Snapshot:

• In marketing, a lead magnet is a free item or service created and given away with the intention of gathering contact details such as a lead’s name, email, and phone number.
• Lead magnets are a key way to build credibility and brand awareness with prospective clients. Plus, you can create lead magnets with little to no financial investment.
• One of the most important benefits of lead magnets is that they help you ensure you’re collecting high quality leads that are actively interested in the information you have to share and, most importantly, your service offerings.
• Keep in mind these tips when you’re creating your lead magnet: share a specific message, craft unique content, repurpose content when possible, and demonstrate your expertise.
• Once you’ve created your lead magnet, it’s time to share it with the world! You can promote your content across your website, social media, or other unique channels such as podcasts or guest blog posts.

As a business owner, deploying tactics to gather leads is an important part of ensuring your business is growing and expanding its reach. You wear many different hats as you run and manage your business–– one of which is a marketer. In fact, you might be your business’ entire marketing department if you don’t have additional team members at the moment. This means that lead generation falls to you. While this might seem like a daunting task, lead magnets are a great way to start expanding the reach of your business and building your email lists. In this article, we’ll cover everything you need to know to successfully leverage a lead magnet as part of your marketing strategy.

What is a lead magnet

In marketing, a lead magnet is a free item or service created and given away with the intention of gathering contact details such as a lead’s name, email, and phone number. So what are some examples of lead magnets? They can take many different forms such as trial subscriptions, whitepapers, e-books, case studies, and newsletters. For lead magnets such as whitepapers, e-books, or case studies, they must be gated. In other words, a lead has to input their information to unlock and access the content. But a prospective buyer isn’t going to give you their contact details away for nothing in return. The key to lead magnets is the unique value they provide–– value that can’t easily be accessed with a simple Google search.

In order for your lead magnet to have an effective impact on a prospective buyer, it should

• Have perceived value: There must be information in your lead magnet that isn’t ungated content elsewhere on your website. Make sure to highlight the value of your lead magnet in your promotion of it (more on this later).
• Provide clear solutions: Your audience accessed your lead magnet because they have a problem and they’re looking for a solution. Make the solution to their problem abundantly clear in your content.
• Communicate your unique selling proposition: Your audience should walk away from your lead magnet considering your service over other competitors. Make sure to highlight what differentiates you and how you can help them achieve their goals.

Why you need to create a lead magnet

Lead magnets play an important role in driving awareness of your business while building credibility with your audience. They are the ultimate marketing tool because they serve as a key connection point for prospective clients who may have never heard of your business to give you their contact details.

Creating lead magnets is also a relatively inexpensive way to market your business and service offerings. You don’t need to hire a full fledged marketing agency to create a lead magnet. Think about creative ways to demonstrate your services and drive home your business’ value add. Your lead magnet could look like recording three or four 20-minute training videos and gating them on your website. Take your lead magnet strategy to the next level and consider repurposing that information into a different piece of content such as a how-to guide.

What are the benefits of lead magnets

When leads actively give you their information through a lead magnet, you’re taking steps to ensure that the leads you’re collecting are high-quality and genuinely interested in what information you have to share–– and the services you’re trying to sell! Which business niches benefit most from lead magnets? Well, any of them! Regardless of your industry and offerings, your business can most likely benefit from lead magnets as a way to drive lead generation and make connections with prospective buyers.

How to create a lead magnet for your personal training business

While lead magnets are an integral part of your marketing strategy, they don’t necessarily require that you create  a long form content piece. Your lead magnet covering 10 at-home fitness routines can be just as effective, if not more effective than a 20 page whitepaper.

Before you get started on creating your lead magnet, keep in mind that your content should be easy to understand and valuable enough that a prospect would pay for it. It’s also important to note that the type of lead magnet you create depends on which area of the buyer journey you’re targeting. Each stage (awareness, consideration, decision) requires different types of content to truly connect with your audience.

Let’s say you’re targeting leads in the consideration stage and you decide to leverage gated training videos as your lead magnet. Here are few tips to keep in mind as you’re creating your content:

• Share a specific message: Think about the question or problem that a prospective client is researching and position your content in a way that answers it and provides a solution.
• Craft unique content: Aim to share information that hasn’t been widely covered in your industry. If your content is common sense, it’s likely not going to motivate leads to access your lead magnet.
• Repurpose content when possible: Review your existing content repository. If you have blogs or newsletter content that covers your topic, you can repurpose that information and package it in video form.
• Demonstrate your expertise: Lead magnets are a great way to build up your credibility with prospective clients. Make sure to show your confidence and maybe even incorporate some added research into your content, so leads know that they’re accessing content from a reputable source.

How to promote your lead magnet and get the most out of it

Once you’ve created your lead magnet, it’s time to share it with the world through a promotional strategy! You have a few options when it comes to promoting your content piece. Here’s a breakdown of the platforms you can leverage:

• Your website’s highest performing pages are a great place to promote your gated content piece. Add it as a sidebar on your homepage, resource page, or a “thank you for downloading” page assigned to a related content piece.
• Social media is the place where most of us spend a lot of time. Promote your lead magnet across your social media accounts through status updates, ads, or special features such as Instagram stories or Twitter moments. You’re the expert when it comes to knowing where to find your audience online. Tap into those channels to promote your piece!
• Other ways to promote your lead magnet include highlighting it in a guest blog post, mentioning it during your podcast (if you have one), or including it in an email newsletter sent from a brand you’re partnering with.

As you go through the process of creating and promoting your lead magnet, remember to continuously put yourself in your prospective clients’ shoes. Consider the problems they’re encountering how you can position your business and service offerings with a clear and straightforward solution. Your lead magnets don’t need to be overly complex, but they do need to offer valuable information that encourages leads to share their information with you. Once you start collecting leads through your gated content piece, you can begin nurturing those leads and helping them progress through the sales funnel by providing them with increasingly valuable content that, of course, puts your service offerings top of mind for potential clients.

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