Lead Magnets - building contacts online

I'm here to share with you the SEO knowledge , hints and tips I've built up over the years . Today , I'm going to talk about lead magnets . Let's start with the basics of the lead magnet . A lead magnet is a free item or service that's given away in return for contact details .

Essentially , with a website , this will be where we say to access this piece of content or this tool or this guide or whatever , then you're going to have to give us some contact details and then we'll give you access to the tool . This is the lead magnet .

It's something that's compelling enough that people are willing to give over some details in order to be able to get access to it . Why would we want to do this as a website owner ? It's because , without using lead magnets , we don't really know who the people are on our site . They come , they consume the content and they're gone .

We don't have a chance to build a relationship with them . We don't have a chance to be able to bring new content to them in the future . To push content to them , we just rely on them coming to us .

A lead magnet enables us to deepen the relationship with people by building a list of who these people are , finding information about them which should depend on the kind of things that you're trying to achieve in your website and also getting contact details so we can then get back to them in the future and push new content to them .

Building these relationships is both sides for the person using your site and for yourself , because it means that you can obviously not provide more valuable content to people that you won't be able to do otherwise . You give them access to these things On your side . It means you're less reliant on people having to come to you .

It means that you can now then essentially go back to people when you've got new things to show them new offers or new content . It means you're less reliant on people coming to you . It makes your website more valuable If you build up a list of contacts and leads .

It's much more valuable than just a site that's relying purely on people coming to you on a passive basis , rather than being able to push out to them . All lead magnets having common that , before you provide access to it to people , you will get some contact details off them . Generally , the absolute minimum on this is their email address .

Commonly , people ask for a name as well .

Some further sort of more complex ones might ask for more and more details about people , such as phone numbers or physical addresses or those kind of things , depending on the kind of lead magnet you're giving out , what the kind of services you offer are and what you're actually trying to achieve in the long run with that lead magnet .

So let's look at some examples of different types of lead magnets and we'll start with a really simple one . Possibly the simplest I've ever seen are checklists . So this is where you would create a simple PDF document with a checklist that's relevant to the audience of your website .

So if you're running an SEO website , then you might create a checklist of SEO tasks to undertake on new sites , which would be a simple could be a simple one pager with a number of different steps and things that people need to check to make sure that SEO basic SEO setup right on their website . Obviously dead quick to create .

You've only got to create a one pager and then this is something that you then make available to people in return for them leaving their email , their name and email address and then you can email that to them and then you've got the details and then you can obviously get back into it further . So that's a really simple lead magnet .

Next up , we've got something a little bit more complex which would be like a guide or even an e-book . So essentially , it's taking the same core concept of taking some written content , packaging it up and making people provide their content details in return for getting it .

Now you'll notice , with all these things , what you're trying to do as well is trying to find something shareable , something people might actually pass on to other people . Now , not all lead magnets just have to be simple content and guides that people download and then consume .

You can actually make more complicated ones , more complex ones that provide much more value . So a couple of examples of ones that we've produced in the past . The first one is on broadband at code at UK . There's some broadband speed test functionality on there and it's just a page we can go to click .

You know , start test and it will test your broadband connection speed for you . The lead magnet that we put on there was we actually created it so that after you'd run the test , it would invite you to create a free account so that we could keep recording all the tests .

You did so over time , you could see how well your broadband connection was performing over a period of time and we'd save all the details for you and show you how you know how it happened before , on different days , when you had good days and bad days , and how you compared to other people in your area .

Now , this was a great lead magnet for us because we could then obviously target people with new offers and new deals as they became available in their area .

So if someone's having particularly trouble , particularly bad trouble with the speed of their website , we'd know that and then we'd be able to suggest new deals from new providers that should be able to give them a better quality of service in their actual area .

So that's a much more complex lead magnet to put in place , but obviously it targets those people really well and actually provides them a lot of value in terms of being able to bring them better deals . Another example is on keywords people use . Obviously on that we have a freemium option on there so you can use it for free .

But to use it for free , you obviously have to provide some details , and that then means that we can stay in touch with people who've using the free version of the site and offer them upgrades , offer them deals , and you know , other content around the sphere of SEO .

So that's using a very complex tool which keywords people use is as an actual lead magnet to bring people in and start working with them and building up that relationship to obviously in the longer and try and show them the real value of the product and how to use the product well , to the point where it makes sense for them to take out a paid subscription .

There's plenty of other things you can do for lead magnets , though . Here's some other examples . So you could offer free consultations . So that's where , if you've got a service where you're a consultant , you can offer , say , a 30-minute slot for people to reserve an appointment using something like Calendly and then they can get 30 minutes talking to you .

