Lead magnets are your company's future, and here is why…

‍What and how can a lead magnet change your ecommerce forever?

A lead magnet is a freebie that offers your audience an incentive in exchange for their contact information. Now, this free content often comes in a variety of downloadable values for the targeted consumer - examples are; checklists, demos, tutorials, reports, templates, ebooks and the list goes on. It’s free gated content and free information, free value that your audience can receive to best both of you. 

The benefits of using lead magnets for your ecommerce/ business is that it's not just a one time interaction… Sure, at first you deliver that free content to them once, but once that person is in your email system you can continue marketing towards them but gently, slowly encouraging them from the position of leads to happy paying customers. 

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The benefits of leads sharing

One of the huge benefits of lead sharing is the build of trust and authority. Potential customers aren't to be so willing to spend money on a brand they don’t know much about, yet. However, offering your audience a taste of your brand by using something like a lead magnet is going to help your business develop customer relations with trust and authority. 

Another advantage that I briefly touched on earlier is that it will help grow your email list. Email marketing is the stuff dreams are made of. This is no exaggeration. Email marketing is going to be a huge money maker for your business, and one of the best ways to really put people on the fire is lead magnets.

Before we jump into the list you will need to apply an idea onto what your target audience is looking for when you look through this… think appropriately. The example on the right is an eBook from Oberlo. They chose an eBook because it is most accurate in their professional circumstance. This mindset will really refine your engagement in the long run for your company. 

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Different types of lead magnets:

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1.eBooks

Ebooks are an ideal lead magnet for business models that have blogs. This is because you easily create an ebook from the content you have already. Combining a few blog posts (with relevant subject matter of course) you have created an easy guide downloadable eBook! This makes your content more consumable and is something that will make your customers keep referring back to. 

You can find out more about Oberlo here. 

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2.Templates

Also known as toolkits, they are very effective in terms of attracting audience versatility. I say this because it’s ‘saving time’ as most people are already seeking this online. They are in demand, useful and informative. This type of lead magnet can be used for various different businesses as there are a variety of different ways you can do this type of lead magnet. For example you can offer a resource list, various different templates for meal planning to something that may benefit educators / students more or daily planner, the possibilities are pretty much limitless and easy to mould around your business. 

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Cloudways is a successful example of this, it offers businesses free templates that they can use for their work alongside information all in exchange for the person's email. Once the email is exchanged, they will receive said template attached in an email.

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 3. Discount / free shipping

According to NRF, 60% of shoppers expect free shipping from retailers and 79% of consumers say free shipping makes them more likely to shop. These are massive numbers that we cannot ignore as an ecommerce brand. We need to address this straight away in terms of attention to detail,  which is why we make sure the very first thing people see is what they are looking for.   

It is imperative to offer such a discount especially for first time/ active buyers. It’s a diverting and easy way to gain loyal customers on your email marketing list. Your business could even offer an additional discount with that free shipping for first time customers in exchange for an email. This type of lead magnet especially works well for retail based businesses. Gymproapparel do this really well on their website and they state their free delivery first thing when you visit. 

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4. Demo videos and Tutorials 

The reason why demo videos work is because they are highly visual and brainlessly engaging, especially when you can recognise a face to relate the product and sale to. 

Having a tutorial in place allows a quick and easy understanding of the products and it’s intentions. This is important as users 99% get bored easily if the product doesn't apply to them. Using this technique can persuade them that extra bit to make them want to buy. Fortressboxing executes tutorials really well within their content/ website. It’s short, cuts to the point and it’s easy to watch. They make sure to not drag out any part of the video to keep engagement at its peak.

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Salecycle.com offers a great demo example as you can see… as soon as you visit the website they provide you a free demo with the benefits of becoming a valued customer. Great right!   

Example of tutorial video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KY0RHxqPY8E 

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5.Recipes 

By offering your audience downloadable recipes that they can follow and use themselves. There are quite a few recipes online already, so it's important you can offer a wide range of recipes your audience can choose from themselves if you’re trying to push your recipes as a company. People will always come back for the right food!  

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6.Free Trial

Offering a free trial to a piece of ecommerce! Having the offer at a limited time only and making the free trial seem exclusive and something that they need. People love free things, especially something that can provide a service to them. In terms of e-commerce websites that people use they're a lot of free options out there to get your business started with the best ones being: 

Squarespace.com (free trial in exchange for email) 

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Shopify.com (For larger businesses but also offer a free trial)

Bonus: Squareup (Completely free website to start your ecommerce)   

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7.Newsletter

According to HubSpot, 67% of people prefer creative newsletter designs over plain text emails. Offering your newsletter straight out as a lead magnet itself is extremely effective in this context. Sometimes the newsletter is just so good that people are willing to give their email away to leter on enjoy the read. Make sure your news letter is worth it - include downloadable content, tips and other types of content that people will engage with. 

https://www.bunbox.co.uk/ Have an outstanding use of wording and visuals to accompany their newsletter bringing useful knowledge and tips to help in the future (in this case) to help your bunnies. BunBox Example: 

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8.Generator

Your generator can be for anything - you can have a generator that will come up with a username, blog post ideas, qr codes, logos. This offers a quick solution to people that may be stuck or who quickly needs to generate something like a qr code for their own use. After they use it, you can ask for their email before they see what the generator has produced. 

Here's an example of a hashtag generator. This is great as hashtags are widely used and needed in particular for influencers on social media : bigbangram.com

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9.Persona’s

Personas are pretty crucial when it comes to marketing and definitely important to consider when choosing which lead magnet to use. A buyer persona is what your typical customer is that is also based on market research. Researching and getting to know your customer base helps market the right way. 

What does your persona want and need instantly and how is your business going to help them needs / wants to be met?

This introduces my next point which is about pain points. Ultimately people are looking for a solution:

• What caused them to search for this solution, how did they get here?
• Can your business ultimately save their pain?

By knowing your personas, target audience, you can use this to your advantage when creating your lead magnets. You can make the offer personal which means no matter how the user perceives the offer it will resonate with them and become familiar. 

BONUS: Additional tips on using lead magnets:

It's key to consider what is going to happen next after the email is entered. Whether you are going to make a ‘landing page’ that says thank you or shows reviews, it's beneficial to do this right and again make it simple and distraction free. It helps keep the consumer engaged even after the ‘’freebie’’ has passed. Of course now you have the person's email it's always of use to send a follow up email. Do more than inform. Think carefully about what lead magnet is right for your market and don’t offer too much at once. Be simple, eye-catching and easy to use. 

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I’m glad if you’ve enjoyed this piece of content, at any point if you believe you found something of interest don’t hesitate to reach out to us. There's plenty you could learn even from just meeting one of the team. Thanks for reading and we hope to see you again soon.

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