One of the main challenges for B2B marketers in the crowded and competitive online space of today is maximizing the lead generation potential of content marketing. Standing out from the competition and consistently directing prospects to content is often a lengthy process.
However, the complexities of generating and curating long-lasting interest with content can be facilitated with lead magnets.
Essentially, a lead magnet is a digital asset that encourages website visitors to exchange contact information for access. Most types of lead magnets are typically gated, although this is widely debated and depends on the goals of each marketing strategy.
Lead magnets are effective lead generation tools that are either made in-house or with a lead magnet creator such as a third-party agency. Magnets can bolster content marketing campaigns with tangible and trackable results that demonstrate ROI.
A lead magnet funnel is essentially the same as a regular opt-in sales funnel. However, a lead magnet funnel is built around a compelling lead magnet at the top of the funnel stage.
This funnel features a value exchange for sharing contact information and provides leads with content specific to their needs. In this way, the lead magnet encourages leads to progress through the funnel.
Apart from proving the efficacy of content marketing strategies, successful lead magnet ideas also boost traffic and leads coming into a website. This may also result in an increase in time spent per visitor on websites and repeat visitors, as well as the performance of other content.
Lead magnets serve to expand contact lists and support other high ROI marketing channels reliant on contact information such as email marketing.
One of the main motivations behind creating lead magnets is the ability to demonstrate the value a company can provide its potential clients with engaging content pieces. This establishes what prospects can come to expect upon conversion and encourages them to progress along the sales process.
Analytics and data collected from interaction with lead magnets and form completions can be insightful by showing marketers trends, buyer intent, and which strategies are working. This goes beyond simply following spikes in traffic as prospects filling up forms indicates a greater interest in a brand.
As B2B marketers, it is essential to understand the fundamentals of developing interest and awareness of your brand with demand generation.
In our Definitive Guide to B2B Demand Generation, we explain in-depth how to design and implement successful demand generation campaigns.
So, what makes a good lead magnet? Before developing different types of lead magnets, it is important to ensure each magnet meets the following five characteristics for it to truly be effective at attracting leads:
1. Make it relevant to your audience:
Your lead magnet should be client-centric and built with your target market and audience in mind. This means matching content with their preferences, needs, and goals. These can be determined in the planning stages by referring to buyer personas created with insights gathered from market segmentation methods. Take your research to a granular level by examining cognitive factors with psychographics to align your lead magnets with your target audience. While lead magnet templates are useful for speeding up development, lead magnets are far more valuable when tailored specifically to your audience.
2. Address pain points:
Give your lead magnet ideas a purpose that your prospects will understand by focusing them directly on the issues they are facing daily. This adds to their relevancy and makes them valuable. Even if your magnet is only able to provide a solution to one pain point, this still lays the groundwork for conversions as prospects associate your brand with an improved experience.
3. Make content easily digestible:
Your lead magnet content should suit the preferences of your target market that you previously established. This applies both to the length of content and the topics covered. Lead magnets should be visually appealing with designs and infographics that aid by dissecting the subject and encourage longer reading times. One way to achieve this is by using an AI image editor online, to create unique and eye-catching visuals for your content. Make your content scannable and easy to access by dividing longer pieces into content blocks, subheadings, bullet points, and bold text when appropriate. Interactive summary bars are another great feature your readership will appreciate as they allow users to pick and choose from the subtopics they want to consume. Allowing prospects to see the full extent of the topics covered gives power back to the reader and encourages better retention on in-depth content pages.
4. Inspire interaction:
The aim of lead magnets is to extend engagement past the initial top of funnel stage of prospects interacting with content. Create quality content that provides solutions to pain points so that readers are motivated to explore more content pieces. Sharing lead magnets across social media with both paid and unpaid promotions can help to get your content in front of its target audience. Social media platforms are also perfect for sparking and managing discussions with followers. If they gain traction, these can also act as promotion that improves engagement and traffic. LinkedIn is particularly instrumental and can be leveraged to nurture trust with audiences.
5. Provide value:
Above all else, before developing lead magnet ideas be sure that they contribute value, educational or otherwise, to your prospective clients. It is important to remember that your lead magnet represents an opportunity to demonstrate the value your company can bring to its clients. Make sure that a snap judgment of even just one of your lead magnets benefits your brand image with positive representation. To ensure this, start the process by performing extensive research of your target market. This will help you create a lead magnet that is distinguishable in quality and accuracy from the competition.
