On average, about 70% of your website traffic is likely to be new visitors each month; people who are interested in the services or products that you offer, but aren’t necessarily ready to buy right now.
So how do you stay in the forefront of your audience’s memory, so that when they are in a position to buy your product or service, they think of you and make that purchase?
(Hint, start building lead magnets into your marketing strategy)
Lead magnets are things that attract your audience and entices them to provide you with their highly-sought-after email address or their social follow and shares, whilst answering their ever present ‘what’s in it for me, what do I get?’. The benefit for you is that you can start building an engaged database to nurture until they are ready to purchase, at which time their familiarity, and to some degree loyalty, with your brand should drive them your way.
Think of The Body Coach, Joe Wickes. He regularly gives away free workout sessions, free recipes and free tips, answering the ‘what’s in it for me?’, but his business is selling DVDs, cookbooks and membership plans. The aim isn’t to give away every recipe in the cookbook, but to build a strong and engaged fan-base. When they’re ready, they will buy the products because they have an affiliation to his brand, already know what to expect and trust has been built.
To be truly beneficial, the content has to be useful, interesting and relevant for your audience.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting that you start giving away your crown jewels for free! Rather, give away a taster, something they will value and remember in return for them providing their email address, and ask them to subscribe to your social channels so they see when your new content is available.
Here are some ideas to help build an effective lead magnet.
Plan how you’re going to capture the info
- You’ll need an effective landing page that gets straight to the point and gives the audience a clear idea of what they’re going to get from you as a result of swapping their details and signing up.
- Create short, painless forms. Make it as easy as possible for people to provide their details. This could be as simple as just their name and email address.
- Don’t make them wait! Whatever they’re expecting to get for providing their info, ideally make sure they receive it straight away or make it clear how soon they will receive it. Failure to do this and make them wait could be detrimental, so tread carefully and make sure this part is well tested.
Make content that’s interesting and helps
Understand what your audience’s problems or issues are and aim to help solve them.
Exclusive offers
- The classic, time limited money off promotion. Everyone reacts to an offer, and limiting the timing of them provides urgency which is proven to drive sales. Handy hint: Get yourself organised well in advance—prepare and plan at least a month ahead and make sure that you have the stock and staff to fulfil orders.
How to’s
- Solve one simple problem that your audience has and they’ll consider you the expert. This could be in the form of quick videos, regular emails with tips, or explainer webinars.
Free trials
- More suited to service industries, give access to your services for free for a limited amount of time. Allow them to explore and learn about your product and develop a follow up plan to engage with them about their experience throughout their trial period.
Create insights
- You know your industry and will almost certainly have opinions about what is good and what is bad about it. Share this information and create reports or regular news updates via email. Put across your personality and your opinion, remembering to be considerate when your are being critical!
Don’t forget to add your contact details
- In everything that you do, remember to always include a call to action. Make it easy and clear how to contact you if they need to, get them to take action and add in that urgency again, ‘Don’t Miss Out, Call Us Today!’
And make sure that you promote it!
- Everything you create should be mentioned or shared on all your social media accounts and referenced on your email signatures. You should also consider targeting your content more specifically using paid-for boosted posts and email marketing.
Follow up
Once you’ve built your lead magnet, launched and promoted it, you should start to see your database growing. This now triggers the beginning of your nurture marketing process.
- Set up a sequence of follow ups. What else is interesting that you can share in a timely manner with them—get your calendar mapped out so that you don’t lose momentum.
- Be prepared that it could be a long burn; customers are all at different stages in their purchasing journey, so for some it could take much longer than for others.
- Constantly analyse the results and adapt. Why have some people not completed the process? Where did they drop off? What could reduce the drop off rate?Understanding these elements gives you more insight to building even more effective processes and content that really engages, reduces drop offs and improves sales.
Understanding and reaching your target audience can seem like a minefield, but it needn’t be. Get in touch today on thrive@418group.com to find out how we can help make things easier.
