For a business to make money, it needs customers. There is a whole journey of discovery that your customers go on before they end up actually buying from you, and this is where marketing comes in. More specifically, lead generation. One way to effectively generate leads is through the design of a lead magnet.

Lead generation is the pillar of an efficient marketing campaign. It is the actions or processes through which you are able to identify and cultivate potential customers for your business. You’ve worked hard to develop your product and build your website – now you need something to hook your target audience with. With only 2% of prospects converting after the first website visit, it’s imperative to get the most out of the first interaction before they move on. That’s where a lead magnet comes in!

What is a Lead Magnet?

A lead magnet is an incentive. It’s something you offer a potential customer in exchange for information that is valuable to you – like their contact details. If it works, you can go on to use the information gained to streamline your marketing efforts, build a fruitful relationship and drive conversions.

While a lead magnet is a “freebie” for your customers, it still has to be of actual value to be effective! The 21st-century customer is very marketing savvy. They’ve seen all too many of the marketing “tricks” for anything half-hearted to be effective. They are also time-poor and hate unnecessary clutter in their inbox, so in order for it to work, you must design an asset that truly rewards them for engaging with your message. It must be an obvious and clear value-for-value transfer.

What Must They Do?

For a customer to decide to give over their personal detail in exchange for you lead magnet, it must:

• Solve the customer’s problem/address the customer’s pain point
• Provide quick gratification (the customer should be able to use the magnet immediately)
• Carry some tangible value for the customer
• Demonstrate your expertise as an industry leader
• Be easily digestible (lead magnets shouldn’t contain jargon, be wordy, or seem hard to understand)
• Be evergreen (you want the lead magnet to be highly usable without regular updates)

Ideally, you need to design a tool that your customers use regularly and build easily into their business processes. This way they’ll constantly be reminded about your expertise every time they use it.

Examples For You To Use

The most efficient lead magnets are:

• Checklists
• Cheat sheets
• Toolkits
• Planners
• Calculators
• Recipes
• Tutorials
• Ebooks
• Guides
• Webinars
• Event tickets
• Predictions
• Quizzes

While it’s not always possible, you should aim to give your lead magnet a highly digestible format. For example, images, infographics, and videos particularly work best.

Make It Irresistible!

A one-size-fits-all recipe for lead magnet design doesn’t exist. To create something that works, you need to combine research with insight.

1. Study Your Audience

The key to creating something grab-worthy is understanding your audience. Since the magnet needs to address a pain point to be effective, you’ll really need to take the time to figure out how you can offer a creative solution.

2. Create a Buyer Persona

By creating a customer avatar, you can understand what type of lead magnet will work best for your particular audience. Read our blog about creating effective customer avatars here! You then need to segment your potential customers according to their characteristics and create an avatar for each segment.

You may consider designing different assets for different pages of your website, depending on which segment of your target audience is likely to visit it.

3. Find out What Your Audience is Buying

While studying your buyer avatar, follow your target audience to other websites and social media platforms and see what they’re doing there. What type of products are they buying? Which questions are they asking online? What are they discussing?

Use this information to design something which answers their questions and provides a quick solution.

4. Give a Preview

Don’t spend weeks designing a catchy headline. It’s not how you’ll make your impression. You need to provide a small preview of the content you are offering without giving away the entire idea.

Allow the visitor to read a paragraph or get a glimpse of an infographic before they follow your CTA.

5. A/B Test the Lead Magnet

Sometimes tweaking one phrase or image in your lead magnet can make a huge difference in its efficiency. Things to a/b test include:

• Sidebar vs pop-up
• Magnet type
• Size of preview
• Headlines

Check which variation stimulates more conversions and use it for your further lead generation tactics.

The Takeaway

A high-quality lead magnet can streamline lead generation efforts, raise conversion rates, and improve your marketing ROI. Once you acquire contact details in exchange for a freebie, you can use them for email marketing, social media marketing, cold calling, marketing automation and much, much more!

At Oracle Tree, designing top-notch lead magnets are kind of our thing! If you’re looking to do something that will not only blow your target audience away but your competition out of the water, contact us now!