To turn your prospects into paying customers, you need to nurture them.
The reason why it is vital for businesses across different niches to set up a subscribers email list.
With a subscriber email, you gain access to direct communication with your prospects. It can help you offer valuable content to your prospects to ensure a strong relationship and make them sales-ready.
But how do you maintain a list of high-quality leads for your business? Lead magnets are the key.
In this blog post, we will discuss lead magnets, their use cases, functionality, and types.
What are Lead Magnets?
A lead magnet is any kind of content or offer that attracts prospects in your niche and persuades them to click on it. You can encourage your website visitors to subscribe or register for your email list and become leads by offering high-value and gated content. The subscription stage is later followed by some rigorous lead nurturing process to turn these leads into long-term and loyal customers.
This is how lead magnets perform a centric role in making your content marketing campaign successful.
Lead magnets are of different formats, but they generally share the following characteristics:
- Brand Awareness for your business (hook prospects and produce hot leads)
- Involves no cost
- Offer high-value, educational and engaging content
Below is an example of a ScaleYourBiz lead generation campaign offering a lead magnet:
Right away, the visitors interested in generating high-value leads, closing more deals, and having high customer retention turn into leads. All they need to do is click on a CTA and submit their business requirements and contact info.
It means both customers and businesses are getting something valuable and unlocking new opportunities.
Why is it important to use lead magnets for lead generation?
If you are eager to generate hot leads, then your business website needs an effective and persuasive lead magnet.
It is fruitful for all types of businesses or websites, including personal blogs, B2B SaaS businesses, eCommerce sites, business services, etc.
Why do lead magnets remain instrumental in gathering prospects’ contact info? The answer is that your business is a strange entity for your prospects, and no one is going to provide you with their email address without getting anything valuable in return. As a lead generation expert, it is your responsibility to give them a persuasive reason to submit their contact info and relevant information.
For instance, consider publishing a blog post on the 11 strategies to run a successful brand awareness campaign. At the end of the blog, you ask your audience to join your subscriber list for further updates.
Or, you can ask your prospects to register for your subscriber list and gain access to a free and detailed PDF guide with real-time use cases of businesses that leverage 11 different strategies to improve their brand awareness campaign.
What do you think, which lead generation strategy can earn you more leads? Of course – the second one.
Now you have a rich understanding of the importance of an impactful lead magnet on your brand website, you may be curious about what type of lead magnet can generate value for your business.
Types of Lead Magnets
Consider the following lead magnet examples, and discuss with your team members which content format can produce more results and fulfill your customers’ needs.
1. Whitepaper
A whitepaper is a comprehensive and high-value content format that offers valuable data, insights, or recommendations to your prospects.
It helps your audience grasp a rich understanding of complex scenarios in your industry and exactly what actionable steps they need to resolve their pain points. Whitepapers are specifically practical in B2B lead generation, where leads often go through some attentive and prolonged lead nurturing phase. B2B leads require a lot of information before finalizing their purchase decision, as most of them are likely to spend more than $1000 for a particular product or service.
2. Webinar
Another impactful lead magnet idea is to schedule a webinar for online prospects in the form of engaging video content like a podcast, product demo, Q/A session, etc.
You can ask your prospects for their contact info at the end or start a webinar session. Another effective way is to offer on-demand webinars after the first successful live event. By doing so, you can generate leads for several months to come later on.
Keep each webinar strictly subjective and centric around a specific conflict or pain point of your customers.
3. Ebook
Just like whitepapers, eBooks like product purchase guides or comparisons are another effective type of lead magnet. An ideal eBook can range from 10 to 100+ pages with different visual and graphical representations.
The only difference between whitepapers and eBooks is that eBooks do not contain complex and data-centric content. eBooks are easy to understand and fluent to read. They serve as guides that help prospects grasp a rich understanding of traditionally complex and hard-to-find topics or ideas.
eBooks can be informative, engaging, and highly visual forms of content.
4. Templates
You must have created any pie chart, checklist, flow chart, or other content from scratch and crave an easier and simpler way to do so.
