PODCAST EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

How To Create A Perfect Lead Magnet – Part 2

This is part 2 of how to create a perfect lead magnet. In this part, we take the 7-point checklist from episode #70 and apply it to the “real world”. What are some bad lead magnet ideas? And what are some good ones to aim for? What’s wrong with the “big honker ebook”? What is…

Episode #71 | Episode Date: April 11, 2015


This is part 2 of how to create a perfect lead magnet. In this part, we take the 7-point checklist from episode #70 and apply it to the “real world”.

What are some bad lead magnet ideas? And what are some good ones to aim for? What’s wrong with the “big honker eBook”? What is the problem with offering a 7-day free course as a lead magnet?

Also, we talk about why you should have MULTIPLE lead magnets rather than just one. This is an important episode, because the lead magnet sits right at the top of the blog profit funnel.

So with that,  welcome to Episode 71 of our Coffee Break Blogging series. 🙂

Today we are going to do Part 2 of what we started in the last episode where we were talking about how to create our perfect lead magnet. So we are going to wrap that up today with this episode.

Quick Review of Part 1

Now I’ll do a quick, quick review of Episode 70; Part 1 of this whole thing…

We talked about what the lead magnet actually is in terms of getting people on to our email list. And then I gave you the 2 main purposes of the lead magnet which are to entice people to opt in but also to set people up for the sale which is going to come right after it. And now when you introduce that second component to it which is an extremely important component to the entire workability of this thing from a business perspective, it changes our considerations on the type of thing that we make as a lead magnet. And moving from that, we went into the 7 Point Checklist on how to create a good lead magnet; not something that is big and long and wieldy but something which is usually going to be a lot shorter.

So with that, I am not going to review those 7 Points again, you can go back and listen to Episode 70 if you haven’t already and you can get those 7 Points on what makes a good lead magnet.

Lead Magnet Mistakes

The first thing I want to do is I want to talk about lead magnet mistakes. Some of the things that I have seen out there that just do not obey the 7 Point Checklist of a lead magnet so therefore, I do not think that they are that good.

Now I want to qualify that statement…

There are some fantastic lead magnets out there and in fact, before I really evolved my business model to be a lot more funnel-focused and a lot more metric-focused, I used to do these big honker lead magnets that were like… I have a 6-Figure Blogger Blueprint which was actually a pretty nice eBook. I liked it! I thought it was great, I got fantastic feedback. I have had several thousand people get that thing. But it doesn’t obey the 7 point checklist. It might have done the first purpose of the lead magnet which was to get them on to the list but it didn’t accomplish the second one which is to set them up for the sale. And it was also kind of vague. It kind of has that book like title… “The 6-Figure Blogger Blueprint”. Great! If you are a blogger and you want to make money; that might be fine. But there is no big promise there and in this day and age, if I use that same lead magnet, I would have a lot of people who will file it away into their “read later” file and probably never get around to it. A lead magnet that they do not consume is essentially “useless”. Okay?

So let us jump right in to the mistakes…

1. No Lead Magnet At All

The first mistake; and this one should be glaringly obvious, and that is to have NO lead magnet at all, or to say something like “subscribe to my newsletter.” I see some big blogs out there which are still doing this. They just say “subscribe to my newsletter” and no harm to subscribe the account, like join the other few hundred thousand people… I don’t know… But the thing is, a lot of those are RSS readers, a lot of them they do not even open the darn email. It is kind of a bogus number. It is great that they have got the big audience but trust me, not all of those people are engaged and they are probably not… The business could be a hell of a lot bigger for those people if they utilize it correctly.

So there are a lot of big bloggers that are still not utilizing their list correctly. And the thing is, if you do what I am talking about here, you are going to be able to make more money with the smaller list which is going to be good news for those of us who probably are not going to get a list of several hundred thousand people, okay?

We are playing in real ville. We are playing in a world that you are probably in a market where you are looking and going like, “Well, I do not know if I will get to be that big blog with a hundred thousand people on my list or something.” But the good news is… what we are talking about; the stuff that I talk about with the Blog Monetization Model is extremely efficient. And you can make good money with not a ton of people. So with that being said, I do not want to go off into a tangent… “Subscribe to my newsletter” is a really crappy lead magnet. It is not even a lead magnet. So if your blog is doing that, we need to change that really, really quickly.

2. No Real Promise

Another lead magnet mistake that I have seen is the idea of tips… Like, 7 Tips for something, or 7 Secrets to do something… The problem with those lead magnets is that there is no real promise outcome there. It is too vague. And actually, it is like a big listickle post. It is like a big blog post. There are so many high quality blog posts out there and so many of them out there are in this list format like 101 Tips to do that or 7 Tips to do this. So if you are just taking basically what is in all essence a list post and you put again in PDF format, it doesn’t really standout. It is not specific enough, okay? You are not setting them up for a sale. Alright? So that is the problem with those types of lead magnets. Whatever comes after the word 7 secrets or 7 whatever it might be; you cannot target it by getting a certain type of person on the list but it is not necessarily going to do the job of setting them up for anything, okay? So that is not the best lead magnet idea.

