsubscribe button too).
First, send them a few emails giving more free tips and adding value to their life or business then you can lead them into your offer. That’s what we call an email follow-up sequence! We need their trust first before we talk about handing over money.
Main Take-Away
Have an automated email sequence in place and provide a lot of value before you pitch anything!
You don’t need to have a fully built website to offer a lead magnet. Actually quite the opposite. When you build the website page for your lead magnet (where people then can add their email address in order to get that freebie) you want to build an opt-in page also called a landing page.
The main goal of that landing page is that people download your free creation. NOTHING ELSE
This brings us to the next mistake: Over cluttering your landing page.
A landing page doesn’t have a header (you know like a website has, with all good stuff like “services”, “about”, “contact” etc).
Its main goal is for people to download that lead magnet. So there is only one button (or several buttons that lead) to the same outcome.
The sign-up or download button!
So now that you know what a lead magnet is and what to avoid let’s summarize the action steps you need to take in order to create your email list with people who want to buy from you and that you actually own!
Action Steps:
Write your freebie that matches your offer
Design your freebie in canva
Write a follow-up email sequence with at last eight emails
Write your landing page
Design your landing page either on convertkit, kartra or clickfunnels
Upload your emails & freebie into the systems mentioned above
Track the statistics and numbers to see if people like it and open your emails