Attracting the right people (leads) into your creative business is about creating the right lead magnet (also called a freebie, free gift,incentive) that provides value to your potential client/customer.Your lead needs to see your lead magnet and go, “Wow! I have to have this. I can’t believe it’s free!”How do you do that? You figure out what your best lead magnet(s) are and create them! What the heck are lead magnets Lise?
A lead magnet is an incentive/enticement/free gift that you use to get the right leads onto your email list.In exchange for providing their email address, they receive your lead magnet aka the free gift they have to have.Now all going well, and in a perfect, happy-creative-business owner world, every visitor that lands on your website will grab your lead magnet straight away—happy to hand over their email address...Unless your lead magnet is the best lead magnet for that person in this moment in time, they can end up leaving your site without joining your email list. And that’s ok. You don’t want everyone to join, you just want your ideal leads to sign up.Which is why I want to highlight that a few things need to align before someone hands over their email address…
#1: Your lead magnet needs to be the thing they need right now.It’s a case of meeting them where they are at based on where they land on your website. There’s no point someone joining your list
and not being able to implement your thing.
#2: Your lead magnet also needs to be something that your potential lead feels they can take action on right away. If it looks like too much effort, they’ll skip grabbing it, meaning they’ll skip joining your email list. Quick wins are what you want to focus on helping them achieve.Which leads to the question: How can you find your best lead magnet for your ideal audience?Let’s work out what your best lead magnet is by coming up with different ideas. The goal is to have no more than five lead magnets leading into your products or services (funnels).
Ultimately, you should only have 3-5 funnels in place total.If you’re just starting your creative business, one funnel is plenty and 1-2 lead magnets are more than enough to support that funnel.Keep it simple.
THE 5-PART FRAMEWORK TO YOUR BEST LEAD MAGNET
#1: Brainstorm
I know this sounds kinda simple, but I’ve always enjoyed making things simple, and brainstorming is the best way to unlock ideas you hadn’t considered.So to get started, grab a piece of paper or whatever you do to take notes, and set a timer for 15 minutes. I find the timer on my iPhone works best.Here’s what you’re going to do:
Write down as many ideas as you can for lead magnets that you
feel would be the best fit for your ideal customer/client.
A few things to consider before doing this:
• You should think about high-value ideas, like courses,video training, etc.
• Swipe files, templates and checklists are also great ideas
• Avoid ebooks on their own, they have lost a lot of their value… unless they are an existing published ebook, then it could work Free-write for 15 minutes until you have at least 20 ideas.
Remember, you’re focusing on ideas that would work for YOUR ideal audience but also the types of clients/customers you WANT to work with.
#2: Check out your competition The next step is to see what your competition is doing. Find your 5-10 closest competitor’s websites and check out what they’re providing in the way of lead magnets.Sign up for their lead magnets and see what their autoresponder sequence looks like too.
Caveat: DO NOT COPY THEIR LEAD MAGNET!
Instead,think about how you could make it better, provide more value,add to it etc.Filter your competition’s lead magnets through your own goals and purpose:
• What is your ultimate goal with your business?
• Are you selling services or products?
• Are they direct competition or just in a similar niche? If direct, be careful about what you produce, again NO COPYING!By now you should have a large list of lead magnet ideas, adding more from this competitor research.
#3: Survey your list
Have you ever asked your potential customers/clients what they actually want or need?I have to admit, I was pretty scared about sending out a survey to my Hustle & Groove email list—until I did it that is!It was such an amazing experience. I had a lot of responses and most people were happy to answer a few simple questions.This has led to me being able to provide even more value via my Hustle & Groove emails and private Facebook Group.So if you haven’t surveyed your list, this is something you should do now.
Don’t have an email list?
For those of you who are just getting started with your creative business or email list, you might not think that you can do this step.But you can.Instead of sending an email, simply share your survey on the social media platform(s) that your ideal potential customer/client is hanging out on.No excuses! You have to do this step if you want to identify the best lead magnet to attract the right leads into your business.Otherwise, you’re going to end up with a ton of leads who aren’t the right fit, making your business no fun.This is what it looks like when the wrong leads end up on your email list...
Argh! Why is no-one buying my services?
They downloaded my lead magnet, but none of my subscribers seem at all interested in buying my things.I get comments like “I love your stuff, but have no money.” and “I’m too busy.” or “Next paycheck, I’ll buy.”I have over 1,000 subscribers but not one of them wants my thing. I just don’t get it.This is what we are looking to avoid. There are a number of reasons why you can end up in this situation. One of those is not understanding your audience and what they want.Another is providing them with a product or service that they aren’t ready for yet.This is why it’s important to survey your target audience and understand who they are and what they want and need.Never assume you know best.So coming back to the survey... The most important question you need to ask inside your survey is this:“What’s the #1 biggest challenge you’re facing right now in/with [insert your topic here]?
”The next few questions can be things like:“What would you like to see more of on the site?” (multi-choice,provide them with options!)“Where are you in [your topic here]?” (multi-choice, starting out,intermediate or advanced) Make it easy for people to respond and keep it short! No more than five questions is ideal.Compile the answers and add any new ones to your growing list.
#4: Rank your ideas
Now that you’ve got a huge list of potential lead magnets, it’s time to narrow things down.SERVICE-BASED BUSINESSES If you’re providing services or consulting, then you need to think about the lead magnet you offer.You want your lead magnet to relate to your services and lead them into your email sales funnels that will upsell/down-sell them based on the actions they take.Educational content works best. What do they need to know/do to be able to work with you?
DIGITAL PRODUCT-BASED BUSINESSES
If you’re selling products, your lead magnet should provide part of the solution that your (digital) product provides — so they get a taste of how amazing life could be if they had the whole thing.You’d also want to feed them into your email sales funnels to upsell/down-sell based on the actions they take too.Remember, you’re looking to provide a lead magnet that is high value. In fact, it should be something that your ideal client/customer would pay for.Some great examples include:
• A resource library (perfect for both a service or productbased business)
• A video course (3-5 videos is the sweet spot)
• Swipe files (email copy works great here)
• Templates (if you’re selling ebook/book formatting services, providing them with a template with instructions is a great idea)• Cheatsheets (great if you’ve got some special html code that you use to get your site to do something special)
#5: Identify your top three
Identify the top three ideas and then create all three of these lead magnets.Why limit yourself to one lead magnet right? But know this — if it feels like a lot to create right now, then just do one first. You can do more later.In fact, if you want to be a smarty pants about it (who doesn’t?!) then you should create lead magnets for the different levels that your audience might be at (achieving the ‘meet them where they are at’ idea):
1. Beginner, just getting started 2. Started, looking to grow
3. Advanced or nearly there
By doing this, you’d have different funnels that would lead into your products or services that meet those needs.Then you could upsell/downsell based on the actions they took during the email sequences.Don’t worry about this now though. Get the free gift created then worry about the tech stuff later (we’ll cover this later in the book too).
But what about the ideas you have left?
With the list of ideas that you’ve got left, consider which ones fit within your business model (services vs. products) and your overall strategy for your creative business.Make a plan to review these ideas against the ones you create and see if you can create another for your best-selling product or service… that way, you’re offering more ways for someone to get into your funnels!Only do this once you’ve got your first 1,000 leads/subscribers.
Remember, you’re looking for the right leads.
Jose Amoros
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