Most websites contain some sort of lead magnet. You’ve probably seen them in the form of something like a checklist, a calculator, a spreadsheet or an infographic.
The most effective lead magnets offer website visitors something important enough to hand over their email addresses.
Email addresses are a valuable commodity.
With access to your customers’ email addresses, you can market directly to them.
Using lead magnets allows you to turn website visitors, into people that you can now reach.
But… getting people to give their valuable email addresses is not as easy as it sounds.
The internet is flooded with freely available information and inboxes are already overwhelmed by spam.
So, how do you do it? What makes an irresistible Lead Magnet?
Creating An Irresistible Offer
Lead Magnets have to be unlike any other product on the market. The information in your lead magnet needs to be in demand.
So how do you find out what people want?
Before you develop your lead magnet you need to do some research.
As a running example, we will look at how we could go about obtaining the email addresses of potential clients for an accountancy firm.
For this, we will need to identify what people are searching for and consider what we can offer in return.
Finding the right keywords
One easy way to do this, with data to back it up is to carry out keyword research and look for relevant search terms that have high download intent.
Keywords, where you know that someone searching for this, is looking for it here and now.
You can then match these keywords with relevant lead magnets. Where people are likely to give their info for something useful in return.
Lead magnet keyword research example
Looking at lead magnets that an accountant would use, consider what people would want to download immediately.
Using google keyword planner, two keywords we identified with high search volume, as well as clear intent, were:
- bookkeeping spreadsheet
- bookkeeping template.
These keywords show high intent because people are looking for “something” that they can use immediately.
Keyword research tools you can use
There are many different methods you can use for keyword research. Some of our favourite lead magnet keyword research tools include:
- Your own google analytics
- google keyword planner
- search console
- answer the public
Using These Keywords To Make Lead Magnets
Once you’ve identified the type of thing that your audience is looking for you can use this to create something useful for a lead magnet.
For our example, we would create a ready-to-use bookkeeping spreadsheet template for Excel or Google Docs.
Access to the template would be given in return for an email address to send it to.
To add the cherry on the top, a link and/or phone number could also be included in the spreadsheet. So that anyone who gets stuck, or wants more information, can call you from the details in the spreadsheet.
Doing this then opens the door for a conversation with you through an immediate need.
Using software to create lead magnets
You can use software like attract.io to create irresistible lead magnets.
If you want to make quick, easy and attractive banners to encourage people to download your lead magnet, we find bannersnack is a great option.
Below is an example of the type of banner you would see encouraging you to download a useful lead magnet, which was made in no time on bannersnack.
Different Lead Magnets in Different Baskets
While we know that the chances of this lead magnet being downloaded and in large numbers are higher as our keyword research shows it fits an actual need.
So even though you can take confidence from your lead magnet keyword research it’s best to increase your chances of finding a lead magnet that works.
To do this, we suggest creating a few different lead magnets to use based on other keywords identified, or the different types of lead magnets you can use. Such as checklists, templates, audits.
Once you have enough data, you can see what’s worked and what hasn’t.
Then you can take the best-performing lead magnets and learn from them to make more, or to improve your current lead magnets.
While we focused on lead magnets, another option you can explore is, whether a lead magnet or content upgrade is best for you.
