Whether you’re a business owner looking to sell products or services or a blogger looking to establish a healthy subscriber list, the primary purpose of any website is to increase conversions. Typically we think of increasing conversions from a monetary point of view, however, visitor loyalty can be just as important. 

A website showcases your credibility and, for the purposes of this blog post, provides an avenue to establish and foster a relationship with your dream client. That first impression with your brand or product may not immediately establish loyalty or trigger action; but, by using a Lead Magnet or “Opt-In” you can initiate a relationship that provides them a tidbit of value in exchange for their email address and begin to build that relationship. 

6 Reasons Why Lead Magnets are Important

We believe a lead magnet is a staple of any established, well-built website because it provides the following benefits:

• Collects emails for future use

• Grows trust in your business and your brand

• Provides value to your target audience 

• Promotes brand authority

• Helps SEO

• Acts as Evergreen Content that can be shared on social media

Quite the laundry list of opportunities for one lead generator, huh? Building a lead magnet that attracts the right people while providing useful information is key. A lead magnet could take days to create, but it can be embedded on your website to provide valuable information for months or years as long as the information is still applicable and not outdated!

The primary purpose of a lead magnet is to collect emails (leads) that you’ll add to your database. You can then routinely send your subscribers information related to their interests, which you can determine based on the lead magnet they’ve opted into. By opting in, they have given you  their permission to serve them with more. This is how you begin to build trust, loyalty, and relationships. Use this opportunity to continue providing valuable information directly to their inbox, to ultimately seal the deal after so many touchpoints. 

Types of Lead Magnets or Opt-Ins

What type of lead magnet best supports your message?

Now that you have the understanding of why lead magnets are a must-have tool, let’s talk about the different types of lead magnets. Keep in mind, a good lead magnet provides valuable information and puts your ideal customer at the center of its creation. Therefore, start by asking yourself these two questions: 

1) What is my audience interested in learning?
2) What format best suits the information I can provide? 

The answers to these two questions should lead you to the type of lead magnet that best supports your message.

Here are our top website lead magnet recommendations: 

• FAQ Downloads

• Checklists

• Discounts or Coupons

• Free Trials of a product or software

• Free Consultations

• Quizzes

• Template Examples 

• Surveys

• Pre-recorded podcast or webinar

• Event Registration

• E-books or Guides

Choosing Your Lead Magnet

As you consider which format best suits your business, put yourself in the shoes of your dream client. For instance, if you’re a food blogger, providing a free recipe download for “The World’s Chewiest Cookie”  is an easy, peasy & delicious go-to. If you’re a business professional, providing your visitor with a FAQ download or Entrepreneurship 101 checklist would be a great way of sharing your expertise. 

Creating Content That Provides Value

Once you have an idea of what type of lead magnet you want to create, what valuable information can you share? This information should highlight your expertise and be enticing enough for your audience to willingly provide their email for it. If you’re struggling to come up with ideas, think about your value proposition or your customers’ pain points and provide content that addresses one or the other (or both!)At the end of the lead magnet, be sure to highlight your products or services and include a quick Call to Action (CTA). You don’t want it to be too salesy, but I personally think we can all agree that it’s best to be open and honest - everyone knows the sales pitch is coming… might as well call a spade a spade!

HeiPro Digital Opt-In Lead Magnet Examples: 

Since most of our audience comes to our website with questions about their existing websites and are on the fence about needing to revamp or upgrade, we provided three different lead magnets that address these pain points. 

1. Our “5 Things Every Website Must Have” downloadable guide provides insight on the five non-negotiables of a well-functioning, well-designed website. Within 10 minutes, they can use their best judgment to assess whether or not their current website is hitting these benchmarks - and whether or not they need our services!

2. Our “What Your Website Says About You” personality quiz assesses your business’s website including its branding, copywriting, functionality, and SEO - and determines which popular TV persona you are. This quiz format wasn’t only fun to create, it also allowed us to provide a unique opportunity to give personalized, detailed, curated responses to our audience based on their chosen answers. It might sound like fun and games, but this quiz actually packs a serious, info-loaded punch! 

3. Our “2021 Pricing Guide” is a downloadable PDF that provides detail into our services and prices (which we don’t list on our website). It’s a win-win for us and our potential clients, they get to see pricing before even speaking with us, and we get to add them to our email list as potential prospect!

While these lead magnets all have slightly different purposes, they provide several opportunities for different types of potential clients to opt-in. One person may only take the quiz; another may opt-in to all three. If all three are opted into, we can assume they are a warmer lead - with the warmest lead being someone who’s opted in to see our prices. 

The Importance of a Workflow for an Opt-In

While creating the lead magnet is obviously an important step in this whole process, it’s only one step. Setting up your workflow is just as important. It would be a darn shame if you spilled the beans to all your trade secrets and weren’t able to at least gather their email address! A workflow is the process of collecting the email address and what happens after the visitor opts-in. Once they’ve opted into the lead magnet, we can consider them a “subscriber”. This workflow process is critical to engaging the subscriber and ensuring they continue to follow along. 

Lead Magnet Workflow Must-Haves

• Connect the opt-in to your email software (our favorite and what we use is Flodesk!) - you’ll want to make sure their name and email address is automatically added to your email list - manually doing this task is a no-go.

• Ensure you’ve segmented the subscriber (or organized them) into a single list based on what they’ve opted in to. This helps ensure you send relevant content to that particular segment or list in the future.

• Set up a welcome series of emails - at a minimum, you’ll want to deliver the first email immediately to their inbox along with the information they opted into from the lead magnet. Over the next couple weeks, keep delivering additional emails about your company, testimonials, and what they can expect by being on your email list. Most email software allows you to set it up so that these emails are automatically sent for you. Take advantage of this function! Trust me, it is invaluable!

Not only is adding a lead magnet a great way of providing your dream client some additional value, it’s a fun way to diversify the content on your website and grow your email list! If you have any questions about lead magnets, be sure to comment below!

Cheers!

-Mica