In the last post, I shared some general ideas for scoring quick marketing wins in 2014. In the next series of posts I’d like to offer some specific things you can do to make your marketing more effective to win more customers and increase your sales in the coming year.
Create a Compelling Lead Magnet
In order to get more customers, you need to attract more people to your business. You need to market your company. Sounds simple, but how do you do that?
One of the more effective ways to attract people to your business and get them to enter your marketing hourglass is to provide the answers to the questions they are trying to answer. In order to do this effectively, you need a thorough understanding of firstly, good marketing website ideas for your company and, secondly, your ideal customers buying process and the types of information they need to see and/or hear before they feel comfortable moving from one stage of their process to the next. While this is true for all businesses, it is particularly true for B2B companies.
As John Caples famously said, you need to enter the conversation going on in your prospect’s mind. When was the last time you think “I hope I can find a newsletter to subscribe to today!” was a conversation going on in the mind of your ideal prospect?
Unfortunately, “subscribe to our newsletter” is many small business websites’ strongest call to action. Offering a subscription to your newsletter probably isn’t going to be enough to entice someone to give you their contact information these days. Most buyers who haven’t come to Know, Like, and Trust you yet aren’t interested in your newsletter – they want answers to their questions and solutions to their problems.
You can create a compelling lead magnet by providing the information that answers the questions in their mind. Luckily, you already know what your prospects want to know because you talk to prospects and strangers about your business almost every day. Think about your recent conversations (or look through the Sent folder in your email) – what are the topics or questions you answer over and over again? Use these questions to jog your memory:
- What are some common mistakes you help people avoid?
- When people work with your competitors, what frustrations do they experience?
- What are your prospects trying to learn?
Packaging Your Offer
Once you decide upon the information you will share with your prospects, you need to decide how you will package that information. One common approach to delivering this information is in the form of a white paper or eBook. A word of caution, I’ve seen more than one business owner get so bogged down in creating the “perfect” eBook that they never get their lead magnet in place. If you find yourself continually pushing back the due date on your white paper or eBook, consider using a different medium to deliver your information. A simple email series or a series of short videos or audio recordings can be just as effective. Get something deployed quickly – you can always improve and repackage the information in the future.
Not just for online marketing
Although lead magnets are typically considered an internet play, a compelling lead magnet can also be used for offline lead generation. This has been the essence of two-step or direct response marketing for decades – provide something of value in exchange for the prospect’s contact information so you can continue to nurture the relationship until they are ready to buy.
Even if you don’t buy traditional advertising for your lead magnet, pretending you will be a helpful exercise to determine how compelling your offer is to your target audience. Assuming you were thinking about buying your first home, would you be more likely to respond to an ad for a real estate agent’s newsletter or a free report about the “3 Mistakes First Time Homeowners Make and How to Avoid Them.”?
Once you have a compelling lead magnet, you can use it in all of your lead-generation activities. Here are a few examples:
- Advertising – change your existing advertising to offer your valuable information
- Networking – “Give before you get” by offering your information to those who indicate interest
- Referrals – encourage your referral partners to share your lead magnet with their networks
Your First Step to Measuring Success
Incorporating a lead magnet into your lead generation activities provides another important benefit – it makes your marketing measurable. Now that your lead generation activities ask prospects to take a specific action, you can measure how many of them actually do. Set things up correctly and you can even measure where your prospects come from so you can start to make better decisions about where to spend your marketing budget.
Start Today
Take a look at the lead magnets you have today from your prospects’ point of view. Are they compelling? Could they be better if you tweaked them a little?
If you don’t have any lead magnets yet, take out your calendar and set a deadline for creating one. Don’t get bogged down by making it a bigger project than it needs to be – get something in place so you can start testing and improving upon it on a regular basis.
Need a second pair of eyes to take a look at what you have? Feel free to contact me.
