Sales stand and fall on leads, but attracting prospects and optimally converting them into buyers is an art that many have yet to grasp. About 61% of marketers consider generating traffic and leads their biggest challenge, according to Hubspot. Why?
Three problems currently hamper the visibility of a website. First, the digital competition is all optimized for Google’s search engine. Second, new privacy policies in Europe and the U.S. restrict data collection, limiting diverse marketing opportunities. Finally, consumers are showing increasing concern about the benefit-cost calculation of handing out their contact details to businesses.
Facing difficulties doesn’t mean all hope is lost, though. On the contrary: Those who strategically align lead generation with the goals of their potential buyers will gain a significant advantage. The key is building a foot-in-the-door technique for continuous engagement — lead magnets.
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Let’s explore what lead magnets are and how you can design and implement them effectively to build a strong customer relationship from scratch.
Many companies are quick to overlook that the timing of when a lead magnet is displayed influences user behavior.
The enticing charm of lead magnets
In physics, the movements of the +/- poles in magnetic fields generate energy. It’s similar for websites: By incorporating different magnets that trigger various actions, you create a robust environment for sparking a users’ interest. A lead magnet is on-demand content that incentivizes users to provide their contact information (“a sign-up”), so you can engage them in the future. In a survey conducted with 1,000 bloggers, we found that those using lead magnets were 57% more likely to report strong results from their content marketing.
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Today, 96% of visitors to your website aren’t ready to buy. Instead, they are either becoming familiar with your brand (awareness stage) or considering your products as one of many options (consideration stage). In these initial phases, you want potential prospects to put their contact details down so that you can engage them with personalized emails in the future. Unfortunately, very few customers just hand over their data like that. This is exactly where alluring magnets enter the equation.
Essentials for creating high-conversion magnets
Magnets can be anything that provides additional value, whether benchmark studies, guides, interactive quizzes, short or long-form video content, or anything else. The purpose is exchanging a contact, just like an ethical bribe. To effectively design magnets for several buyer personas and decision stages, you need to ask yourself the following questions first.
Does the magnet solve a problem?
If your lead magnet doesn’t solve a visitor’s problem, or if it doesn’t help them achieve their goal, then your hard work has gone to waste.
To find out if your magnet fits a purpose, you need to listen to your audience. Here, SEO tools come in handy, allowing you to do keyword or search analysis. Browsing through the long- and short-tail keywords with the highest search volume will help you quickly discover what kind of answers potential leads are looking for.
