If you are looking for new ways to prospect new business for your product or service, a lead magnet could be a valuable investment. A main magnet is basically a bridge drug or a bribe to coax your target audience into your sales or marketing funnel. You "corrupt" a prospect with a specific value in exchange for their contact information that you can then use to feed a relationship that, hopefully, leads to a sale.
The value-offer of lead magnets are often pieces of content like:
- Case Studies
- Digital eBooks
- White Papers
- Exclusive videos
But they can also be:
- Discounts
- Free Shipping
- Free trials
- Free Tools
- Tickets for an event
I'm sure all these types of lead magnets have been successful for many companies at one point, but at Proposify, we discovered that a lead magnet that is Embedded directly into our SaaS product is the most effective way to attract qualified users who then convert into paying customers.
A main magnet that is part of your product is different from the examples mentioned above because it is usually specific to your product and service. Done well, this type of lead magnet should demonstrate the value and benefit that you can provide to your prospect if they choose to pay for your product or service.
Using our experience at Proposify, with other examples, I will describe six steps to building a successful lead magnet in your product.
1. Be extremely specific
At Proposify, we use commercial proposal templates as the primary magnet to conduct free trials of our online proposal software.
Proposal templates are free, but they can only be used in our product, so the user must sign up for a 14-day free trial on Proposify.
Models then act as both an acquisition tool at the top of the funnel and help new users on board faster.
We offer a document (proposal template) specifically related to our product (online proposal software), and specific to an industry (accounting, marketing, architecture, etc.). Combined with a SEO job, we end up ranking very high on Google's search results for the keywords that our target audience is looking for their time of need.
Someone who bangs his head on his desk trying to write a marketing proposal for a new customer is likely to look for "marketing proposal template", and can find us via our results of paid or organic search. This is a key aspect of an effective lead magnet: you must be visible during your ideal prospect's need time and provide specific value to help them in this moment.
Another example of this is SEOptimer. They rank first for the keyword "SEO Audit Free" with their free SEO audit tool. Someone who is not an SEO expert may have a hard time knowing where to start when he's attacking the SEO performance of his site. Many websites allow these people to have an overview of the performance of their site through a free audit / website ranking / SEO tool.
Technically, it is only a search tool and a checklist, but for someone who is unfamiliar with SEO or looking for a quick view and a high level, this tool can be extremely valuable. This lead magnet is part of the product SEOptimer that they give only for the purpose of generating leads.
This tactic probably generates a lot of traffic up the funnel for SEOptimer, but could stumble when trying to contact prospects, since they do not ask you for your email. They could retarget, or a domain corresponding to emails, but I can not confirm. The sixth step becomes more in the development of the relationship, an area where SEOptimer could improve.
2. High value offer
This sounds like a no-brainer, but your main magnet must be precious for your lead. Content marketing is exploding, and competition to catch the attention of your online audience has probably never been as tough as today.
The only way to break through all the noise is to create something of value that attracts your audience, holds their interest, and is so valuable that they ideally share it with their network. We like to think that if someone is willing to pay for your main magnet, but you give it at no charge, then it offers value.
Our models save time, money and mental health. Coming with designs and copies can be a huge time to suck when you try to get a proposal to the door to a potential customer quickly, so our free templates are a great value proposition.
HubSpot is another great example of a company that offers a lot of value for free; in fact, they give a free full CRM. HubSpot has tons of content on lead magnets, and they certainly practice what they preach. As part of HubSpot's marketing, they are faced with the need to sell the concept of inbound marketing as well as their complementary inbound marketing products. What better way to get people in the Inbound Marketing and HubSpot ecosystem than to give them free parties?
3. Make it easy
You must remove any barriers that may make it difficult for your target audience to recognize the value of your main magnet. A common mistake is to add too many fields to your lead generation form, resulting in a lower conversion rate. You need to find a way to pull as much data as possible from your prospect, without disabling them.
Building a lead magnet in your product should also have the added benefit of making it easier for a user to get into your product. Our proposal templates help attract new users, but they also help accelerate the process of integrating our customers by simplifying the task for users who submit proposals more quickly.
The SEOptimer mentioned above makes it extremely easy to obtain value from their free SEO website audit tool. All you have to do is enter your field and go there; no long forms to fill out or additional information to provide. The free HubSpot CRM mentions directly in the support documentation that they are "confident that you can be setup in less than 10 minutes", making it a simple decision for the user to start right away .
4. Provide instant gratification
Once you have made your lead as easy as possible to reach the meat of your main magnet, you must provide immediate satisfaction. If the user does not find value quickly, it will be less likely to continue to interact with your main magnet, and certainly less to pay attention to future development or conversion tactics that you can deploy.
