Everything you need to know about a lead magnet

What is a lead magnet.

Actually, the word says it all. A lead magnet. In other words, a piece of content that is valuable enough to attract your target audience and convince them to leave their details. What a lead magnet looks like for your organization depends entirely on the target audience and its pain points. Enough theory?

An example of a lead magnet

that might trigger your target audience. Imagine; you live in the Amsterdam area. You live in an apartment with your partner in the city center. Because you want to take the next step and expand your family, you start looking for a new house. Still in the city, but in a different neighborhood. What is relevant to you at this time?

Question: what budget do we need to buy a house in neighborhood X or Y?

Now imagine a broker who has the answer to this. In the form of a quarterly report that is automatically updated and sent out. Would you then leave your details for this? The answer to this is probably yes. Because this immediately answers the question you have. Question now remains; how much and what data are you willing to leave behind for this? At that point we come to the opt-in. We will tell you more about this in the next piece.

Lead magnet as a trigger for your marketing automation system

We won't go into much more detail about this in this blog; we'll do that in one of the next sections. What we can already say is that the moment of opt-in is the starting signal for the marketing automation system. The opt-in is the trigger of one or more flows and from that moment you will be approached. With relevant content for you, if the organization has done it right. Does the lead magnet connect well with the flow? Then chances are they will open the emails as well as click on the content. And the beauty of the system? You can also see when and how often someone opens the lead magnet. So you know exactly how 'warm' your lead is!

what data are you going to collect?

That collecting data on users is valuable, we don't need to tell you. After the opt-in, you can start approaching your leads. And depending on how much information you collected in the form, you can immediately qualify leads as Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) without having to make a selection. But what kind of content will you send next? Obviously, you want to do this as personally as possible. Responding to the pain or needs of that particular lead so that they slowly move forward through the customer journey. How personal you can go about this approach depends on the questions you ask on the front end. And thus on the lead magnet you deploy to reach your target audience.

Who do I want to address with my lead magnet?

When thinking about the questions in the form, it is very important to think carefully about a specific question. Who do I want to address with this lead magnet? Is this person the company's decision maker? Then you will be able to go into a little more detail with your questions. Simply because they most likely know the answer to this. Is it an employee of a company? Then they will be able to give up on questions to which they do not know the answer. And that, of course, is a shame.

Is your target audience as specific as possible?

Besides the questions you ask, the type of person you want to address with your lead magnet also determines the content of the lead magnet. Open door, we know. Yet we still often see this go wrong. A target audience is often broad. And then includes multiple functions within a company or multiple types of companies. This increases the chances that your piece of content, which you think is so valuable, is not so valuable to a large part of this target group after all. Therefore, make it as specific as possible. So you can be sure that you are addressing the right person and triggering them to download or request your lead magnet.

Testing your lead magnet.

You may have collected multiple lead magnets for your business. Several valuable pieces of content that you want to use to collect leads. A luxury problem, of course. This is where we have a solution. Rotate! Test at which stage and among which target audience the lead magnet works best. Is it not working? That too is valuable data. At the end of the process, you know exactly what type of content is seen as valuable by your target audience. And depending on how much data they are willing to leave behind, you'll also know how valuable!

TO BE CONTINUED...

You've come to the end of the third blog in our blog series. The lead magnet and its importance has hopefully become a little clearer. Of course, we already want to talk more about how the lead magnet is the foundation of your marketing automation flow. But that would mean cutting the grass in front of our own feet. So we'll save that for next time!

Do you have questions about the lead magnet? Of course we would be happy to answer them!