If you’ve spent any time at all surfing the web, you’ve likely been bombarded by what are known as “lead magnets” when visiting various web sites.
I say bombarded as if it’s a bad thing, but it isn’t. Lead magnets are great. Savvy business owners are using lead magnets more and more these days as a way to capture a visitor’s (read: potential customer’s) contact information. Unfortunately, all too frequently lead magnets are put in a pop-up window, which can feel a bit like you’re being bombarded if you immediately get hit with a pop-up every time you surf to a new site. But that’s another rant for another day… Back to the topic at hand:
What’s A Lead Magnet?
A lead magnet is a value offering (gift, promotion, informative content, etc.) offered to a prospect in exchange for their email address or other contact information (the lead).
There are two key components defining a lead magnet:
The offering needs to be attractive (valuable) to your prospective customer. So valuable, in fact, that the prospect is willing to exchange their contact information for your offering — even knowing that you intend to re-market to them and possibly try to sell them something later. Typically lead magnets are free content, but there’s nothing wrong with selling your lead magnet.
The offering needs to be “gated” within a form of some sort, requiring certain information be entered in order to access your offering. Collect whatever information you’d like to in your web form or landing page. Just keep in mind that you don’t want to ask for too much; keep the number of required fields to as few as possible to meet your needs. Also understand that the more information you ask for in your form, the more valuable your lead magnet needs to be.
Have something to say about this article?
Leave your comments below or spread the word socially!