Part of the reason we have proposal templates is to shorten the process between when a user starts a free trial and when he sends out his first proposal. The templates reduce the arduous task of spending hours on a design or layout and instead bring the user closer to the satisfaction of sending a proposal and winning new business, an area of great satisfaction for our customers and an indicator of success for the adoption rate of Proposify.
With SEOptimer's audit tool, a few seconds after accessing your domain, they offer a top-notch free website audit with an easy-to-understand scoring system. They facilitate learning of how they break down their scoring system, in addition to identifying the most needed enhancements for your field.
Providing a high-quality, visually appealing report like this in seconds is a good example of instant gratification for a lead magnet. It's something that you can easily understand, get value and act immediately.
5. Demonstrate your worth
Although this is a list of six things you should do when you build a lead magnet in your product (and you should do them all!), this is the most important step important .
Building a lead magnet in your product should communicate your true value proposition. A main magnet that is part of your product helps the user understand what you can do for him and demonstrates the potential value before paying for it. This is the precise reason why free product trials exist.
A lead magnet that clearly demonstrates your value proposition is the Holy Grail, whether it's built into your product or not. Someone who is having a problem that you can solve and finds your lead magnet is a very qualified lead and will be much more likely to investigate your product or service further.
We saw it with our proposal models. Once a user subscribes to Proposify's free trial and uses a template to submit a proposal, he also discovers our other exciting features such as proposal metrics, digital signatures, and more. variables and the content library.
Another excellent example is ChartMogul, a tool for reporting, analyzing and measuring SaaS subscriptions. Although they do not rank organically on the first page of Google for "LTV Calculator", they have an excellent example of a free tool that demonstrates the value of their product.
Having an LTV calculator (lifetime value) is ideal for a single calculation, and much easier than doing it manually. But, it is very likely that if you are looking to find out what your LTV is once, you will want to follow it more frequently, with, say, a dashboard. That's exactly what ChartMogul does, and they have a call to action just below the calculator to let you know.
Similar to the way the SEOptimer audit tool identifies areas for improvement to your website, WordStream offers a ranking tool for your Google AdWords account.
After using their product to evaluate your AdWords account, they are betting on the fact that they will find areas for improvement and that their PPC software will be more appealing. The tool could also help WordStream to segment its audience and identify accounts that are spending a lot on AdWords, and could easily find a positive return on investment from their software.
6. Nurture the relationship
Finally, your main magnet may be valuable to your user, but it is of no value to your business unless you nurture the relationship, bringing the prospect closer to the point of sale.
Examples of relationship promotion vary depending on the location of the prospect in your sales or sales funnel. Typically in B2B, it can be an automated email management campaign. qualifying information such as industry, company size or job title; follow the social profile of the brand; or book a call with a seller.
Users of our templates should sign up for a free trial with their name and email address, which allows them to enter our drip sequence. Once users enter this sequence, they can be qualified based on their activity, such as the number of sessions, proposals submitted, and users added.
If you've already downloaded a HubSpot lead magnet, then I'm sure you've been "nurtured". I will not go into best practices to feed prospects, but HubSpot has tested more than a few different tactics. I found this one interesting: a colleague and I entered the HubSpot CRM at different times, but by linking our company's information, this "Product Specialist" was alerted and told me about it. contacted:
SEOptimer includes two calls to action in his email; one to connect with SEO services, and another for white labeling their lead magnet like yours. Essentially, this means that their main magnet is not only integrated with their product, but that's their product, making it the finest example of building a lead magnet in your product you can find!
However, SEOptimer could improve their ability to develop the relationship after using their lead magnet. I have never been contacted or retargeted about the labeling of their SEO audit tool. That being said, I do not work in an agency offering SEO services, so maybe they're doing a good job of eliminating unqualified prospects.
WordStream does a better job by moving the user to the next step of his funnel because it requires you to enter your email before using his free tools.
Success metrics of the main magnet
After creating your lead magnet, cross your fingers and hope for the best one is probably not the best plan of action. Make sure you follow each step of the lead-loving career of your prospect with a tool like Kissmetrics.
What is the amount of traffic that the main magnet entails? What is the conversion rate of a new user who visits your landing page and ends up using your main magnet? What is the conversion rate of people who use your main magnet to become a paying customer?
Building a lead magnet in our product has given amazing results. More than half of our new website traffic is via a landing page, and those who view a proposal template are 2.5 times more likely to sign up for a trial than those who do not. .
If you are thinking about building a lead magnet in your product or perhaps taking advantage of something you already have, I hope that the six steps above will help you succeed.
- Have you built or built a lead magnet in your product?
- Do you have any lessons to share?
- I would love to hear your comments and hear about your experiences!
About the author: As marketing director at Proposify, Patrick Edmonds gets his kicks from measurable results. He likes to get his hands dirty in depth (especially on the business proposal models of the main magnet) in order to discover new ways to convert more customers to the Proposify lifestyle.