What is a lead magnet and why it is so important?

A lead magnet is any piece of unique content that you offer in exchange for someone’s contact information. Depending on your industry, products, and overall content strategy this can take a few different forms. It could come in the form of a massive guide to a specific topic like a “Marketing Definitive Guide”, it could be in the form of video tutorials, or it could be worksheets and interactive documents that help expand on things you’ve talked about on your blog.

Whatever form it takes, the underlying formula of content in exchange for contact information is what makes it a lead magnet.

That being said, there are typically two things that are characteristics of lead magnets. First, they usually take an extra amount of time and effort in order to be successful. People aren’t going to give you their email addresses if you’re just offering something they can find for free elsewhere online. Second, lead magnets aren’t just about what you’re selling but instead take the time to teach people information that would be useful even if they don’t sign up for your services. It’s this added value that comes without any strings that really boosts conversion.

Why Lead Magnets Are So Important to Your Content Strategy

We’ll say it boldly: no content strategy is complete without lead magnets. Yes, the implementation can vary, but somewhere on that chart of how your blog, social media channels, and influencer outreach work together you should be seeing a piece labeled “lead magnets.”

There are 3 reasons that lead magnets are so essential to successful content marketing:

Reason #1: You Get to Drive Conversion

It’d be a pretty big mistake if we didn’t just start with the obvious and most important reason: lead magnets drive conversion. Their very purpose is to get the contact information for potential customers and to convert anonymous visitors into known leads. But beyond looking at the obvious, we should take a moment to explain why creating lead magnets is a better conversion investment than your other options. It all comes down to what’s happening when someone decides to get a copy of your lead magnet.

First, they’re opting into the pool of people who are interested in what you have to say. Second, they’re declaring that they are highly motivated to learn more from you. Finally, they’re ready and willing to take action to reach their goals. These three signals aren’t meaningless: they’re the bedrock of every qualified lead you’re going to get.

Reason #2: You Can Step Outside Your Daily Writing Pace

Getting into a rhythm of publishing content is probably among the most useful and worthwhile focuses you can have when investing in content marketing. You get repeat visitors coming directly to your site, you’re building up a reputation, and you have time set aside to think about your content creation efforts. That being said, there’s a downside to constantly writing in the same format, week after week: stagnation.

Stagnation in writing comes about when you aren’t pushing yourself to try new things, in new ways. In other words, imagine if you’re writing two 1300-word blog posts every week. That’s great, but as the weeks go by you start to have a list in the back of your mind about different topics that would be great to go into more depth on, but which you don’t have an opportunity to educate people on. By taking the time to create a lead magnet, you can go into greater depth on topics that matter to you, but which don’t fit into the weekly publishing schedule.

Reason #3: You Can Prove Your Unique Expertise

You should never publish a blog post if you aren’t adding something to the conversation. This can be the conversation that’s happening in your industry, answering questions your customers are asking, or solving problems that your readers are facing. Whatever your approach, every blog post and piece of content you publish needs to contribute something. That’s especially true when creating lead magnets.

Unlike blog posts, lead magnets allow you to really flex your muscles when it comes to showing off your unique expertise. Yes, you can prove that you’re an amazing real estate agent by building up an archive of top-tier posts. However, if you’re looking for a more immediate return on your content investment you’re going to want to have something big to share with people that will really open their eyes to what you have to offer.

Why Lead Magnets Are Effective at Converting Readers: 2 factors to explain this !

Converting readers into leads and then eventually into paying customers is easier said than done. After all, if it was so easy you wouldn’t need to spend all day researching how to do it more effectively. In our experience, lead magnets are one of the most impactful tactics you can use to increase your reader-to-customer conversion rate, if not the most impactful. There are two driving factors behind this.

Factor #1: You Become Top of Mind

When people begin to research a topic online there’s a good chance that they follow a normal pattern: search a phrase, open a bunch of blog posts on it, and then read through them all while closing the tabs as they go along. This is very common and leads to plenty of information, but there’s an issue with it. Specifically, they’re not building a connection with any one brand.

However, when you release a lead magnet you become the one brand they form a connection with since you’re the one brand that has their email address, has sent them a detailed document that meets their needs, and which has a proven ability to deliver on promises. This key factor will increase your reader-to-customer conversion rate.

Factor #2: You Get High-Quality Contact Info

The second factor is much more important: you get their contact information. Now, this may seem obvious, but the truth is that not all contact information is created equally. In fact, many people have email addresses that they use as a primary address and additional email addresses that they give out to random companies. Your goal is to get into the first inbox, but that’s not always easy to do.

That’s why lead magnets are so effective. If people are interested in learning from you, then they’re going to give you their real, primary email address. After all, they don’t want to miss out on the ebook or email course you’re promising to send them.

Between these two factors, you’ll find that lead magnets are incredibly effective at converting readers.

Next post : “How to Pick a Lead Magnet Topic.”