Giving that free consultation . You obviously get the details , you can keep in touch with them and if you've done a good consultation , then that's much more likely to lead to an engagement than if you had a website which just was like a marketing website with no real added value for people , so that's a good one . You could offer free classes , free courses .

There's loads of online tools for building online courses , like Teachable , so you could create a free course . People have to sign up to the course and then they take it . And these courses that have to be long , they can just be , you know , a few slides , a few . If you have some explanation and with a voiceover , it doesn't have to be a lot .

But it's the kind of thing where people will hand over their contact details to take that free course . Then you can obviously say you're selling courses , it's your main product line , then that's obviously good upsell for other courses . If you're selling professional services , then things like a case study can be really , really good .

So it's almost a bit like an ebook , but a bit more specialized . It's showing how you or your company have actually provided real value for your customers and you know it's a great thing to be able to demonstrate that value to potential customers at the same time as getting their contact details and you can then follow them up .

So they've got something they've seen that you can do it , you can go to them and follow up afterwards and see if it's something that you could potentially sell into them . Particularly good one , if you are , say , an e-commerce store , is prizes prize draws .

This is a great way of gathering and potential customer details where you know they're not ready to buy from you yet but you can offer them some of great prize something you can run monthly , say , and it helps you really build up a list of people that are interested in your product that you can obviously contact to and remark it to you later .

Now you don't have to be limited by these . Lead magnet can be anything that is valuable enough for people to want to hand over their contact details to get access to . So use your imagination when you're trying to come with one .

A lot will depend on what the niche of your site and your audience is as to what will be kind of the the right kind of lead magnet for that audience . So use your imagination . Think of something that people would want that suits them , and then go for it and build on that , actually implement a lead magnet .

Once you produce that lead magnet , you've obviously got to introduce it to people . So this is going to depend on your site and what the actual lead magnet is , but try and introduce it at the right time for people .

So , for example , with the broadband at KDUK , we introduce people to the speed test lead magnet after people have done an actual speed test , because those were the right people at the right time to introduce it to them with keywords people use .

People can come and use the site and do a limited number of searches without registering and then , as soon as I've done that set number , that's when we introduce the lead magnet to them , which is registering for the freemium account to be able to carry on using the tool . So it's the same . It'll be the same thing on your site .

You've got to find the right landing page and the right point to introduce people to your lead magnet and then , once you've introduced it , only take the information you really need to make it work for them .

You don't want to ask too many questions to put people off , but likewise you don't want to ask too few so that you and they can't get the right value from it . So , for example , with the broadband speed test tool , we wanted to know their POS and their email address .

So email address so we can get back in touch with them post code so we know where they are , because that mattered with that , because different broadband suppliers are only available in certain areas , so we needed to narrow down their area With keywords people use .

We obviously need an email address and a name and then we also take some company details so we know what kind of company they are , so that we can then , further within the tool , know what kind of use cases to suggest to them to make it more valuable for them and then , once someone signed up for the magnet , obviously provide them access to whatever it is

you've promised to give them access to , whether that's by download or emailing them or giving them access to a tool . Just send a thank you email always in the email .

Just outline how you're keeping in touch with them in the future and make sure that you offer them a way of opting out , because you have legal responsibilities when you take these kind of information off people .

You need to be able to allow people to easily opt out , because some people just want the magnet and then they don't want to hear from you again , and that's perfectly within their right . You don't need to limit yourself to just one lead magnet on a website .

You can have multiple lead magnets that target different types of people in different types of use cases . For example , on broadband , at Kuddee UK we had a broadband beginners guide that was a download that we offered to people , again on different parts of the site , so you don't need to limit yourself to just one . They're really , really powerful .

If you haven't got a lead magnet on your website , I strongly suggest you investigate doing it , because they add such incredible value . In the long run . Having a base of users that you can contact anytime with offers and updates is so much more valuable than just having a passive website where you're relying on people just coming to you .

You need to be able to reach out to people , and the only way you're going to do that is by building up a contact list of leads , by implementing lead magnets . Thanks for listening . I really appreciate it . Please subscribe and share . It really helps . Seo is not that hard . It's brought to you by KeywordsPeopleUsecom .

These solutions find the questions people ask online . See why thousands of people use us every day . Try it today for free at KeywordsPeopleUsecom . If you want to get in touch , have any questions , I'd love to hear from you . I'm at channel 5 on Twitter . You can email me at podcast at KeywordsPeopleUsecom . Bye for now and see you in the next episode of SEO .

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