Creating highly-target content requires a solid base of knowledge of your target market that can be achieved with market segmentation.
Not sure where to start? In our Definitive Guide to B2B Market Segmentation, we break down the variety of segmentation methods and tactics that can boost your research and understanding of your audience.
Once you have established your lead magnet strategy and goals, the next step is to develop a variety of content that resonates with your target audience. Below are 10 lead magnet examples that can boost your content marketing:
Webinars are an excellent form of content for encouraging users to complete lead contact forms as they offer prospects value, often in the form of educational content. Webinars can also be a great platform for holding a debate, both with a guest and attendees. These debates and their conclusions can then be used to fuel consequent magnet ideas.
Creating webinars as part of a co-marketing strategy with guests can allow all members to benefit from each other’s audiences and potentially expand their own. Be sure to choose a partner whose audience and credibility are beneficial to your goals.
Although webinars in the past have been primarily live, webinars can also be leveraged as a lead magnet in an on-demand format. Larger webinars can also easily be repurposed into shorter topic-based videos. This allows viewers to consume webinar content at a time of their choosing. Implementing this strategy helps to combat attendee drop-off as people continue to suffer from screen fatigue in an ever-virtual business world.
Whitepapers and eBooks are great for in-depth explanations of complex topics. For these lead magnets to effectively relate to your target audience’s interests, it is crucial to first perform extensive research.
When gating this content, be sure to feature an excerpt or create an introduction that captures the interest and curiosity of the reader. This will compel them to complete a form for full access. Support the content of these lead magnets by adding visual elements that enhance long sections of text.
These could take the form of infographics, videos, or other design features that help to break up long sections of text into smaller content blocks. Although infographics can also be used as lead magnets, inserting them into content with a sharing option can create valuable backlinks. Graphics help to add more in-depth detail to content pieces that can help the reader gain a clearer understanding of the topic.
Whitepapers and eBooks can also be made available as downloadable PDFs, which can serve as another indicator of engagement.
Case studies present marketers with an opportunity to take advantage of a prospect’s existing interest in their company with a lead magnet. By publishing a case study of how your organization has helped existing customers meet their goals, you can bring credibility to the rest of your messaging and content.
Case studies essentially function as evidence that proves the validity of guarantees made to prospects. These lead magnets should be more formal in voice and contain all the necessary details of the case outlined. Formulate your case study into clearly defined sections covering the objectives and steps taken to meet them.
Be sure to have your client’s permission before publishing this information on your site or sharing it across your social media platforms.
Offer your prospects a free trial of your product if possible. Not only does this incentivize lead generation but it also serves as a platform for demonstrating the tangible value and benefits of your products and services. This can be very effective in encouraging conversions as your product demo gives prospects a taste of how their daily experience can be improved.
If this change is notable, then they are unlikely to want to return to a subpar process. Sign-up analytics can also be indicative of which products are being effectively marketed or are in higher demand in the market. This can lead to changes in strategies and inform future product creation and marketing.
Email marketing is another way of cultivating and nurturing interest to generate leads. Personalized emails can demonstrate the value of products and services to recipients. Depending on the strength of the copy, emails alone can be effective lead magnets. However, one of the main strengths of emails is their ability to distribute content (ungated or gated lead magnets) to its intended audience and boost its lead generation potential.
Be sure to keep content relevant to the needs of each lead to encourage them to complete lead contact forms. Email marketing can also be used to announce giveaways or promotions currently running to boost their traction.
Once leads have opted in, weekly newsletters can continue to boost content and nurture leads, encouraging them to progress through the buyer’s journey.
INFUSE’s team of creatives and content specialists craft content for some of the world’s biggest businesses.
Our team will analyze your strategic needs and develop content marketing assets that deliver results for your demand generation campaigns. There is no limit to the formats and asset types that we can create, including articles, whitepapers, eBooks, videos, and infographics.
Toolkits are lead magnets comprising of a compilation of various marketing materials, content, and resources centered on one topic or purpose. This could also include guides, free tools, or even lead magnet templates. Toolkits offering prospects a whole range of useful content make great lead magnets.
The cost of producing toolkits depends on whether new materials need to be created or not. However, most toolkits can consist of existing content on a similar topic that can easily be repurposed into one guide or eBook.
Depending on your marketing messaging, your toolkit can be another great way to showcase the value of your company and its positive culture. Take this into consideration when deciding who the target audience is for your lead magnet.
