11 Tips to Create More Effective Lead Magnets

98% of your visitors aren’t ready to buy right now, and 70% of them will never return to your website. Scary, right? So, how do you turn this around? Enter lead magnets. These irresistible offers maximize the number of targeted leads you get for your business by adding value to your end customer.

And nothing spells value better than an offer. In fact, it is one of the most powerful words in human language. The best kind of lead magnets that you can create include webinars, checklists, templates, research reports, ebooks, whitepapers, on-demand videos, and demo requests. However, not all offers are created alike.

When an offer is exclusive, scarce, or in high demand, it becomes more desirable. Why? Because they trigger a psychological reaction that makes an offer more valuable. People need to perceive the value of your offer to be greater than what you’re asking for in return.

If created right, lead magnets can get you as many as 35K leads in 60 days! But how do you do it right? Let’s understand.

1: Use The Element Of Scarcity

It’s a known psychological fact – humans place a higher value on an object that is scarce, and a lower value on those that are abundant. Thus, quoting your offer as scarce helps create a sense of urgency.

Here are three ways you can make your offers exclusive:

Limited Time – Offers that are available only for a given duration of time. Hubspot tested limited time offer vs. a control page. The limited time offer outperformed control by 8%. Amazon’s daily deals is a good example of this, and so is this time-specific landing page designed by Marketizator.

Limited Quantity – These offers perform better than limited-time offers. Why? Because it’s hard to tell when an offer of limited quantity will suddenly become unavailable.

Google used this tactic to generate the user base for Gmail during its early launch phase. During the early months of the initial beta phase, the exclusive nature of the accounts caused a fast-growing demand for gmail addresses, to the point where people started buying them in order to get their hands on one. That’s right, people were buying a free email service. According to PC World magazine, Gmail invitations were selling on eBay for as much as $150, with some specific accounts being sold for several thousand dollars.

Limited Time & Limited Quantity – Groupon is the perfect example of using both tactics. All Groupon deals end within a certain time frame, and they limit the number of people who can buy a Groupon.

2: Focus On Relevancy

It’s important to keep your offers relevant to your business and, of course, your target audience. If you’ve got a SaaS product, your offers should be on lines of free product demo, a free webinar, extended product trial etc. Similarly, the lead magnets you create must be relevant. For instance, Outgrow’s target market comprises digital marketers and agencies. Thus, most of our lead magnets talk about topics relevant to marketers – lead generation, interactive content, funnel strategy etc.

Free Course: Boosting Lead Generation with Interactive Calculators

3: Leverage The Bandwagon Effect

It’s human tendency to follow one another, and you shouldn’t miss out on using this psychological factor to promote your offer. Wherever possible, mention how many people have purchased, downloaded, signed up, or donated – this makes the offer more lucrative for your audience.

Copyblogger is a great example. The message of their membership landing page clearly states how many marketers have already joined them, building immediate trust.

4: Focus On Creating A Great Title

A great offer or lead magnet with a bad title is a dud. Short, sexy, accurate, and thoughtful titles can help you crack the deal. Hubspot did a small experiment on the title of their ebook and ran an A/B test to see which title performed better. The revised version outperformed the original by 776% at generating leads (first time submissions).

Struggling with creating awesome headlines? This guide by Hubspot can help.

5: Different Offers For Different Buying Stages

Abiding by the Holy Law of Marketing Funnel, thou must engage the customer at every stage of the buyer journey. For top of the funnel, create informational lead magnets like ebooks, guides, checklists etc. At the middle stage, product webinars can be a good idea. At end of the funnel, which is the purchase stage, a product demo or free trial works well.

6: Avoid Corporate Jargon

It’s best to keep the copy for your offer promotion simple. While a professional tone is important, avoid using corporate or technical jargon. Here’s a list of words/phrases you shouldn’t use as a part of your offer or lead magnet promotion – next generation, flexible, robust, scalable, easy to use, cutting edge, groundbreaking, best of breed, mission-critical/

Pro Tip: Have a look at this amazing article on best lead magnets for organic growth by Campaign Monitor

7: Offer A Demo/Trial Version Of Your Product

If you let people try your product/service for a certain time period, it build trusts and they are happy to leave behind their information in exchange of value. In fact, at GoToMyPC and GoToMeeting, they typically convert 40% – 45% of their trails into paying customers.

8: Try Interactive Content

The way customers interact with brands is changing. Millennials don’t want to be sold to; they seek value. In fact, a research by Rosetta Consulting revealed that engaged customers are five times more likely to buy only from the same brand in the future. But, how do you engage them? Think interactive content.

Experiences like calculators, quizzes, and assessments help you engage your prospects while adding real value. And people love them! Brands using interactive content methods such as apps, assessments, quizzes and calculators, report seeing up to 70 percent more conversions compared to passive content at around 36 percent. Take this quiz by Cloud Sherpas, for instance. While Cloud Sherpa gets 3-4 qualified leads from the quiz everyday, it helps the existing leads know more about the brand and their service offerings.

9: Use Case Studies And Testimonials

Social proof goes a long way in establishing trust amongst prospects, and there’s no better way of showing it than case studies and testimonials. For Neil Patel, case studies have grown the sales by 185%. In a similar instance, VWO found out that placing testimonials on your lead generation page can improve the conversions by 50%.

Pro Tip: Since videos are doing so well these days, you can also create a video testimonial or case study. The idea is to keep it keep short, fun, and informational. We love Codeacademy Stories.

10: Host A Webinar

Webinars and podcasts provide more leads, even more than gated content. In fact, you can gather more customer information through a webinar opt-in, than you would with a more top-of-the-funnel offer. Don’t believe us? Ask Neil Patel. He was able to generate 518,399 visitors and 16,394 leads from 77 webinars!

11: Offer Discount Codes

According to MarketingProfs, 57% of US online shoppers who used a coupon code said that if they had not received the discount, they would not have bought the item(s). What’s more – 93% of consumers consider special promotions as an influential reason for signing up for loyalty programs. Thus, it is a good idea to offer discount codes to see increased sales.

You can think of lead magnets as opt-in bribes, and the better the bribe, the more leads you get. Rule of thumb – be creative, test repeatedly, and stay focused on your customers. Now it’s your turn. Tell us what works best for you in the comments section below.