3. Big Honker Ebooks

The third one of a lead magnet mistake is what I like to call the “Big Honker eBooks” like the 6-Figure Blogger Blueprint that I mentioned earlier; I believe it was about 54 pages long. It is good…I had a lot of meat. I get a lot of great feedback. And in fact, when they opted-in for that they actually got an audio version as well, which is just basically me speaking out the eBook, narrating it and it was a little bit over an hour to listen to that and you know… just by opting in they got this 54 page eBook, they got this hour long audio book… It was a lot of value. They were getting a lot for that. That was a lot of work to make that thing and not only that, it did not ideally set them up for a sale. It violated a couple of points of our checklist. One is that it did not give immediate gratification and the other was that it cannot be consumed in just a few minutes.

So it was really easy for somebody to get something like that just because they are in this collector mentality; they are just trying to collect freebies, they put it in in their read later file and they just never get around to it. That person is not going to make the ideal subscriber to you. That is why the big honker eBooks, it is just a lot more work and you are going to get less results from it.

4. Multi-day Training Course Ideas

The other type of lead magnet mistake are these multi-day training course ideas… A 7 day course for that; a 7 day boot camp for blah-blah-blah. They are not great lead magnets and I have seen some big bloggers do this just because; and believe me I’ve done it, man… I want to give people a lot of value to get on to my list. I want them to feel that they have just hit the mother lode. The problem is, it does not fulfill the second purpose to the lead magnet which is to set them up for a sale; to attract a specific type of person who is an ideal prospect for a specific offer. And that is the problem with the 7 day training courses. The other thing is; and I have talked about this last time in Episode 70, is that it kind of opens up this loop. They kind of want to finish it. So any offer that you are going to present them with; they are not going to be even remotely ready for that until 7 days goes by because they are just not done with the free thing you are giving them. And not only that, whatever heat of the moment that they were in when they opted-in, you have just now given them 7 days to cool off and they are not going to be as actionable at the end of it.

Now it will lead to this… This is not some hard case where it is like I am sitting here telling you that there was never a time and a place for a multi-day training course, okay? There obviously is value in those things and it can be done right. It does do a massively good job of building up the “know, like and trust” factor with your audience. So there is definitely a time and place for it, I am not telling you not to do them. It is just that when it comes to actually having a funnel and something that we can attract some metrics to it and really build our business quickly; it is not the best kind of lead magnet. Okay? So there are varying degrees here, I want to make sure that that’s clear.

The Right Kinds Of Lead Magnet

Now the good news is, when you do the right kind of lead magnets, they are just a lot easier to make. It is a lot easier for me to make a checklist that fits on one page than it is for me to write a 54 page eBook, okay? But the checklist is going to convert a lot better, alright? So moving from there, let us go into some good lead magnet ideas. I am going to cover this in a vague sense and you can translate this into your particular market but these are just formats; things that you can take as a general idea, as a general format and move it into what you are doing.

1. Cool Tools or Resource List

The first one is a tool or a resource list of some kind. People love tools. They love resources. They love things that they can use because they just feel like they just found it… they didn’t know about it before and it is like they get this little excitement. In my market, if I share people’s really cool WordPress plug-ins that they didn’t know exist, they just get all excited about it. I mean, they just love it.

So translate that in your market. It is specific, it is going to give them immediate gratification because it is just resource list; it is a tool list… It is this kind of thing that would fit one or two pages.

I have got a lead magnet, I forgot the exact title of it but it is basically a resource list of the things that I use to create my online videos. It listed out my camera, it literally list out every single thing that I use and it is a lead magnet that I can tack on anything that is regarding the subject of video. The one thing, in my case, is that it gets them on to the list and I do not have like the perfect offer to put right behind that. I wasn’t really thinking of it at the time but it is still a good lead magnet because it has the specifics. And if I had some kind of a video production offer to put right behind that, like as a front end offer, it would probably convert really darn well. And by the way, I am thinking off the top of my head, I probably could find some affiliate product out there that does that and put an affiliate product as a front end offer behind a lead magnet like that.

You can do these things without your own products; it is just a lot better when you have your own.

2. “How To” Tutorial

A second good lead magnet idea would be a specific “how to” tutorial. Now this could be in printable thing like a PDF or you could even do this in video format. But the whole idea here is a “how to” video is nothing new. You just want to make sure that it is pretty targeted, pretty specific that you can live up to your end of the checklist to about a specific solution and promising one big thing and then you are going to deliver that via this “how to” tutorial. So step 1, step 2, step 3 and when they get to the end of those steps they know that they have accomplished something and you could do that via a “how to” tutorial.

