Creating great lead magnets that your potential customers will love depends on specificity. If you’re wondering what on earth lead magnets are and why I’m waffling on about them, take a look at my last blog. It’s OK, I’ll wait.
Ready? OK, let’s get down to brass tacks.
Choose a specific audience
Your lead magnets need to speak to a specific audience so you need to be really clear on exactly what their pain points are. It’s not enough to say ‘they’re busy’. Different people are busy in different ways.
If your customer is a young single man without any dependents, they’ll probably have a job and an active social life. That means that their needs and wants are going to be entirely different to a middle aged woman with a job and two children.
Don’t fall into the trap of saying ‘anyone could buy my product’. Anyone could, but they probably won’t. If you want to succeed you need to focus on the person who is most likely to buy from you. This is easier if you’ve got an existing customer base. Look at the regular customers – what type of person keeps coming back for more? Take note of their age, gender and home life. What sort of work do they do? Some of this could be guess work but if you ever chat with them you might know what they like to do in their spare time.
Pick a pain point
It’s really tempting to market yourself by telling people how wonderful you or your product are. News flash: no one cares. They want to know how you can help them. Say you sell baby monitors. Your primary audience is going to be new parents who are totally bewildered by the amount of choice. They just want to do the best thing for their new tiny human.
They might have a whole list of things that they struggle with or find daunting, but you only need to pick one.
Turn the pain points into specific lead magnets
Writing your lead magnet means taking one pain point and turning it into information your customers can use immediately. Taking the baby monitor example, your new parents don’t want ‘the complete guide to baby monitors’. It’s too overwhelming. ‘How to choose the right baby monitor for you today’ is much more tempting.
You can then offer a few tips based on the size of their house, the importance of sound quality and why they might want a movement sensor. It’s all stuff that they can apply to their specific circumstances.
By contrast, an accountant working with a small business would offer something completely different. They might target businesses who are currently struggling to prepare their own accounts and tax returns. Their lead magnet could be an e-book setting out five easy ways to get your tax records in order or insights into the methods they use to organise receipts.
Be helpful
You might wonder why you need to offer all this stuff for free. Basically, it builds trust. Your potential customers know that you understand them and like the fact that you’re helpful.
Building that relationship means using language that they can relate to and setting it out clearly. They might read the whole e-book the first time then think ‘what was that tip about x?’ Having clear headings means they can find things easily and put them into practice. All of that makes you even more likeable.
Do you have a lead magnet? Is it specific? Drop me a comment and share your story.
