Are you Making This Mistake With Your Lead Magnets?

You’ve been taught to use lead magnets to grow your email list but, you may be making a big mistake with your lead magnets.

In order to build your email list you need to capture the email addresses of your website visitors. Right?

Of course. Here’s the problem though.

Many marketing sites will tell you that there should be a unique lead magnet for every blog post.

That lead magnet would be specific to the content within each post.

For example, a blog post on “How to Create Your First Facebook Ad” might have a lead magnet that offers a downloadable checklist of step-by-step instructions.

Making sense?

So, what if you wrote 2 blog posts per week?

That’s 104 lead magnets you have to create.

Heck, even if you did one post per week, that’s 52 lead magnets.

That seems like a lot of work doesn’t it?

Now, while it’s a lot of work, that doesn’t necessarily mean you shouldn’t use this strategy.

If you want to create a lead magnet for every blog post, that’s your decision.

Here’s my issue – the effort to create all these lead magnets most often doesn’t lead to higher conversion.

I mean conversion to a sale, not a conversion to an opt-in.

Let’s go a bit deeper…

Your use of copious amounts of lead magnets has helped you build your email list faster…but what’s happening with those leads?

Are they buying your products or do you just have a bigger list that you can brag about?

Now, while I can’t speak to YOUR situation specifically (I mean we just met) I can say that we make it a habit to study what a lot of the top online entrepreneurs are doing to grow their list. On top of that we’re building out sales funnels and marketing automation for the ones that are our clients.

So, we see our fair share of lead magnets being used.

Over the last 6 months, we’ve noticed a very consistent trend of the lead magnets that convert leads into customers vs the lead magnets that don’t.

And despite, the numerous blog posts teaching you how to create a successful lead magnet, I continue to see the same mistake over and over and over again that’s killing conversion, yet not many people bring it up.

Note, I mean the bad kind of killing, not the “you be killin’ it brah” kind if you’re picking up what I”m putting down.

So, whether you decide to create just a few lead magnets or hundreds, avoid this ONE mistake with your lead magnets and you’ll be well on your way to creating lead magnets that actually help you drive revenue vs just adding a new person to your list.

The Biggest Mistake With Your Lead Magnets: Your Opt-In Intent and Purchase Intent Don’t Align

The next time you create a lead magnet ask yourself this one question.

Does this lead magnet necessarily imply the same intent that will drive them to make the first purchase I’m going to place in front of them?

If the answer is no. You should rethink your lead magnet.

While your lead magnet should most definitely NOT be arbitrary, it NEEDS to capture at lea st a tiny bit of the same intent that is going to be a part of their purchasing decision. Here’s my elementary school style diagram.

This is actually what you should be doing to create your lead magnet in the first place but, I like to reverse engineer from the product first, because that’s where we often see the biggest disconnect.

Here’s an extreme example of what NOT to do. (Believe me, we actually see this in various ways)

Let’s take a health and fitness site for example, that ultimately offers a 6 week program on home exercises using only body weight.

So, for someone to buy this product, they are going to have to be able to put in some work to do the exercise routines for the 6 weeks program right?

Ok, so now imagine the lead magnet of this site was “3 Quick Meals You Can Make From Home” to be more fit.

Do you think someone downloading meal plans to be more fit has the same intent that will be needed to make a purchase of a 6 week exercise program?

I’d say no.

While there is some alignment – being more fit – the person looking for dietary solutions isn’t necessarily going to be looking for fitness related solutions despite there being a correlation.

Let’s look at an example of what TO do by looking at John Lee Dumas of Entrepreneur on Fire with his product Podcasters’ Paradise.

Here’s the lead magnet. A free webinar.

Ok, so we’re looking at a free webinar I can opt-in to on his landing page.

As a person who lands on this page, I quickly know that when I claim my spot, I’ll learn how to create, grow and monetize my podcast. Simple and straight forward right?

My intent in this situation is to most likely grow my own podcast so that I can make money from it.

As an attendee of the webinar, I in fact get a crash course on all of these things, but there is only so much that can be taught in a 60-90 minute webinar.

So when John offers me a way to take things to the next level through his world class online training program and community, Podcasters’ Paradise, I’m promised the deep dive on how to create, grow and monetize my podcast.

The webinar is essentially just scraping the surface of what you’d learn in the course.

So, if my intent was to learn these things on the webinar (the lead magnet), when I see the opportunity to go deeper via purchasing something, it’s tapping into that same intent that I had when opting into the webinar making it an easy transition to want to fork out some money.

Here is brief snapshot of what’s included in the training:

Now, if this sounds basic, that’s because it is!

The problem we’re seeing is that people are getting carried away with their use of lead magnets and forgetting to make the connection to their product offering.

They just align it to the blog post they are writing at the time.

I hope you can see with the example above, the intent for the lead magnet is very similar to what will be needed when a prospect will decide to purchase the related program.