The Ultimate Guide to Creating Your Most Effective Lead Magnet Ever
Most of our clients running small businesses and personal services have some type of lead magnet working for them already.
We love to see it—all these folks are putting their valuable and worthwhile freebies into the world to show potential clients what they’re made of!
Some people offer a variety of lead magnets that they tie to different blog posts in order to continually grow their email lists. Others have one main lead magnet that does all the heavy lifting for them. There are many ways to approach this.
No matter how you come at creating a lead magnet to grow your list, there are fundamental things your lead magnet must have to REALLY put in the work for you. To build the smart, effective email marketing presence you dream of, there are a few boxes your lead magnet has to check.
This is for you whether you have a lead magnet yet or not.
We see a lot of entrepreneurs getting lead magnets out there as quickly as they can. And that’s great! You have to HAVE the darn thing before you can do anything with it, after all, and just getting your first lead magnet set up is a huge step.
If you’ve gotten there, give yourself a pat on the back. But stick with us—there’s a good chance your lead magnet isn’t working as hard for you as you’d like it to, and we’ve got a few upgrades to suggest to help it do just that.
And if you haven’t yet gotten around to putting your lead magnet out into the world at all? No shame there. Save yourself some headache and read on, because we’re going to help you do your lead magnet right—the first time.
The most important thing to remember:
You want your lead magnet to continue working for you even when it's been sitting in someone's downloads folder for 3 months. Even when it doesn’t get opened right away. Even when there are no signs of life.
You know why?
It’s simple. You’ve been actively invited into the space of the person who opted in to receive your amazing freebie. You need to leave your mark so that whenever they’re ready to engage with your content, they know who it came from!
Your potential client opted in for a reason.
If you’re invited into someone’s home or office to sell them on your business offerings, do you quietly slip in a back door and dump your content on the ground like an anonymous drone delivery service? Do you wear a bag over your head and evade identifying questions? Do you refuse to give them your contact information?
Of course not.
You show someone your face. Your smile. You let them know your business name. You tie your style and personality to the fabulous services, products, and content that you offer. You let them know how to get in touch with you once they decide they need what you’re offering in their life.
So why are so many lead magnets we’ve seen acting so shy?
You wouldn't believe the amount of lead magnets we’ve gotten when signing up for a list that have no company name to be found anywhere on the document. No link to a site or social media. No indicator where all this priceless information even came from.
Remember when we said you want that lead magnet to work even when it’s stuck in someone’s downloads folder? That’s because there’s a good chance it’s going to live there for a little while. Even with the best lead magnets, a subscriber might not look at it right away. Or maybe they’ll skim it quickly, get excited, and then forget about it until they need it later.
Yes, you’re amazing and they should remember you! But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t leave a trail of breadcrumbs back to where you are.
Point being, your potential clients are more than likely going to put your lead magnet to use some time AFTER they get it—whether to try out that recipe you sent, fill out those worksheets you designed, or read through that useful, topical blog content you bundled into a PDF. That’s the beauty of the evergreen goodness you’re putting into the world.
Where it can get ugly is when three months down the road, while cleaning out their downloads folder, the person who signed up for your lead magnet opens your fantastic, beautiful, chock-full-of-content PDF, gets a ton of helpful knowledge and practice out of it… and then has no way to sign up for a consult call, purchase your products, and trace all that goodness back to you.
Don’t be shy.
When people sign up for your lead magnet, they're telling you they want more of what you have to offer. They WANT your presence. So please tell them how to get it—whether “it” is more of your content, ways to get to know you better, or some special trick that’s going to improve their life.
So how do you ensure all roads lead back to you? The answer is, hands down, to include a strong “about” blurb in your lead magnet, within which you boldly and clearly present who you are—by including your name, your business name, links to your socials, links to your website and other relevant content, AND a photo of you.
It might feel sort of selfish and silly to include this at first, and we’ve had clients ask us to leave out the about blurb in the past. But we feel strongly that brands do this to their own detriment.
If you have a personal brand, you can’t leave the “person” out of it. Your potential clients aren’t falling in love with faceless corporate entities. They’re falling for whatever special spice you uniquely bring to your field. And since most people remember faces, a strong “about” blurb anchored by your smiling face will give them a sense of the personal touch that went into creating the valuable content they’re holding. And that’s what keeps them coming back for more. Beyond the words you say, how you say them, or how they look on the page, YOU are the magic ingredient to the service you provide or the business you run.
Taking it even further
A stellar about blurb is just one of the many pieces that go into a successful lead magnet. What we just let you in on is only a fraction of the info we’ve packed into a brand new freebie we’ve created: a shiny PDF all about making, implementing, and testing your lead magnet.
It’s chock full of info you can put to use immediately to ramp up your email marketing game:
- what a lead magnet even is,
- why you need to grow your email list as a business owner,
- ideas on what you can create as your first lead magnet,
- and an in-depth exploration of the essential content to include in it (plus more on pulling off the perfect about blurb).
See what we've done here? We made a lead magnet about lead magnets! And we took all of our own advice and made it seriously worth your time. Go download it now and put your lead magnet to work for you!
Make the ultimate first impression with a confidently compelling lead magnet.
Download our guide to creating your most effective lead magnet ever NOW!
Keep reading, friend!
