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Whether you’ve employed a digital marketing agency to help you with your reach, or you’re going it alone, there’s no doubt about the power of strong email opt-in conversions. Most of the time, writing great content isn’t enough. Generating traffic and social shares is effective, but that doesn’t actually give you any real information about your readers and in order to turn them into customers, you need something more.
These days, it’s common practice to trade lead magnets for a reader’s email address. However, most of these don’t lead anywhere – you’ll need lead magnets for that. We’ve compiled a foolproof guide for you to create email opt-ins that will undoubtedly increase your conversion rate.
Before anything, research!
As a marketer, you are only as good as your knowledge of your audience. Ensure that the topic you want to qualify your lead magnet under is entirely relevant to your website and to your target audience.
In order to create an effective lead magnet, you’ll need to assess what level of urgency it lies under.
Here are the three levels of urgency, accompanied by some examples:
- Urgent need e.g. “how to stop a dog biting”
- Strong desire e.g. “obedience training for dogs”
- Interest e.g. “how to choose a puppy”
Confirm this urgency by checking Kindle marketplace, Google search, Amazon and the Dummies range, and if your lead magnet is something people need, it will show up in a range of ads and published books.
Below is a simple guideline to dictate what level of urgency your lead magnet has:
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If you can find a topic in your niche that falls under Urgent Need, you’re going to end up with a successful lead magnet. As Ryan Deiss said, you need to find a specific solution to a specific problem in a specific segment of your industry.
Evolve from idea to lead magnet
There are three relatively easy lead magnets to produce:
- Checklist
Checklists cater to our innate desire to finish tasks. Add a paragraph to flesh out each point so readers understand exactly what you’re saying.
- Tip-sheet
Readers love when you do all the hard work for them, and compile the best tips in one easy-to-read article. Collate your top tips, based on both your experience and your research regarding your topic.
- Resource list
Put together all the resources you’ve used up until this point, as well as the resources that your resources have used.
Irregardless of what type of lead magnet you pen, be sure to include visual stimuli such as images, video or infographics. Save the document as a high quality PDF, and create an attractive image of your lead magnet to tease readers.
Market your magnet
In order for your lead magnet to make an impact, it needs to stare users in the face when they visit your site.
Think about implementing a ‘welcome mat’, which is a full-screen CTA that are shown to readers as soon as they arrive to your site, prompting them for their email address. A strong option, the welcome mat gives users an option – either click ‘yes’ or ‘no thanks’, or something of the like. Utilise some strategy; make the ‘yes’ button visually appealing, whilst making the ‘no’ button psychologically unappealing.
Although some readers will opt-in for a lead magnet, there are other ways you can boost this. For example, another tactic to encourage an email opt-in is to offer a relevant, valuable lead magnet while users are reading about another post of the same topic. This is called a post-specific lead magnet or, more recently, has been dubbed a content upgrade. By creating lead magnets for each piece of content you post, you boost the relevance of your offer.
Lead magnets are an impeccably powerful tool that can help you learn about your readers. Gaining an email address is an opportunity to build a relationship with users that can eventually transform them into paying customers.
What’s the best lead magnet you’ve created for your business?
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