Customized templates offer drag-and-drop UX for non-tech savvy prospects who want to perform different operations without downloading a dedicated software with a range of complexities. Customized and built-in templates allow you to leverage a user-friendly interface to craft different types of content, diagrams, graphs, tables, etc, like a pro.
5. Free Trials
Your prospects love to have hands-on experience with your service before buying. Free trials are the best lead magnets for SaaS businesses.
In order to gain access to a free trial, your prospects need to register or provide their email address to unlock the guest UX.
This type of lead magnet is very impactful because if your prospect like your product or service, they are more likely to upgrade to the paid version to enjoy full functionality.
6. Case Studies
Case studies can offer convincing proof of the capabilities of your products or services and push your prospects further down the stages of B2B sales funnel.
There are two ways you can use case studies as lead magnets.
- Make your case study or testimonial downloadable PDF as gated content that asks your prospects to register with their email before downloading.
- The other and more effective way to use a case study as a lead magnet is to showcase it on your website as news or blog post with a catchy headline that leads to a CTA.
Key Elements of a lead magnet
Let’s discuss the conversion roadmap that drives website visitors to your lead generation sales funnel.
Call to Action (CTA): A button your prospects click to land on the landing page (eBook download, product tutorial, free trial, etc).
Landing page: This is where your CRM captures the information of your prospects. Once your prospect clicks on the CTA, they’re led to a landing page where they submit a form with their name, email, and any other relevant information you consider valuable for your lead generation efforts.
Email: Setup an automated email as a follow-up to the lead right after the exchange of information. An email marketing approach allows you to begin an engaging conversation with your lead to keep them in the loop and for future re-engagements.
Thank you page: your prospects, after becoming a lead, led to a thank-you page that shows the direction to access their desired content or service.
You can turn each blog on your website into a lead-generating engine and generate fresh & hot leads for your business.
13 Lead Magnet Ideas and Examples for 2022
1. Lucid Chart
The lucid chart offers a range of tools and utilities for visual content production. To enjoy your free trial, you need to sign up with your email address.
2. ILovePDF
ILovePDF allows you to convert different file formats into PDF. You register at their lead page with your Facebook, Gmail, or other email accounts to enjoy a range of additional utilities and features.
3. HubSpot
Hubspot offers valuable, educational, and gated content as its content marketing course for beginners. It requires you to register with your email address to gain access to free course material and informative tutorial videos.
4. SEMrush
SEMrush offers highly informative and valuable eBooks for different SEO practices and guides. You need to register with your email address to gain access to this valuable gated content.
5. W3Schools
W3Schools, a famous web development tutorials site, offers a paid Pro version for an Ads-free experience, access to HTML video tutorials, and website hosting services in exchange for your contact information.
6. Netflix
Netflix, a leading OTT platform, offers 30-day free subscription and asks for your email address and credit/debit card credentials. You can cancel your subscription anytime without getting paid. You will be charged for a paid plan once your free period ends.
7. Amazon Prime
Amazon is another leading OTT platform. It follows the same strategy as Netflix by offering a free trial and letting you enjoy a range of movies, seasons, dramas, and documentaries.
8. Coursera
Coursera offers access to 4000+ top-notch educational courses in exchange for your contact info. You can choose from a variety of paid and free courses for your desired subject or area.
9. OptinMonster
OptinMonster offers a comprehensive guide to converting website visitors to subscribers in exchange for your contact info as an effective lead generation strategy.
10. Zapier
A renowned business automation platform offers free access to a range of utilities and features for businesses around the world. All you need to do is simply register by signing up with your email address.
11. Century
A learning-based educational platform, Century offers free webinars to students around the world. You can register yourself for their webinar sessions with your email address.
12. Wyzowl
Wyzowl, a video marketing platform, offers different eBooks to users who want to master video marketing. These eBooks can be downloaded for free by providing your email address.
Copyblogger
A renowned digital marketing and SEO services provider, Copyblogger, offers free training sessions to its users in exchange for their email addresses.
Conclusion
By setting up an impactful lead magnet with an optimized lead page on your website, you can crack more hot leads for your business. Consider the aforementioned examples of lead magnets and types of content formats to unlock the true potential of your content marketing efforts and improve your ROI.