3. Webinars

The next one is going to be a webinar. Now, I want to clarify this one… Webinars can make really good lead magnets even though this is obviously not that can be consumed in just a few minutes. But the reason I said this is because webinars are so darn good in setting a person up for an offer. They can convert better than most things, okay? And so for that reason, they can make good lead magnets. The other thing I love about webinars; I am about to jump in to this one head first because I have been doing webinars for a while and that is about to change. But they really form that great connection with your new lead. This person who is going to come in, they are going to opt-in for a webinar and then you deliver some value ahead of the webinar because that is going to increase their chance to actually show up for the webinar.

So the average attendance rate on a webinar day is about a third. It is only about the third of the people who are going to sign up for the webinar; usually will show up. But we can increase those numbers by giving them value ahead of time and then of course, there is the webinar itself. And through this entire experience, they are seeing you; they are hearing your voice like you are hearing mine, right now. And it builds that “know, like & trust” factor. They start to become familiar with you. And so for that reason, because of all the pros that go along with the idea of the webinar format, a webinar can make a good lead magnet even though it is a little bit of a different twist or kind of taking the sales funnel and we are doing it a little differently there, but it is still very effective.

4. Checklist

The fourth good idea for a lead magnet is a checklist. I love checklists. I like making them. I am kind of a systematic thinker in the way I go through things. So for example, if you go to the Blog Marketing Academy right now, you will all see what I call the pre-published checklist available there on the sidebar. So it is a 27 point checklist that will guide you through how to prepare your blog post for maximum distribution but before you hit the publish button. So it is all the things that you need to do to make sure that when you hit the publish button your blog post is set up to have maximum effect. It is a 27 point checklist that literally fits on one page and they can have that. So the checklist idea is a great, great lead magnet.

5. Cheat Sheets

And the last one I am going to give you is… This is more of a terminology thing and you can take it for what it is worth… That is the idea of a cheat sheet. People love doing cheat sheets. I have listened to Amy Porterfield’s podcast and she gives a cheat sheet kind of a thing on every single episode of her podcast, so specific to her podcast. But it is the whole mentality of the cheat sheet; just the word cheat sheet, you think you got some inside scoop and you are making some headway toward something and you are saving yourself a lot of work with this cheat sheet. It is almost like you are getting a shortcut so it brings that high perceived value to it. But at the same time it doesn’t have to be a big thing. Okay?

So those are some ideas here for some good lead magnets and you can translate them into your own market.

Now the big thing with these lead magnets is that whatever format you take; whether you call it a cheat sheet, or a checklist or a resource list, or whatever… You want to take a big pain point of your prospect and you want to give them something that is highly specific toward that. So doing this, you need to understand your market really well. You need to understand what their pain points are, what they are struggling with, what has got them hot-bothered and you take those things and you design a strategic lead magnet using the 7 point checklist that we talked about in Episode 70 and you design this specific lead magnet that is going to move them a little further down the road but targeted at that exact pain point because it is that pain point that is going to get them to opt-in in the first place. Let them get a little win in the direction of solving that pain point and that sets them up for the offer that comes after it.

So this is marketing, man. This is how those games work. And we have got to know how it works so that we can do it properly. This is not just getting general newsletter subscribers. That is the flaw of the game. It is an uncompleted game.

One other thing that I want to make mention of is that we do not want to just have one lead magnet. We want to have more than one. Most bloggers tend to have one lead magnet which sits in the sidebar and there it is. It doesn’t really do anything from that point. The thing is, when we look at what the purpose of the lead magnet is; the fact that it is going to have an offer right after it, the fact that it is targeting a specific type of person… Well, chances are, your audience is made up of a lot of different types of people. They might be unified by one global umbrella of your niche but they are going to have various little different pain points depending on who they are. So your lead magnet is designed not to attract everybody. It is designed to attract a specific type of person but the thing is, that is going to lend itself to the fact that you are going to want to have other lead magnets that are going to attract those other types of people.

So you are going to have to want more than one lead magnet. Now the good thing is that if you are following the 7 point list, these are going to be fairly short, right? So that makes it a lot more easier to make them which means it is a lot more real for you to have multiple lead magnets.

Now we are not going to get in to this on this episode on how to display all that stuff on your blog and squeeze pages and all that. We will start talking all about that stuff a little bit later. But I do want you to open up your mind with the idea of having more than one lead magnet; more than one pathway into your email list and then you can put the right kind of offer right behind that.

Now if you do this, I guarantee you that is going to build your list a heck of a lot faster than if you are not doing that. And not only that, when you set it up right and you get the full blog profit funnel built up behind it, you can actually very reliably grow your traffic with paid advertising. If you do not think that you can afford paid ads right now, it is probably you do not have a funnel set up. And what we are talking about in this episode and we started on the last one, is the very tippy-top of a strategically built sales funnel that goes behind your blog, is what I refer to as the business machine which sits behind your blog. And what we are talking about right now is the very beginning of it with the lead magnet. Okay?

So we are going to end off right there. This episode is getting a little long; I would like to keep this episode a little shorter than this, so we are just going to end it up like this, we’ll go abrupt… 😉

And I will see you in the next episode; Episode 72 where we are going to jump in to some strategies for how to get more opt-ins onto your email list. Okay?

I’ll see you then! 😉