I don’t normally recommend you do anything terribly, but you really should create one terrible lead magnet for your business. That’s right. It should be terrible.
Hear me out here.
When I had to wrap my brain around how I could people figure out lead magnets and what they should be doing, I realized most people I know haven’t even broken the seal yet on creating a lead magnet.
They haven’t taken the risk to create their first. And that’s a shame. A lot of people will spend weeks and months on organic social media content posting because they don’t want to take the time to test the waters to see if a lead magnet might work for their business.
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What is a lead magnet?
A lead magnet is the thing you give away, the freebie. It is how you collect someone’s email information.
So let’s say you’re out there working to get leads to sell your service or your product. To do that, one of the strongest, most immediate channels out there is an email marketing program. This lets you to consistently communicate with customers, let them know what you sell, and turn listeners into buyers.
The quicker you can build a large email list, the quicker your business is going to grow.
Just because email has been around for a really long time, I think we tend to take it for granted and ignore its potential, and that’s a huge mistake. Email is still the most impactful way you can own communication with your customers and consistently send them messages for free.
There are lots of perks to social media, but bringing customers into your world and being able to communicate with them is still the strongest thing you can do.
So how do you bring them in? Develop a lead magnet.
A lead magnet will help you build and grow your email list, enabling you to bring people into your world. It’s something you can give away for free, but it’s valuable. It will make people say, “Yeah, I’d like that. I’m interested. I want something for my business that you are providing, and I’m happy to give you my email to do that.”
Make A Terrible Lead Magnet
You can Google lead magnets for literally any industry, and there will be some examples out there. So you have no excuse about the creative process.
But, the premise of this lesson is to create a terrible one.
That’s what it takes to start. Just get out there and build something that seems obvious, and try it. Then you’ll have a benchmark for success.
Step 1
To do this creation is a very simple process. Here’s what you do. You go to a site called Canva.com. There is free content, and subscription versions are also pretty cheap.
Canva has hundreds and thousands of templates for everything you can do in your business. Go to the template called Infographics, and design one of those infographics just to give a quick checklist or a quick set of steps that someone can take. Maybe it’s a quick set of resources you use that you want to offer to listeners.
Just answer the question you get asked the most in a sequential format in one of these infographic templates.
Now don’t get me wrong. This is not a crazy effective lead magnet, but it will get you started. It will help you figure out what this process is like.
So build something. Build a creative infographic using Canva, and download it as a PDF.
Now you have something digital that you can give people. You can email it, or put it on your web page as a download. You can even create a landing page and have it point to this PDF.
Step 2
Step two is getting your lead magnet out there, and to do that, you need a way to collect people’s email addresses.
The best thing you can do for that is to have an email CRM (customer relationship management) system.
I recommend the website ConvertKit.com. I subscribe to their software, which lets you learn how to set up a very simple landing page where you literally just put in three forms: the person’s first name, the person’s last name and their email address. Once they submit that, you can choose to automatically them send a PDF.
So that’s where you build the form. Next, how do you get that form in front of people?
That can be organic — you can post to social media and let people know you’re doing it — or you can pay for a Facebook ad and send customers to that form.
I’m not going to pretend those are all easy things to do, but they are critical things that everyone can do on their own.
And in this case, done is better than good. For those of you who have not done this yet, I just want you to start. I just want you to have built something. And at the end of the day, if you can start this process of educating yourself, getting better at building these things, you will be better off.
That’s why I say let’s build something terrible, something that you can get done so you can see the power of it.
The second time, you can be more thoughtful about it. Be more creative, and put a little more work into it. But first, get the systems figured and prove you can do this yourself.
Lead Magnets as Community Builders
Why is this important? Because it solves so many problems in the process of building a personal brand.
Here’s a quick refresher on the three pillars of personal branding:
- Message. This is figuring out what you stand for, what you tell people, and what your message is. It’s finding your voice.
- Community. This is bringing people together and helping them connect with you and with each other. Through that, you get to discover what they’re challenged with.
- Impact. Once you know what they’re challenged with, you find ways to solve it.
A lead magnet is a big part of the community pillar. Building your community is all about list building. You can’t have a community if you don’t have people’s contact information. And if you don’t bring people into your world and give them a place to communicate, it’s harder to have a community.
You need a way to talk to them on a consistent basis. That’s what inspired this lesson. I need you to know that list building is hugely important.
So lead magnets — simple pieces like the template you’ve just made — create this icebreaker. It’s a freebie or digital download that allows you to begin collecting contact information.
Nurture Your Relationships
The next step is nurturing these relationships. You might have to start sending them content on a consistent basis via email so they can get to know you better. Eventually, you’d like to get them on a phone call if you’re in the service business so you can talk to them and maybe give them a consultation or a free analysis, whatever that is.
If you’re a personal brand-based business, it should be pretty natural to get people on the phone. The sooner you get them into your world and talking to you, the sooner you’re going to know how you can help them and be able to pitch them something that will solve their problems.
If you actually help people in your community, you can then ask them to share that with their communities. Let them spread the news that you are helpful and that you can solve problems like this. And start to grow that community.
Get Started
The No. 1 thing you can do to grow your list is to build these freebies, to build these lead magnets.
There are a million types of lead magnets and hundreds of examples for every single type of business out there. Ask yourself, “What can I help people with today?” Then create that, and offer it for free.
If you want to see some of my freebies, good, bad, ugly, whatever they are, go to brandonbrands.com/resources and download them to see what those things can look like. I’m not an expert lead magnet builder, but I know it’s huge for my business, and it’s one of the primary things I’ll be focusing on this year.
And when this business gets even bigger than it is, I will point to this as probably the biggest strategy in my arsenal. That alone should tell you this is a big thing.
I have seen the biggest players in the game spend millions of dollars on ads. But I can tell you that the No. 1 one thing you can do for your business is grow your community and grow your audience.
The best way to do that is to have a list of people you can consistently communicate with and nurture. These are people you can turn from cold leads into warm leads into hot leads that are ready to buy because they know, like and trust you.
Ready to share?
So get out there, create a terrible, terrible lead magnet, and share it with me.
And if you actually take that step and do that extra work, I’d be happy to respond to you and send you a link to set up a call with me for 15, 20 minutes to help you brainstorm.
I will give you my time for free to help you brainstorm something that you can take to the bank for free, without any hassle. That’s how important I think this is for your business.
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