As previously mentioned for webinars, co-marketing can be a powerful strategy for driving engagement with lead magnets by growing your audience. In the same way that collaboration with another industry leader can bring credibility to your content, collecting expert opinions on a subject of interest is another efficient tactic.
Create long-form content that features expert opinions on a trending topic to take advantage of backlinks and engagement from shared audiences. This is a valuable lead magnet both in terms of SEO and lead generation potential.
Collaboration could also include working with a lead magnet creator (software or individual). However, be sure to evaluate their portfolio and ability to create a magnet that suits your needs, before establishing a partnership.
Another way that partnerships can benefit your demand and lead generation is by helping to distribute your content across your target audience’s preferred channels. Content syndication can be a powerful tool for this process.
For more on syndication strategies and how to boost the reach of your content, read our CMO Guide to Modern Content Syndication.
Arguably, the best lead magnets for your website are those that encourage repeat visitors. One way to do this is by developing free tools. These tools should be easy to use and simplify a process specific to your target market’s workflows. The more successful these lead magnets are in making your prospect’s lives easier, the more likely they are to use it repeatedly and share it with others.
This boosts the reach of your lead magnet and establishes your company as a provider of a valuable service, even if not all prospects are currently ready for conversion. Here are two examples of free tools that are effective lead magnets:
Hubspot Blog Topic Generator: This lead magnet captures leads by allowing users to enter keywords related to their content and receive new content ideas free of charge. Some are provided instantaneously, while others are behind a contact form. This tool is simple, specific, and encourages a repeat process.
EINFUSE Lead Quality Grader: The Lead Quality Grader analyzes and shares a comprehensive report which includes rejection statuses for incorrect leads, comparisons and calculations, data corrections, and more. Any information shared is used solely for the purposes of generating a report. This free tool only requires the completion of two fields on a contact form to start evaluating leads.
These lead magnet ideas are an efficient method of boosting brand awareness and incentivizing engagement. All lead magnets can be easily promoted across social media platforms and email newsletters to boost their reach by back linking to their specific landing pages.
This lead magnet idea requires the most investment of time, resources, and budget by far. However, developing a course can also be invaluable in improving brand awareness and creating lasting equity that results in a steady stream of leads.
Start your course design by organizing and repurposing existing content into course modules. This will help to kickstart development and give you a clear view of how much new content needs to be crafted.
Educational courses not only establish your company as an industry leader but as more people complete your course and receive certifications, their value and therefore the impact of your courses is also compounded. The more graduates and reviews of your course, the more traction they will gain as they become recognized as a qualification in your space.
If creating an entire course is out of the question, consider repurposing existing content pieces into short educational videos to share on social media.
When designing these pages, be sure to keep their design simple and clear. Limit the number of calls to action (CTA) to one to make it easy for visitors to understand the requirements for participation.
It is crucial to target these campaigns to the specific needs of your target market or smaller groups within your segments to avoid capturing irrelevant leads.
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Creating a variety of different types of lead magnets that suit the needs and interests of your target market boosts your lead generation strategies and adds tangible value to your content marketing.
Here are a few additional recommendations to consider when planning your lead magnet strategy:
Lead magnets do not guarantee potential buyers reaching out to your company to start negotiations. Make sure to close the gap by implementing effective lead follow-up.
Aligning sales and marketing teams can make workflows more efficient. This aids the lead handoff and lead magnet development process by incorporating feedback from both teams.
Regularly update the content featured in lead magnets to ensure information is up to date. Editing your content with new data and keeping it evergreen allows you to make the most of its potential.
Lead magnets are also excellent lead nurturing assets as their highly-targeted content continues to match the needs of target markets and segments. Remember to nurture leads, even as they reach the bottom of the funnel and beyond.
Investing more time in the quality of your lead magnets is better than producing a higher quantity of content using lead magnet templates. Keep in mind that lead magnets serve as examples of the value a company can provide for its clients. Make sure prospects secure a positive impression.
As the value of content marketing continues to increase, there has never been a better time to develop lead magnet ideas for your marketing strategies. Use the lead magnet examples, design ideas, and best practices explored in this article to create lead magnets that suit your audience and help you reach your sales and marketing objectives.
INFUSE has developed highly-targeted content marketing campaigns for thousands of clients that have helped them surpass their goals.
With a myriad of lead generation and demand generation tools and services at our disposal, we can help you get the result you are looking for.
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