Content marketing is all about building relationships with potential customers. The problem is that it’s easy to make that initial connection but difficult to nudge things along. As a result, you have prospects lingering at the top of the sales funnel.
So how do you help these relationships progress? How do you turn someone who is marginally interested into an engaged lead? You deploy lead magnets. These are the ideal tools for getting people into the hands of your sales team.
If you aren’t using lead magnets yet, you should be. Just take a look at these ten benefits of content marketing lead magnets.
What are Lead Magnets?
A lead magnet is a valuable piece of content or service that you offer in exchange for contact information. The idea is that by giving potential customers something of value, you can nudge them through the sales funnel and increase their engagement.
Examples of Lead Magnets
Looking for lead magnet ideas? Here are a some that are quite effective:
- eBooks
- Whitepapers
- How-to videos
- Consultations
- Trial offers
- Templates
- Webinars.
Anything that adds value and isn’t openly available to your followers could be a lead magnet. Whatever you choose, you will enjoy these benefits.
1. Grow Your Email List
‘This is the key purpose of offering lead magnets.
You can gather email addresses and other contact information.
This can be passed along to your sales team for further engagement or used in your email campaigns.
2. Gain Insights into Your Prospects
Consider putting up a few different lead magnets to attract prospects. Then, use analytics to track which ones get the most traction.
This will help you better understand the content that is most engaging to your audience.
If they are willing to give up their contact information for an eBook or video, you can be sure that the content is helping them solve some problem.
3. Learn What Your High-Value Content is
Gating content as a lead magnet offer is also a great way to identify your best posts.
In addition to using this content as lead magnets, consider other ways to get ROI.
For example, you could transform content into different formats or bundle gated content together for client onboarding.
4. Connect with Customers One-on-One
Now you have contact information along with some insights into your prospect’s needs.
You should absolutely add them to your subscription list, but that’s not all. This is the perfect time to have a member of your sales team reach out to make a personal connection.
Send a direct email asking for feedback on the content. Ask if they have questions. This is an engaged prospect. Don’t miss the opportunity to move them a little further in the customer journey.
5. Earn Referrals
The best outcome is that your lead magnet turns into a sale. If that doesn’t happen, there are still benefits to this approach.
Prospects may not be ready to convert after checking out your lead magnet, but they may see value in your content for someone else.
Add a referral form to your lead magnet and ask potential customers to pass your name along to anybody who might be interested in your services.
6. Benefit from the Principal of Reciprocity
The principle of reciprocity in business is a useful tool in marketing psychology.
The core idea of it is that people don’t want to feel indebted to others.
When you offer up valuable content or services, recipients often feel compelled to reciprocate in some way. This could be the nudge you need to get some prospects to convert.
7. High Impact
The best lead magnet content is going to have high production values and offer something that your potential customers really want.
You will invest more time and money in this than you will in a standard blog post or video.
With that being said, the impact of creating a lead magnet can generate significant ROI.
Once your lead magnet is ready, you can use that to generate dozens of leads. That’s an impressive amount of use out of a single presentation or whitepaper.
8. Improve Content ROI
When you measure lead magnet performance and receive feedback on your gated content, you aren’t just learning about a specific article or webinar.
You’re also gaining insights into the topics and content that are generating meaningful engagement.
Use this information for future content planning and to determine which pieces you should promote to your audience.
9. Build Trust and Thought Leadership
Customers are attracted to lead magnets because they help them solve a problem. Your lead magnet might:
- Give them useful information
- Make a task easier to complete
- Help them to make better use of a product they are using
- Allow them to understand their current needs a little better.
When you offer a lead magnet, you show that you are willing to give something of value that isn’t conditioned on a sale. Additionally, your lead magnet can act as proof of your expertise and thought leadership.
10. Segment and Qualify Leads
If done correctly, your lead magnet strategy won’t just generate leads. It should also help you to learn more about your prospects. By analysing the lead magnet, a prospect selects and their feedback on that lead magnet, you should be able to:
- Identify which leads are most qualified
- Further segment leads according to new information about the prospect
- Forward leads to the most capable salesperson.
The result is that you get valuable, actionable leads.
Lead Magnet Tips
Here are some simple tips to get more value out of your lead magnets.
Choose the Right Lead Magnet
You have three options. The first is to create entirely new content to act as your lead magnet.
The second is to find existing content and add something of value to it. For example, you could expand a blog post into a whitepaper. You could also combine a series of related videos into an eCourse with some additional insights added to it.
The third option is to identify a product or service that you are willing to offer for free. This should be something that your customers value that also showcases what your company has to offer.
Make Lead Magnets Customer Specific
Use your customer personas to help select the best lead magnets for your prospects.
Initially, you may only have the right content types to target one or two groups. That’s fine.
Eventually, you can expand your lead magnets to address the needs of more audience segments.
Communicate Your Value Proposition
Let your customers know exactly why they should download your lead magnet.
Tell them about the benefit they will gain in clear terms.
This will help to motivate them to give up their content information.
Keep Lead Capture Forms Short and Simplify the Download Process
Yes, data are great marketing tools. However, your purpose is to simply get a name and an email address. Don’t turn prospects off with long, intrusive forms. Instead, make the process as easy and frictionless as possible.
Also, if you’re offering something to download, don’t make things needlessly difficult. Avoid demanding debit card information or routing customers to other sites. Finally, don’t forget to include supporting documents to help ensure customer success.
What Do You Think?
Have you had any success using lead magnets? Which content performs best for you? Do you have any additional thoughts or insights?
Over to You…
Do you agree with 10 Benefits of Content Marketing Lead Magnets? Or is there something missing, or you would like to add?? Would love to hear from you in the comments – any feedback is greatly appreciated.
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